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there to-night and try to carry it off.
This "Fountain of the Virgin" is the one which tradition says Mary used
to get water from, twenty times a day, when she was a girl, and bear it
away in a jar upon her head. The water streams through faucets in the
face of a wall of ancient masonry which stands removed from the houses of
the village. The young girls of Nazareth still collect about it by the
dozen and keep up a riotous laughter and sky-larking. The Nazarene girls
are homely. Some of them have large, lustrous eyes, but none of them
have pretty faces. These girls wear a single garment, usually, and it is
loose, shapeless, of undecided color; it is generally out of repair, too.
They wear, from crown to jaw, curious strings of old coins, after the
manner of the belles of Tiberias, and brass jewelry upon their wrists and
in their ears. They wear no shoes and stockings. They are the most
human girls we have found in the country yet, and the best natured.
But there is no question that these picturesque maidens sadly lack
comeliness.
A pilgrim--the "Enthusiast"--said: "See that tall, graceful girl! look at
the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance!"
Another pilgrim came along presently and said: "Observe that tall,
graceful girl; what queenly Madonna-like gracefulness of beauty is in her
countenance."
I said: "She is not tall, she is short; she is not beautiful, she is
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