ay prepare an indictment
against the government against which they revolted, giving a schedule of
outrages, insults, plunderings and oppressions. This is what is politely
called partisan history. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a literary indictment
of the South by featuring its supposed brutalities. And the attitude of
the South is mirrored in a pretty parable concerning a Southern girl who
came North on a visit, and seeing in print the words "damned Yankee,"
innocently remarked that she always thought they were one word. A
description of the enemy, made by a person or a people, must be taken
cum grano Syracuse.

* * * * *

When Moses fled, after killing the Egyptian, he went northward and east
into the land of the Midianites, who were also descendants of Abraham.
At this time he was forty years of age, and still unmarried, his work in
the Egyptian Court having evidently fully absorbed his time.

It is a pretty little romance, all too brief in its details, of how the
tired man stopped at a well, and the seven daughters of Jethro came to
draw water for their flocks. Certain shepherds came also and drove the
girls away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young
ladies, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had
left their manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting
which the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven
daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as
basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told
their father of the chivalrous stranger they had met, and he, with all
the deference of the desert, sent for him "that he might eat bread."

Very naturally Moses married one of the girls.

And Moses tended the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law, taking the
herds a long distance, living with them and sleeping out under the
stars.

Now Jethro was the chief of his tribe. Moses calls him a "priest," but
he was a priest only incidentally, as all the Arab chiefs were.

The clergy originated in Egypt. Before the Israelites were in Goshen,
the "sacra," or sacred utensils, belonged to the family; and the head of
the tribe performed the religious rites, propitiating the family deity,
or else delegated some one else to do so. This head of the tribe, or
chief, was called a "Cohen"; and the man who assisted him, or whom he
delegated, was called a "Levi." The plan of making a business of