I had seen often enough before what met us there: the great mob, shouting, “He is born! He is born!” and whirling their rattles, and throwing wheat-seed into the air, all sweaty and struggling and climbing on one another’s backs to get a sight of Arnom and the rest of us. Today it struck me in a new way. It was the joy of the people that amazed me. There they stood where they had waited for hours, so pressed together they could hardly breathe, each doubtless with a dozen cares and sorrows upon him (who has not?), yet every man and woman and the very children looking as if all the world was well because a man dressed up as a bird had walked out of a door after striking a few blows with a wooden sword.

Till We Have Faces, p. 273