 The Mutual Broadcasting System in cooperation with Family Theatre Incorporated presents, transcribed, The Juggler of Our Lady starring America's beloved baritone, John Charles Thomas and John Nesbitt. Irene Dunn is your hostess. Things are wrought by prayer and this world dreams of. This glorious time of Christmas there is a feeling of peace and goodwill in the hearts and homes of people everywhere because the remembrance of Christ's birth brings new hope and happiness into our lives. It means a renewal of our trust and faith in God, a renewal of our prayers for understanding and harmony, harmony in our homes and among the nations of the world. It would be a wonderful world if every day were Christmas if on all days we had the spirit of giving to make others happy, the spirit of kindness and unselfishness. This is the spirit of Christ, his message to all men, a message of love for one another and in homes where this spirit reigns where it is kept in daily remembrance by the practice of daily family prayer. Every day has the joy and hope and happiness of Christmas. Eighteen years ago John Nesbitt, well-known storyteller of radio and motion pictures, discovered a manuscript written in the original French. Curious, he translated it into modern English and thereby came across one of the most beautiful and touching folktales in the world. That exquisite legend is now known to millions of Americans as the juggler of Our Lady. For several years past one of the most noted presentations of this timeless story has been the happy combination of John Nesbitt and the distinguished baritone John Charles Thomas. Tonight, Family Theatre is honored to perpetuate this traditional Christmas offering with America's beloved baritone John Charles Thomas singing some grand old Christmas songs and speaking some of the lines as well. So here is John Nesbitt's The Juggler of Our Lady with Mr. Nesbitt as narrator. John Charles Thomas will set the scene with a song. The stars are brightly shone. It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth in sorrow far. A thrill and glow 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 summer time and the weather was sunny and beautiful and the people were strolling around the streets and the young lovers were holding tightly to one another's hands in the park well then Barnaby would be very happy because he would find a clear place in the village square and 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 he was a wonderful juggler. You wouldn't believe half the things that man could do. At first he would only balance a tin pipe plate on the tip of his nose but when the crowd had collected he would then stand on his head and juggle six golden colored balls in the air at the same time catching them with his foot and sometimes he would actually stand on his head and juggle twelve 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 at the end of the 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 hatful of pennies and always the people would laugh at his simplicity and everyone would say that Barnaby would never amount to anything 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 trudge along the muddy roads begging a chance to sleep a night into farmer's barn or entertaining the servants of some rich nobleman in the kitchen in order to get a meal and Barnaby of course being so simple never thought of complaining about this for he knew that the winter and the rains were quite as necessary as the spring and the summer and as he trudged along he would say to himself 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 100 years it began raining in October and there was not a piece of blue big enough to panch a Dutchman's pants with clear to the end of autumn oh it was a terrible winter and the poor people just huddled in their thatched huts and they slowly starved away to nothing and it is said that the wolves came down out of the mountains and they ran through the icy streets of Paris itself and you can imagine what all of this did to the little vogueville 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 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 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 was a fat white mule and on the mule's 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 sides with his heel 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 as cheerfully as a lark all of a sudden the monk stopped and he looked down and there of course was poor Barnaby hopping along near the mule's tail and staring up at him and the monk smiled at him and he called down well there how would you like that I made a suggestion for you and Barnaby said with his teeth chattering oh any sort of suggestion you would care to make sir would be very welcome thank you well it's a very cold night oh I have a very good suggestion for you yes indeed anything you say sir would be fine all right then how would you like to spend the night where I live at the monastery oh if I only could if I only could earn my lodging of course sir but would they let an ignorant fellow like myself even enter such a holy place as your monastery and the monk laughed ignorant now just hop on behind me brother juggler and all 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 but I am very ignorant are we not all ignorant compared to God and that night sure enough Barnaby found himself seated at the table in the huge dining room of the monastery and it was blazing with candles and silver 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 apple cider that you could hold although Barnaby of course sat down at the very foot of the table below the salt together with the servants and the beggars he looked around with the candlelight shining in his eyes and he thought he'd never seen such a wonderful sight this side of heaven and then to cap it all his own friend the monk now on a fine dry white robe but just as merry as ever I'll tell you was standing up to sing for all the assembled company Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen when the snow lay round about deep and crisp and even brightly shone the moon that night though the frost was cruel poor man came inside as the singer sat down again suddenly everyone stopped laughing and they looked at Barnaby for he had risen and he was trembling and now he was running clear around the table right to where the lordly abbot who was 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 oh I cannot 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 floors and worship in the chapel with you and the fat jolly monk who'd met Barnaby on the road well he turned kindly to the abbot this is a good man simple and pure of heart and so the abbot nodded and that night Barnaby was given a cell to sleep in and he put his carpet with the juggling equipment under the straw mattress and before he fell asleep he solemnly swore to himself that never again would he go back to his disgraceful old job of juggling six golden balls and twelve sharp knives and in the days that followed everyone couldn't help smiling to watch Barnaby work he would scrub the flagstones of the chicken floor until they were so clean that 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 all through those early days his face shone with happiness from morning to night until two weeks before Christmas and then a bewildered expression began to appear upon his simple face and slowly his joy appeared to turn to misery and despair for around him he saw every monk busy busy preparing a gift to place in the chapel on Christmas day oh there was brother Maurice and he was a painter and he would take gold and silver and rare enamels and paint exquisite little miniature pictures on the corner of each page of a Bible and he was working from dawn to darkness to finish this magnificent gift by Christmas day and then there was brother Marbeau who was a sculptor and he was finishing a statue of Christ and he spent all his hours in chiseling stone so that his beard and his eyebrows and his hair were always white with stone dust and there was brother Ambrose who was writing a new hymn and brother Joseph who was composing the music for it and everywhere that Barnaby went there were these educated and trained men following their work and each of them making a beautiful 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 am but a rough man unskilled in art I can't read or write all I know how to do is to perform a few tricks everybody here has a gift to present except me and so there was poor Barnaby sunk deep into sadness and despair and at nights he could no longer sleep but tossed on his mattress and looked up at the ceiling overhead and yet Christmas morning came at last and strangely enough that was the first day in all of that bitter winter that the sun broke out and shone brilliantly outside the monastery the fields of snow glistened like white frosting in a birthday cake and trudging through the snow there came dozens of children and their parents from the village because on Christmas of course the monastery always held open house and there was food and gifts for everybody and in the chapel that day the great stone halls were decked out in pine and red holly berries and thousands of candles gleamed everywhere and all the buildings rang with music and songs and it took 25 of the monks alone just to roll Brother Marlbode's great stone statue into the chapel and then the choir sang the new song that had been written by Brother Ambrose and every monk went humbly forward to present his gift to God and where was Barnaby all of this time? Well, he wasn't to be seen anywhere he stayed right inside his cell his eyes gleaming with fever sick and shivering with chill and tossing on his straw and gazing 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 terrible thing happened a thing that no brother in that great monastery would ever forget during all the days of his life for that evening after the visitors had gone home and the chapel was deserted and nearly all the brothers were asleep on their hard beds the plump jolly monk who had brought Barnaby to the monastery now went running down the halls and he smiled no more he sat as a ghost and he pounded over the stone floors right to the private room of the abbot and he shoved open the door without knocking and panting with excitement he seized the 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 on the choir balcony that was at the rear of the chapel and the monk pointed a trembling finger down toward the altar and the abbot looked and he turned white in color God forgive him he has gone mad for down below 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 six golden balls he was presenting his old act and giving it wonderfully the bright knives, the shining balls and even the 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 but 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 touched it to his forehead gently drying the perspiration that pleasant there and the light dimmed and up in the choir balcony the brother who had befriended Barnaby smiled again now with deep happiness and he turned and he spoke very quietly to the abbot God has accepted the only gift he had to make blessed are the simple in heart for they too shall see God there has presented John Charles Thomas and John Nesbitt in Mr. Nesbitt's The Juggler of Our Lady now here is our hostess for this evening Irene Dunn it is over nineteen hundred and some forty years ago that the Christ child was born in the little town of Bethlehem he came into a cold God forgetting world where might was right and where the poor and weak were oppressed he came not in grandeur and power but in humility and poverty and in the helplessness of infancy and yet his birth brought the dawn of a new day for the son of God became man and gave to all men a new dignity and true brotherhood yes, whenever and wherever men have lived according to his law of love of God and love of fellow men there has been peace and happiness and a new prosperity it is when people or homes or nations forget God forget the love of fellow men that unhappiness, hatred, oppression and war come to the world that is why it is so important that our homes that all homes should have the daily remembrance and expression of our love of God in the daily practice of family prayer for in true love for one another a family that prays together stays together this is Irene Dunn saying good night and God bless you before saying good night we'd like to thank John Charles Thomas and John Nesbitt for their performances this evening and Mr. Nesbitt also for his fine translation of this famous medieval legend our thanks to Max Terror for his music and to the Ken Darby Singers this production of Family Theater Incorporated was directed by David Young this series of Family Theater broadcasts thousands of you felt the need for this kind of program and by a friend of the New York Foundling Hospital which cares for homeless and motherless babies without distinction of race, creed or color today's program was transcribed Tony LaFranco speaking