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. 1 

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

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



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



