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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
great feast was made in honor of Isaac, the babe, on the day of his weaning, and Sarah saw Ishmael mocking.
All the tenderness, pride, jealousy and resentment of a woman’s heart rose in rebellion against this alien boy, whose ancestral Eber blood was tainted by that of Egypt, and she cried out: “ Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.”
An English poetess, whose womanly endurance, resignation, and religious trust made her the fitting lyrist for this pathetic incident, and whose lovely countenance adorns these walls, gives this sympathetic lament:
“ Nor was thy way forgotten,
Whose worn and weary feet Were driven from thy homestead
Through the red sand’s parching heat;
Poor Hagar, scorned and banished,
That another’s son might be Sole claimant on that father,
Who felt no more for thee.
“Ah, when thy dark eye wander’d,
Forlorn, Egyptian slave,
Across that lurid desert
And saw no fountain wave;
When thy southern heart, despairing,
In the passion of its grief,
Foresaw no ray of comfort,
No shadow of relief,
“ But to cast the young child from thee That thou mightst not see him die,
How sank thy broken spirit—
But the Lord of Hosts was nigh!
He (He too oft forgotten In sorrow as in joy)
Had will’d they should not perish—
The outcast and her boy.
“The cool breeze swept across them,
From the angel’s waving wing,
The fresh tide gushed in brightness From the fountain’s living spring;
And they stood—those two—forsaken By all earthly love or aid,
Upheld by God’s firm promise,
Serene and undismay’d.”
The illustrious painters, Correggio, Vanderwerf and Lanfranco, supplemented this word-picture with paintings which, once seen, cannot fail to linger in the memory with a plaint as penetrating as that of the poetess. The boy and his mother were rescued by Divine compassion, and in the course of time, we are told, his mother “ took him a wife out of the land of Egypt.” Twelve sons were born of this union, who became the twelve princes of Arabia. Their descendants led the life of nomads or wanderers, as predicted, for thousands of years, maintaining their freedom, their faith and their peculiar customs against the assaults of great military empires. Neither the Babylonian and the Assyrian, nor the Egyptian and the Persian kings could reduce these wild sons of the desert to a state of subjugation. The Arab devoted his life to his horse, his weapons, his women and his poets, who sang the feuds of the tribes and