"browsing hermits," who lived literally like the wild animals in the
flesh, while they tried to live like angels in the spirit.

Some of the stories told of Jacob savour of that vindictiveness
which Giraldus Cambrensis, in after years, attributed to the saints
in Ireland. He was walking one day over the Persian frontier, "to
visit the plants of true religion" and "bestow on them due care,"
when he passed at a fountain a troop of damsels washing clothes and
treading them with their feet. They seem, according to the story,
to have stared at the wild man, instead of veiling their faces or
letting down their garments. No act or word of rudeness is reported
of them: but Jacob's modesty or pride was so much scandalized that
he cursed both the fountain and the girls. The fountain of course
dried up forthwith, and the damsels' hair turned grey. They ran
weeping into the town. The townsfolk came out, and compelled Jacob,
by their prayers, to restore the water to their fountain; but the
grey hair he refused to restore to its original hue unless the
damsels would come and beg pardon publicly themselves. The poor
girls were ashamed to come, and their hair remained grey ever after.

A story like this may raise a smile in some of my readers, in others
something like indignation or contempt. But as long as such legends
remain in these hermit lives, told with as much gravity as any other
portion of the biography, and eloquently lauded, as this deed is, by
Bishop Theodoret, as proofs of the holiness and humanity of the
saint, an honest author is bound to notice some of them at least,
and not to give an alluring and really dishonest account of these
men and their times, by detailing every anecdote which can elevate
them in the mind of the reader, while he carefully omits all that
may justly disgust him.