nder heart, yet experts say that it reminds them of Hayden and Mozart.
The paintings in the building are those of great masters. It took an
entire year to paint the scenery for the play in 1910, but they could
not afford to spend so much upon it in 1922. The curtains and costumes
are of fine material, nothing shoddy or cheap about it.

The story of the beginning of the Passion Play is as interesting as a
novel. It was in the year 1633. A pestilence was raging in the villages
in the mountains of Bavaria and death rode down the valleys like a
mighty conqueror. Hundreds were smitten and the hand of death could not
be stayed. Whole villages were depopulated and even the dead were left
unburied. For a while the village of Oberammergau was favored, while
neighboring villages were stricken. A line of sentinels were stationed
around the village and a strict quarantine was maintained. Finally, love
of home and the desire to see his family caused a laboring man, Casper
Schushler, who was working in another village, to steal through the line
and spend an evening at his own family fireside.

In a couple of days all was changed. The songs of the children were
hushed in silence, for this man had brought the plague into the village.
In thirty-three days eighty-four had perished and scores of others were
smitten by the hand of death. It was a great crisis and looked as though
that soon there would not be left among the living enough to bury the
dead. A public meeting was called. It was a sad gathering of hollow-eyed
men and women. They spent the whole day in earnest prayer. They vowed to
the Lord that day that if he would hear their petition and save them,
they would repent of their sins as a token of their sincerity, and that
they would try to re-enact the scenes of Calvary and thus give an object
lesson of God's love for humanity.

The chronicler says that from that moment the hand of death was stayed.
Not another person in the village died from the plague. Every one
smitten recovered and by this they knew that the Lord had heard their
prayers. At once they set about to carry out their vow. From that day
forward they aimed to give the object lesson every ten years and have
done so except on occasions when they have been hindered by war, as two
years ago. In 1910 a quarter of a million people endured the hardships
and inconveniences of a long, tiresome journey, sometimes spending many
hundred dollars, to see the play.

The day I sp