Show STUDENT LIFE panting efforts weariness and blows and whose rest even is so cheerless in the darkness of their little stalls? How about wild beasts imprisoned in cages? How about all those poor animals whose life is one long hopeless suffering and who have not even a voice to let us know what they are enduring or to relieve themselves with in curses? What is the use of their What are they paysuffering? ing for? What reward may they Sephora was a very expect? simple old woman but because was naively she thirsty for justice she pondered all these things in her heart and the thought of this unexplainable evil dulled for her the beauty of the daylight and the exquisite coloring of the Judean hills When her neighbors came and told her “The Messiah is born An angel announced him to us last night He is in a stable a quarter of a league away and we have been worshiping him’’ old Sephora replied “Now we’ll see” and she knew what she was thinking about That evening after having cared for her goats and other animals and having caressed them all she started out for the wonderful stable In the soft enchanted light of the evening trees rocks 15 and plain even the spears of grass seemed motionless with happiness You would have said that the earth was taking a delicious rest But old Sephora did not forget that at that very moment sick people were tossing on their hot beds travelers were being robbed on the highway mothers were weeping for the loss of their little ones and animals were suffering without knowing why She saw before her a light soft and yet so bright that the moonlight was pale beside it This light came from the stable which was dug in the natural rock in the Near the entrance side of a hill camels were sleeping their legs tucked up under them in the midst of heaps of carved or painted vases of baskets of fruit of heavy rugs rolled out full length and of whose contents jewel boxes “What wonderfully sparkled is all this '“asked the old woman “The kings have come” replied a man “Kings” said Sephora with a frown sjs i- - She went into the stable saw the child in a manger surrounded by Mary and Joseph the three laborers kings shepherds and with their wives and sons and |