Mary's instinct tells her that
this is so, and she pleads to him to stay.
"Poor Mary! To others he is the Christ, the Saviour of mankind,
setting forth upon his mighty mission to redeem the world. To
loving Mary Mother, he is her son: the baby she has suckled at her
breast, the little one she has crooned to sleep upon her lap, whose
little cheek has lain against her heart, whose little feet have made
sweet music through the poor home at Bethany: he is her boy, her
child; she would wrap her mother's arms around him and hold him safe
against all the world, against even heaven itself.
"Never, in any human drama, have I witnessed a more moving scene
than this. Never has the voice of any actress (and I have seen some
of the greatest, if any great ones are living) stirred my heart as
did the voice of Rosa Lang, the Burgomaster's daughter. It was not
the voice of one woman, it was the voice of Motherdom, gathered
together from all the world over.
"Oliver Wendell Holmes, in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, I
think, confesses to having been bewitched at different times by two
women's voices, and adds that both these voices belonged to German
women. I am not surprised at either statement of the good doctor's.
I am sure if a man did fall in love with a voice, he would find, on
tracing it to its source, that it was the voice of some homely-
looking German woman.
