Slow glides the Nile: amid the margin flags, Closed in a bulrush ark, the babe is left,-- Left by a mother's hand. His sister waits Far off; and pale, 'tween hope and fear, beholds The royal maid, surrounded by her train, Approach the river bank,--approach the spot Where sleeps the innocent: she sees them stoop With meeting plumes; the rushy lid is oped, And wakes the infant, smiling in his tears, As when along a little mountain lake The summer south-wind breathes, with gentle sigh, And parts the reeds, unveiling, as they bend, A water-lily floating on the wave. {135}{136} [Illustration] VIEW FROM RAMAH, THE TRADITIONAL HOME OF SAMUEL Copyright by Underwood & Underwood and used by special permission. "We know not with certainty the situation of Ramah. Of Samuel as of Moses it may be said, 'No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.' But the lofty peak above Gibeon, which has long borne his name, has this feature (in common, to a certain extent, with any high place which can have been the scene of his life and death), that it overlooks the whole of that broad table-land, on which the fortunes of the Jewish monarchy were afterwards unrolled. Its towering eminence, from which the pilgrims first obtained their view of Jerusalem, is no unfit likeness of the solitary grandeur of the prophet Samuel, who lived and died in the very midst of the future glory of his country" [End illustration] {137} MOSES _The Story of the Man Who Led a Race of Slaves Out of Bondage, and Became the Emancipator of a Great Nation_. THE ISRAELITES ARE ENSLAVED IN EGYPT. _The Slave Who Was Brought Up in a King's Palace. Moses Kills One of the Egyptian Taskmasters and Flees from the Country_. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said to his people, "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: come, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land." Therefore they set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor: and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor. {138} And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, "Every son that is born to the Hebrews ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive."