Stories of the Patriarchs

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ARK AND THE FLOOD. O Cain passed away from the earth, blasted and slain by the fire of the Lord. The great city which he built passed away also. The grass covered up the stones it was made of; the bricks mouldered; the wood rotted; the iron rusted. The gray, long-bearded, sad- faced wanderer was no...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ARK AND THE FLOOD. O Cain passed away from the earth, blasted and slain by the fire of the Lord. The great city which he built passed away also. The grass covered up the stones it was made of; the bricks mouldered; the wood rotted; the iron rusted. The gray, long-bearded, sad- faced wanderer was no longer seen among men. No more did the gaunt form frighten the children by the wayside; no more did the gloomy frown drive far off from him the men and women who met him in the villages. The head, heavy with its curse, could carry the burden no further, and was laid low in the dust. The woful, lonely, desolate life was ended. And yet, strange to say, the man lived, and lived more terribly than ever. If you let the worms in the ground break the shell of a nut, the germs of life in the shell come out at the opening, push their way up through the sods, peep above the surface of the soil, feel the warmth of the sunbeam, feel the breath of the air, feel the moisture of the rain, grow hard and strong and tall, till in time they become a tree. Its trunk puts forth boughs; its boughs put forth branches; its branches put forth twigs; its twigs put forth leaves; the leaves rustle in the wind, and cast a broad, black shadow on the ground. In the autumn they drop off, and make the soil richer by their decay. Nuts or other seed- vessels fall from the twigs, and make the beginning there of new trees, that have their trunks and boughs and branches and twigs and leaves, which go through the same course and have the same history; so that at last a whole forest of trees springs out of the hole which the worms bored in the nutshell. Weeds grow very fast in this way, as anybody may see who has a garden. So when Cain's body dropped into the ground, his bitter, melancholy, and hateful soul seem...