St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls

St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys
and Girls,
by Various

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Girls,
Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3, by Various This eBook is for the use of
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Title: St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878,
No. 3
Author: Various
Editor: Mary Mapes Dodge
Release Date: September 28, 2006 [EBook #19399]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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NICHOLAS MAGAZINE ***

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[Illustration: TWO WAYS OF CARRYING THE MAIL. [See
Letter-Box.]]

ST. NICHOLAS.
VOL. V. JANUARY, 1878. No. 3.
[Copyright, 1877, by Scribner & Co.]

THE RAVENS AND THE ANGELS.
(A Story of the Middle Ages.)
BY THE AUTHOR OF "CHRONICLES OF THE
SCHÖNBERG-COTTA FAMILY."
I.
In those old days, in that old city, they called the cathedral--and they
thought it--the house of God. The cathedral was the Father's house for
all, and therefore it was loved and honored, and enriched with lavish
treasures of wealth and work, beyond any other father's house.
The cathedral was the Father's house, and, therefore, close to its gates
might nestle the poor dwellings of the poor,--too poor to find a shelter
anywhere besides; because the central life and joy of the house of God
was the suffering, self-sacrificing Son of Man; and dearer to Him, now
and forever, as when He was on earth, was the feeblest and most fallen
human creature He had redeemed than the most glorious heavenly
constellation of the universe He had made.
And so it happened that when Berthold, the stone-carver, died,
Magdalis, his young wife, and her two children, then scarcely more
than babes, Gottlieb and little Lenichen, were suffered to make their

home in the little wooden shed which had once sheltered a hermit, and
which nestled into the recess close to the great western gate of the
minster.
Thus, while inside from the lofty aisles pealed forth, night and day, the
anthems of the choir, close outside, night and day, rose also, even more
surely to God, the sighs of a sorrowful woman and the cries of little
children whom all her toil could hardly supply with bread. Because, He
hears the feeblest wail of want, though it comes not from a dove or
even from a harmless sparrow, but a young raven. And He does not
heed the sweetest anthem of the fullest choir, if it is a mere pomp of
sound. Because, while the best love of His meanest creatures is
precious to Him, the second-best of His loftiest creatures is intolerable
to Him. He heeds the shining of the drops of dew and the rustling of the
blades of grass. But from creatures who can love he cannot accept the
mere outside offering of creatures which can only make a pleasant
sound.
All this, or such as this, the young mother Magdalis taught her babes as
they could bear it.
For they needed such lessons.
The troubles of the world pressed on them very early, in the shape little
children can understand--little hands and feet nipped with frost, hunger
and darkness and cold.
Not that the citizens of that city were hypocrites, singing the praises of
God, whilst they let His dear Lazaruses vainly crave at His gates for
their crumbs.
But Magdalis was very tender and timid, and a little proud; proud not
for herself, but for her husband and his babes. And she was also feeble
in health. She was an orphan herself, and she had married, against the
will of her kindred in a far-off city, the young stone-carver, whose
genius they did not appreciate, whose labor and skill had made life so
rich and bright to them while he lived, and whose early death had left
them all so desolate.

For his dear sake, she would not complain. For herself it had been
easier to die, and for his babes she would not bring the shame of
beggary on them. Better for them to enter into this life maimed of
strength, she thought, by meager food, than tainted with the taint of
beggary.
Rather, she thought, would their father himself have seen them go
hungry to bed than deserve that the fingers of other children should be
pointed scornfully at them as "the little beggars by the church door,"
the door of the church in which she gloried to think there were stones
of his carving.
So she toiled on, carving for sale little devotional symbols--crosses, and
reliquaries, and