I could not long together keep my eyes turned away from him; he did not move a muscle or blink his great shining eyes. I could not decide whether he was asleep or awake, though I looked at him till I was almost mesmerized. I rested my head on my pillow, full of thought. Suddenly the idea entered my mind that it must have been in such a house as this that Christ was born, and in a manger, such as I saw before me, that he was cradled. It was Winter-time when, in obedience to the decree of Cæsar Augustus, Joseph the carpenter, of the house and lineage of David, went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be taxed or enrolled with Mary, his espoused wife.
I imagined Joseph anxiously seeking shelter and rest for her after her long journey. All the guest-chambers were already filled, and there was no room in the inn—that is, there was no room for them in the "house of rest for wayfarers"—"the place of unlading." The raised floor was crowded with strangers, who had, like them, come to be taxed. But Joseph and Mary may have taken refuge from the cold in the lower part of the room. In imagination I could see them, half-hidden by the cattle, and warmed by the blazing fire of wood and crackling thorns burning on the raised floor close by. "And so it was, that while they were there the days were accomplished that she should be delivered; and she brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped him in swaddling-clothes, and laid him in a manger." The manger was very likely close by her side, hollowed out at the edge of the dais, and filled with soft Winter fodder. I raised my head and looked at one of the mangers, and I felt how natural it was to use it as a cradle for a newly-born infant. Its size, its shape, its soft bed of fodder, its nearness to the warm fire, always burning on the dais in mid-winter, would immediately suggest the idea to an Eastern mother. I fell asleep, picturing to myself the whole scene—"the
