 The Mutual Broadcasting System in cooperation with Family Theatre Incorporated brings you at this time a visit from America's beloved baritone, John Charles Thomas and the celebrated storyteller, John Nesbitt, who collaborate in words and music to present the immortal story called The Juggler of Our Lady. Things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Here is John Charles Thomas to tell us about a story which has become a traditional part of the Christmas season in our land. Mr. Thomas. Dear friends, I've heard people say that the Christmas season is too long, yet I think we all agree that the spirit of Christmas that never lasts too long is found when we live in the spirit of Christ and in heed of his message to all men that we love one another. I know one way of keeping the Christmas spirit all through the year, the way of daily family prayer, praying together as a family will bring our homes to each of us each day the year peace and happiness of Christmas. And here in that spirit is the great story, which is a particular discovery of my friend John Nesbitt. He first translated it from the old French and introduced it to American radio some years ago and for the past four years of these years it has been our pleasure to present it together. John Nesbitt in his own version of the words, myself as the monk who expressed himself chiefly in song. So in song, I'll set the stage for our story, the juggler of Our Lady. If the stars are brightly shone is when the world was young. There lived in France a little man who didn't amount to anything. Everyone said that he didn't amount to anything and he firmly believed this himself for he was just a poor traveling circus entertainer. He was a juggler. He couldn't read or write and all that he really knew how to do was to go about from town to town following the little country fairs and doing his tricks for the children and earning a few pennies a day. His first name was Barnaby but of course he was too unimportant to have any last name at all. Now when it was summertime and the weather was sunny and beautiful and the people were strolling around the streets and the young lovers were holding tightly to each other's hands in the park well then Barnaby would be very happy because of course he could now find a clear place in the village square and there he would spread out a strip of old carpet on the cobblestones and on the carpet he would perform his tricks for the children and the grown-ups alike. Now Barnaby although he knew that he didn't amount to anything of course was a wonderful juggler. You wouldn't believe half the things that that man could do. Now at first he would only balance one tin pie plate on the tip of his nose but when the crowd had collected he would stand on his head and he would juggle six golden colored balls in the air at the same time catching them with his foot and sometimes he could actually stand on his head and juggle 12 sharp knives instead of the golden balls and catch the knives with his feet too and then the people would applaud and the children would jump up and down with delight and a whole rain of pennies would be thrown down onto Barnaby's carpet. And you can imagine that at the end of a day's work like this well then Barnaby would collect the pennies in his hat and before wearily resting his aching muscles he would kneel down reverently and thank God for the hat full of pennies. But all this is about the happy days in Barnaby's life the summer days when the sun was shining and people were willing to toss a penny to a poor juggler. But ah, when winter came then Barnaby could afford no place even to sleep and he had to wrap up his juggling equipment in the old carpet and go trudging along the muddy roads and beg for a chance to sleep a night in a farmer's barn and Barnaby of course being so simple never thought of complaining about this for he knew that the winter and the rains were just as necessary as the spring and the summer and as he trudged along he would say to himself well how could such an ignorant fellow as I ever hope for anything better but now I must tell you that one year in France there was a terrible winter it was the coldest, wettest winter in a hundred years it began raining in October and there wasn't a piece of blue big enough to patch a Dutchman's pants with clear to the end of autumn all it was a terrible winter and the poor people huddled in their thatched huts and they slowly starved away to nothing and it said that the wolves came down out of the mountains and they ran through the icy streets of Paris itself and so you can imagine what all of this did to the little vote bill entertainer whom my story is about on an evening in early December at the end of a dreary wet day poor Barnaby trudged along a winding country road sad and bent carrying under his arm the golden balls and the knives all wrapped up in an old piece of muddy carpet and then as he slopped along in the mud in over the rain and the wind a faint sound came to Barnaby's ears somebody was coming up that road and in spite of all the storm and the blizzard that somebody was singing as happily as if it were a day in the middle of June and Barnaby stopped and he listened with the rain running down to the tip of his short little nose and then through the mist at last Barnaby saw a strange sight coming slowly around a bend in the road there was a fat white mule and on the mules back with his legs sticking almost straight out on each side well, there was a fine fat monk and now and then the young monk would bang the mule's side with his heels and then he would go on singing into the storm with all of his might Barnaby waited and then as the mule came along side of Barnaby he ran along in the mud while the young monk sang on just as cheerfully as a lock all of a sudden you see the monk stopped and he looked down and there of course was poor little Barnaby hopping along near the mule's tail and staring up at him and the monk smiled at him and he called down It's going to be a cold night brother juggler and Barnaby said and his teeth were chattering mind you and he said oh yes indeed sir very cold indeed yes well then how would you like it if I had a suggestion to make oh said Barnaby I should like it fine sir thank you alright then how would you like to spend the night where I live at the monastery oh if only I could if only I could earn my lodging but would they let an ignorant fellow like myself enter such a holy place as your monastery and the monk laughed ignorant now just hop on behind me brother juggler and the three of us you and the mule and I will soon be as warm as three bugs in a rug oh thank you very much sir thank you but I am very ignorant are we not all ignorant compared to God that night sure enough Barnaby found himself seated at the table in the huge dining hall of that monastery and mind you it was blazing with candles and candlesticks and the table was covered with enormous roasts of fine rare beef and legs of mutton swimming in gravy and whole roast pigs with red apples in their mouths and chicken pies and enormous cakes covered with crushed almonds and all the fresh cider that a man could hold and although Barnaby naturally sat down at the foot of the table together with the servants and the beggars he looked around with the candlelight shining in his eyes and Barnaby thought that he'd never seen such a wonderful sight this side of heaven but suddenly the merriment died down and everyone was looking at Barnaby for he'd risen and he was trembling and he was running clear around the table right to where the lordly abbot the head of the monastery sat at the top and there Barnaby sank to his knees Father grant my prayer please let me stay in this wonderful place and work for you I can't hope to become holy of course like one of you I'm too ignorant for that but let me work in the stables or mop up the kitchen floor and worship in the chapel with you and the fat jolly monk who'd met Barnaby on the road turned kindly to the abbot this is a good man simple and pure of heart and so the abbot simply nodded and that night Barnaby was given a cell of his own to sleep in and there he put his carpet with that juggling equipment under his mattress and before he fell asleep he swore to himself and never again would he go back to his disgraceful common old profession of juggling six golden balls and twelve sharp knives and in the days that followed everyone there couldn't help smiling to watch Barnaby work why he would scrub the flagstones of the kitchen until they were so clean you could eat off them and then he would polish the big copper kettles until they shone like gold and when the chapel bells rang out for services then he would always creep humbly in by the side door and kneel down alone in a dark corner and yet through all of these early days his face shone with happiness from morning until night that is until two weeks before Christmas and then a bewildered expression began to appear upon his simple face and slowly Barnaby's joy turned to misery and despair and before around him he saw every monk busy busy preparing a gift to place in the chapel on Christmas day now there was brother Maurice who was a painter and he could take gold and silver and rare enamels and he could paint exquisite little miniature pictures on the corner of each page of a Bible and then there was brother Marbode he was a sculptor and he was finishing a beautiful statue of the Christ as a child and brother Ambrose writing a hymn and brother Joseph composing the music everywhere that Barnaby went here were these trained and educated men following their work each one making a gift to dedicate to God on Christmas day and what about Barnaby? he could do nothing he would go to his tiny cell and there he would unwrap his old juggling equipment from the carpet and then he would gaze at it sadly I'm but a rough man unskilled in art I can't even read or write all I know how to do is to perform a few stunts everybody here has a gift to present except me and so you see there was poor Barnaby sunk deep into sadness and despair and at nights he would no longer sleep but tossed on his mattress and yet Christmas morning came at last and strangely enough that was the first day of the winter that the sun broke out and outside the monastery the fields of snow glistened like frosting on a birthday cake and trudging through the snow from the village you could see dozens of families of children and their parents from the village because on Christmas the great monastery always held open house and there were food and gifts for everyone and in the chapel that day the great stone halls were decked in pine branches and berries and thousands of candles gleamed everywhere and the whole building rang with music and it took 25 of the monks alone just to roll Brother Marlbode's great stone statue into the chapel and the choir sang the new songs and every brother went humbly forward to present his gift to God and where was Barnaby all of this time well, he wasn't to be seen he had stayed all day inside his cell his eyes gleaming with fever sick and shivering with chill and tossing upon his mattress of straw and looking at the ceiling overhead and muttering over and over again the same words forgive me I have no gift to offer I have nothing to give that's worthy forgive me and then a strange and a terrible thing happened a thing that no brother in that great monastery would ever forget during all of the days of his life for that evening after the visitors had gone and the chapel was deserted and nearly all the brothers were weirdly asleep on their hard beds and the plump Jolly Monk who had brought Barnaby to the monastery was now seen in the halls but he wasn't Jolly any longer he was running down the halls with his face smiling no more white as a ghost he pounded over the floors to the private room of the abbot he shoved open the door and panting with excitement he seized his abbot by the arm Father, a frightful thing is happening the most terrible sacrilege ever to take place in our church come with me without speaking a word the abbot joined him and the two men ran down the corridors they burst through a door and they came out on the choir balcony that was at the rear of the chapel and the monk pointed his trembling finger down toward the altar and the abbot looked and he turned white God forgive him he's gone mad for down below them squarely in front of the altar there was Barnaby and he had spread out his old strip of carpet and kneeling reverently on one knee he was actually juggling in the air the six golden balls he was presenting his old act and giving it wonderfully the bright knives the shining balls and even a tin pie plate balanced on the tip of his nose and on his face there was a look of adoration and joy we must seize him and drag him away cried the abbot and the two men turned toward the door and at that exact moment a dazzling light suddenly filled the chapel it was a brilliant beam that came directly from the altar and both the monks sank to their knees for as Barnaby had finished his juggling act and knelt exhausted on his carpet they saw the statue of the Virgin Mary move and she came down from her pedestal and coming to where Barnaby knelt she took the blue hem of her robe and she touched it to his forehead gently drying the perspiration that glistened there and the light dimmed and up in the choir balcony the brother who had befriended Barnaby smiled again now with deep understanding and he turned and he spoke very quietly to his abbot God has accepted the only gift he had to make blessed are the pure in heart for they too shall see God Family Theatre has presented John Charles Thomas and John Nesbitt in The Juggler and Our Lady Family Theatre broadcast is made possible by the thousands of you who felt the need for this kind of program and by the Mutual Broadcasting System which has responded to this need. Be with us next week at this same time when our stars will be Adolf Manjou, Gigi Perot and Peter Miles and remember the family that prays together stays together. This is the Mutual Broadcasting System.