The Library of Work and Play: HousekeepingGilman, Elizabeth Hale
General
The Library of Work and Play: Housekeeping
Gilman, Elizabeth Hale
Home economics
One day, a Rabbi came to Bethsaida, who acted differently from the
others. He did not make speeches in the market-place, and often when
people were crowding to hear him, he went away on the lake or into the
hills. If they followed him, he would sometimes stand in a boat by the
shore, or on a hillside, and talk to them; and he could make sick
people well. He liked children; and the boy had seen him once stop in
the road and talk to a woman. That was a very queer thing for a great
Rabbi to do.
The boy saw very little of his uncles after this new Rabbi came,
for they followed him everywhere he went and seemed to be his close
friends. When they did come home they spoke of him as if they did not
know just what to say, yet always it seemed as if they could have said
more if they had thought it well.
One day, the Rabbi and his friends had gone up into the hills, and
people from the towns on the lake, and from the country round it, had
gone out to find him; for those who had seen him wanted nothing so much
as to see him again, and those who had not seen him could not rest
until they had found out what the others went to see. The boy had been
playing in the boats that morning, which nowadays were most of the time
pulled up on the shore, and when he saw some of the neighbours setting
off for the hills, he made up his mind to go too. First, though, he
thought, "Uncle Andrew will be hungry, and so shall I," and he went
home and got some food to take with him.
The way up through the hills was long and steep. The boy and his
neighbours were tired enough before they came in sight of a great
crowd of people in a green hollow of the hills. It was strange but,
though there were thousands of people all standing together, they did
not make a sound. As the boy came a little nearer, he heard the Rabbi's
voice in the stillness. He wondered why the people kept so quiet. He
did not realize that he was keeping very quiet himself.
After a while he no longer heard the Rabbi's voice, and the people
began to move and make a little murmur of talking. He crept through the
crowd toward the group round the Rabbi where his Uncle Andrew would
be. When he got there he found they were trying to think of a way to
feed all these hundreds of people who were tired and hungry, and miles
away from any place where they could get food. That reminded him of the
luncheon he had brought, and he pushed the basket into Uncle Andrew's
hand.
Uncle Andrew looked into the basket and smiled when he saw what it had
in it. Then he said to the Rabbi, "There is a lad here, which hath five
barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?"
All the same, though, he held out the basket to the Rabbi, as if he
really thought it would be of some use to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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