This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter XIV THE UNGRATEFUL PLAY- FELLOW IN what strange nurseries some children have played: the mountain cave, the gipsy's tent, the ship's cabin, the travelling caravan have all been used as nurseries, but there never was a nursery more strange and unusual than the one we are now to enter. Let us visit, in thought, the City of Jerusalem in the early days of its prosperity and splendour. Let us enter the grand Palace of the King, built by King Solomon. We will pass in, not by the great pillared portico built of cedar, which King Solomon had decorated with a thousand golden shields; we will enter quietly by a side entrance, and creep noiselessly up the stone steps, and thus, mounting to the top of the palace, we shall come to a remote and very quiet room, a room seldom entered by the palace officials and servants. As we go into the room we notice that it is filled with piles of mattresses and bedding: it is a storeys A Strange Nursery 179 room for the spare mattresses not in use in the great palace. Listen! what is that sound we hear? It is a child's cry! Yes, this is the nursery, the strange nursery, for there, behind the mattresses, we find, hidden away from public view in this obscure lumber room, a child of a year old, carefully watched over by an anxious and devoted nurse. See how she tries to hush his every cry lest it should be heard outside! Watch her, as she shakes his glittering string of beads, and hands him his playthings one by one, and does all in her power to keep the little one under her care good, and quiet and happy. Who is this boy, and why is he kept secretly in such a strange place? He is a King's son, the last representative of David's royal line. God had given David a clear, definite promise 'Thine house and thy...