Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/617

Rh water and fishes swimming. For the legend has it that the wisest of men was decidedly curious. The Paul Prys of Jerusalem declared that the queenly visitor labored under the disadvantage of a deformed foot. The ingenuity of the monarch, it is said, suggested the device of the simulated stream, thinking that the lady's anxiety for her draperies would disclose to the court of Israel whether rumor had rightly reported her. But this performance is probably attributable to the imagination of one somewhat later than Solomon. It hardly sounds like the author of the "Proverbs," nor have we any record that the lady ever repaid



him for his discourtesy—a bit of negative evidence that is almost conclusive. But at that time so inhospitable a scheme, even if seriously entertained, could scarcely have been carried out. The hundred and twenty talents of gold and the very great store of spices and precious stones, which to the queen's presence in Jerusalem added their tribute of admiration for wisdom, could not have purchased in any of the marts of the ancient world a plate of glass sufficiently large and sufficiently clear to have made such a deception possible.

The glass-blowers of the olden times undoubtedly produced some fine results in color, which can scarcely be equaled in the present. They had already attained, in the fabrication of rare