Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1910 — An Old Baptismal Font. [ARTICLE]

An Old Baptismal Font.

In the old baptistery at Fiorepce—the baptistery yrlth the wonderful, bronze doors -which Michelangelo called,"so beautiful that they were worthy to be the gates of paradise”—most of ■ the babies of Florence have been baptized for many hundred years. ✓ At almost any>hour of any day w* will find baptismal parties waiting before the font, with babies of every rank in line, from the princely heir of a great house, nearly smothered in costly laces and attended by a small army of friends and relations, to the little creature decked out in gaudv cotton and held in the arms of a solitary old peasant woman. No register of baptisms was kept in the very early days. The £rst record was made In this wise: a certain priest took it into his head to keep account of children he baptised. / Accordingly, he put a white bean Into a box Mr every boy and a black bean for everv girl. , Later on records were carefully kept, and if one could look them over it would be a fascinating study, for prob ably the greater part of the painters," scholars, poets and soldiers who havamade Florence famous received their names at the font of "my dear little Saint John"-Au Dante called it.