It made me sit
up with the instant realization that we had arrived in Bethlehem on
Easter Eve, and that this was Easter Morning. We had read of the
beautiful observance of the feast by the Moravians, and, while I was
hurrying on my clothes beside my faithful base-burner, I kept quite
superfluously wondering at myself for not having thought of it, and so
made sure of being called. I had waked just in time, though I hadn't
deserved to do so, and ought, by right, to have missed it all. I tried
to make my wife come with me; but after the family is of a certain size
a woman, if she is a real woman, thinks her husband can see things for
her, and generally sends him out to reconnoitre and report. Besides, my
wife couldn't have left the children without waking them, to tell them
she was going, and then all five of them would have wanted to come with
us, including the baby; and we should have had no end of a time
convincing them of the impossibility. We were a good deal bound up in
the children, and we hated to lie to them when we could possibly avoid
it. So I went alone.
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