Pool of Bethesda

“ Again, several writers have supposed that the so-called Virgin’s Fountain might be the true Bethesda, because it is an intermittent spring, and because the modern Jews believe the water of this pool to be a sure cure for rheumatic complaints. They often go in numbers, men and women together, and stand in their clothes in the pool, waiting for the water to rise. But the Virgin’s Fountain is too far away from the Sheep-gate to be the pool which the Evangelist refers to. ”

“ Bethesda! Sure enough, like the pool in Jerusalem, it had five porches! And that name, born of grandmother Ruth's indignant surprise, stuck to it ever afterwards.
When the old Squire began work on that bathroom he expected to have it finished in a month. But one difficulty after another arose: the tank leaked; the sewer clogged; nothing would work. If the hardware dealer from the village came once to help, he came fifty times! His own experience in bathrooms was limited. Then, to have hot water in abundance, it was necessary to send to Portland for a seventy-five-gallon copper heater ”

“ Eucherius, “Bethesda gemino ... lacu.”
27 Theodorus, 530 A. D.
28 The Templar rival site is noticed in an anonymous thirteenth-century tract. The map of 1308 shows the Piscina (interior) west of St. Anne, but the Piscina Probatica south of that church. The pilgrims usually call the pool Bethsaida, as in the Vat. MS. (Sinaitic Bethzatha) , and note its “five cloisters” (John v. 2) . Bethesda probably means “house of the stream,” but Beth-ṣiddei would be “the house of sides,” or “cloisters.”
29 Theodorus, Armenian account, Antoninus Martyr, Abbot Daniel (c. 1106 A. D.) , John of Würzburg. ”

“ April 6.—The next morning we took another progress about the city. We made our exit at Bethlehem Gate, and turning down on the left hand under the castle of the Pisans, came about a furlong and a half to that which they call Bathsheba's Pool. It lies at the bottom of Mount Sion, and is supposed to be the same in which Bathsheba was washing herself, when David spied her from the terrace of his palace. But others refer this accident to another lesser pool in a garden just within Bethlehem Gate; and perhaps both opinions are equally right. ”

“ David was already on his feet, peering over the stone wall toward the pool.
"We should try to get Michael home first," Betsey objected, seeing already what was in his mind.
"No, no," the Irishman insisted, having only a vague notion of what they were about, but feeling excitement in the air. "You shall not move me one inch if there is aught to do first that may help Miss Miranda."
"You must lie very still," warned Betsey. ”

“ Of her talk with the farmer's wife, Betsey did not say so much, only delivered her messages and accounted for the eggs.
"I thought I would drop them a hundred times," she said at the end. "I never knew that eggs could grow so heavy."
She sat lazily on the grass, feeling rested and content, unmindful for any further exertion than to dabble her fingers in the quiet pool. A shimmering band of sunset light dyed the opposite half of the basin as though the water had been set on fire. Miss Miranda, leaning comfortably against a tree, had taken out her knitting. ”

“ RUNNING WATER
IT was a thrush, singing in the early morning rain, that awakened Betsey next day. She had slept at the cottage, on the couch beside the toy-cupboard and had seen through the window, as she dropped asleep, the sky all bright with stars and had thought vaguely of how they must be shining in the pool. Through her dreams, however, she had heard, toward the dawn, the patter of rain on the sloping roof above her head and she had remembered how dry the grass was growing and how thirsty the garden, and had smiled to hear it fall. ”

“ Gems of sunlight sparkled on its bosom and scintillated in the ripples left behind by the oars. When seated with our backs to the strongest light, and when glancing along the top of such a pool instead of into it, the mirror-like surface gave way to a peculiar purplish tone which seemed to cover the pool, so that one would forget it was roily water, and saw only the iridescent beauty of a mountain stream. ”

“ She moved over to sit by Elizabeth at the edge of the pool.
"It is not easy to come home to an empty, silent house that is not really home," she went on. "No one knows that better than I, my dear, or would like more to make it up to you."
Betsey moved closer and smiled up at her gratefully.
"You do make it up to me," she said.
David, who was lying stretched out at Miss Miranda's feet was busy at a task of his own. It seemed that he was a persistent boy who would never lay aside a piece of work until every detail that he could think of had been added to make it complete. ”

“ The old Chinaman smiled patiently.
“You Americans are ever in such haste. How long, think you, it takes a true craftsman to carve a tree of jade?”
CHAPTER VIII
HOBGOBLINS Betsey and David were frankly gossiping, but with the most intent and serious purpose in the world. The days were growing so long that they could do their studying out of doors in the evenings, and the place of their choosing, where they struggled with dates and angles and difficult lines of Virgil, was the stretch of grass around the pool. ”

“ In the end they fell to firing rapid questions at each other, Betsey trying to trip David in his fluent statement of the theorem, he in turn lying in wait for her on obscure points of the proof, until neither could be shaken from the thoroughness with which knowledge was now entrenched.
"How lucky it is," said Betsey, putting down the book and leaning back with her elbow on the rim of the pool, "that each of us stuck in a different place! I hope it will often be that way and that we can help each other more. ”

“ The storm burst in the middle of the night. A rush of wind came with a high call out of the South and tore at the hessian walls of Surprise with multitudinous fingers. It fell with upraised voice upon the timbered country of Pelican Pool and swung together the heads of the trees. It leapt in rage upon the staunch homestead of Kaloona so that the timbers groaned beneath the buffet. There blazed through the dark a sheet of light and the ghost of day stood an instant naked and trembling. There sounded a roar of thunder. And at once the sky was torn from end to end to let down the rains. ”

“ On the north side, close to its head, a slab of granite projects over the brink, forming a fine point for a view, over its throng of streamers and wild plunging, into its intensely white bosom, and through the broad drifts of spray, to the river far below, gathering its spent waters and rushing on again down the cañon in glad exultation into Emerald Pool, where at length it grows calm and gets rest for what still lies before it. All the features of the view correspond with the waters in grandeur and wildness. ”

“ With great dignity he stepped across the grass to sit on the rim of the pool.
"Is it deep?" Elizabeth asked, looking down into the quiet water that reflected Dick's image so clearly.
"It is at one side, but not at the other," Miss Miranda answered. "Just here you can touch the bottom if you stretch your arm, but it slopes sharply and is deep enough for swimming over at the other edge. Watch the water and, as it grows darker, you will see the stars come out. Just above the reflection of that tallest pine tree will be the big stars of the Lion, and the curve of the Sickle." ”

“ In some of our old histories occasional mention is made of pools suddenly changing from water to blood, or putting on a sanguine aspect, which in those "muddy-evil" times was considered a prodigy portending wars and direful slaughter. A similar appearance was presented a short time ago in a pool at Snead's Green, Mathon, in this county, the surface of which was so closely covered with a film of crimson and vermilion as to present a most extraordinary appearance. ”

“ And often at the healing hour
He feebly toward the fountain bore him,
But all too late to feel its power,
For one had always stepp'd before him.
A stranger came and look'd awhile
On him who there in anguish lay,
Then kindly said, with holy smile,
'Hebrew, arise and go thy way!'
As forth into the world that hour,
With footsteps light, the Hebrew trod,
'I've felt,' he cried, 'the Almighty's power,
I've heard the voice of God.'
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ I like to stand upon the bank and watch the green water rise and dimple to the top of the pool, and to hear it bickering away in its rusty channel. But the beauty of the place is not a simple beauty; there is something strange and almost fierce about the red-stained water-course; something uncanny and terrifying about the filmy orange clouds that stir and sway in the pool; and there sleeps, too, round the edges of the basin a bright and viscous scum, with a certain ugly radiance, shot with colours that are almost too sharp and fervid for nature. ”

“ The pool was nearly a mile long, and lay on one side of the island between the forest and the sand-bank. The sands are heaped up very curiously around the margins of these isolated sheets of water; in the present case they formed a steeply-inclined bank, from five to eight feet in height. What may be the cause of this formation I cannot imagine. The pools always contain a quantity of imprisoned fish, turtles, tracajás, and Aiyussás. ”

“ He was prevented still further from finding his way by a thick mist which rose as the night fell; one of those mists which come on autumn evenings when the whiteness of the moonlight renders them more undefined and more treacherous. The great pools of water scattered through the glades gave forth a vapor so dense that when the gray crossed them, their presence was known only by a splashing noise, and the difficulty with which she drew her feet from the mud. ”

“ The ability of the engineer who constructed these works is shewn even more in the aqueduct than in the pools, as it falls and rises, winding through valleys and hills on its way from the castellum, until, after a course of about 40,000 feet, it empties itself into the great reservoir in the Valley of Gihon, not far from, and on the north of, the Birket es-Sultan (the ancient Lower Pool) , where its waters were allowed to settle. ”

“ Wumble Pool! The very name struck a chill to our hearts.
"Yes, and there's the moon," whispered the cobbler.
It was true that the distorted image of the moon floated dimly in the Pool, as though it had indeed been caught by the mad-woman, and drowned.
"How soft the ground is!" breathed Angel.
"Ay, and the Pool has no bottom," said the lamplighter.
"I can't think she'd have the heart to do it," said Martindale.
The Seraph screamed.
"There she is! I see her! Standing in the Pool!"
We ran to the brink. A cold air struck our faces. Our feet sank ankle-deep in the mud. ”

“ The whole pitiful business would be impossible under that enlightened statesmanship which some day will make all mineral wealth public property.
The chief features of the Bethesda scenery are the long series of rubbish-heaps, or rubbish-mountains, and the terraced clefts in the hills whence the slates have come. Whole hillsides have been cut and blasted away, to be fashioned into slates that have roofed half the little suburban villas of the world. ”

“ Just where we expected to find a crossing, an overwhelming sight presented itself to our gaze; the pool stretched away in a southwesterly direction to the very horizon, and we could see no end to it! In the mirage on the horizon, a couple of detached blocks of ice rose above the level of the pool; they appeared to be floating in open water, changed constantly in shape, and disappeared and reappeared. Everything seemed to indicate that the pool debouched right into the sea in the west. ”

“ Kaloona household woke up to a cheerless day. In a lull between the storms light crept into the sky. Power from his window, Mrs. Elliott and Maggie from the kitchen, stared upon a strange country. Heaven was choked with frowning clouds looking down upon a broken land. Pools of water filled the depressions. The higher country was beaten and furrowed. Many boughs had been torn from the timber by the river. The saplings bent piteously before the morning wind. Moisture dripped from the leaves down and down until it reached the ground. In all places tiny streams trickled about the country. ”

“ Don't you want to live here again?" Betsey asked eagerly.
Miss Miranda did not answer. It was evident that Elizabeth had put questions that she had no right to ask, so she pursued the matter no farther. The rising breeze had begun to stir the water once more, so that the stars rocked and twinkled and turned into long streaks of glimmering light. Dick had fluttered across the grass, mounted the broken house wall and now sat there in the dusk, cawing loudly. ”

“ The river at this point, after some hundred yards of rapid, makes a sudden turn round a rocky angle, and plunges madly into the pool itself. Very deep water lies at the head of it, but deeper still further down on the east side, where a portion of the stream flicks back again in a swift dark backwater towards the top of the pool again. It is fishable only from the western bank, for to the east, above this backwater, a great wall of black and basaltic rock, heaved up no doubt by some fault in strata, rises sheer from the river to the height of some sixty feet. ”