420 FREAKS OF PLANT LIFE. 



tree, a cedar of Lebanon — was felled by Solomon for 

 the purpose of being preserved for ever as a beam in 

 the Temple. But the design failed ; the king's car- 

 penters found themselves utterly unable to manage 

 the mighty beam. They raised it to its intended 

 position, and found it too long ; they sawed it, and 

 it then proved too short ; they spliced it, and again 

 found it wrong. It was evidently intended for another^ 

 perhaps a more sacred office, and they laid it aside 

 in the Temple to bide its time. While waiting for its 

 appointed hour, the beam was on one occasion impro- 

 perly made use of by a woman named Maximella, 

 who took the liberty of sitting on it, and presently 

 found her garments on fire. Instantly she raised a 

 cry, and, feeling the flames severely, she invoked the 

 aid of Christ, and was immediately driven from the 

 city and stoned, becoming in her death a pro-Christian 

 martyr. 



In the course of an eventful history the predestined 

 beam became a bridge over Cedron, and, being thrown 

 into the Pool of Bethesda, it proved the cause of its- 

 healing virtues. Finally, it became the Cross, was- 

 buried in Calvary, exhumed by the Empress Helena, 

 chopped up by a corrupt church, and distributed. ^ 

 Little more can be said for this than that it reads like 

 a wild dream, and, like most dreams, with very little- 



^ "Gardener's Chronicle," January 13, 1877. 



