* This story was first printed in the Youth’s Companion, Dec. 14, 1905.

Archer sat by the rude hearth of his Big Rattle camp, brooding in a
sort of tired contentment over the spitting fagots of var and glowing
coals of birch.

It was Christmas Eve. He had been out on his snowshoes all that day,
and all the day before, springing his traps along the streams and
putting his deadfalls out of commission–rather queer work for a
trapper to be about.

But Archer, despite all his gloomy manner, was really a sentimentalist,
who practised what he felt.

“Christmas is a season of peace on earth,” he had told himself, while
demolishing the logs of a sinister deadfall with his axe; and now the
remembrance of his quixotic deed added a brightness to the fire and to
the rough, undecorated walls of the camp.

Outside, the wind ran high in the forest, breaking and sweeping
tidelike over the reefs of treetops. The air was bitterly cold. Another
voice, almost as fitful as the sough of the wind, sounded across the
night. It was the waters of Stone Arrow Falls, above Big Rattle.
The frosts had drawn their bonds of ice and blankets of silencing snow
over all the rest of the stream, but the white and black face of the
falls still flashed from a window in the great house of crystal, and
threw out a voice of desolation.

Sacobie Bear, a full-blooded Micmac, uttered a grunt of relief when his
ears caught the bellow of Stone Arrow Falls. He stood still, and turned
his head from side to side, questioningly.

“Good!” he said. “Big Rattle off there, Archer’s camp over there. I go
there. Good ‘nough!”

He hitched his old smooth-bore rifle higher under his arm and continued
his journey. Sacobie had tramped many miles–all the way from
ice-imprisoned Fox Harbor. His papoose was sick. His squaw was hungry.
Sacobie’s belt was drawn tight.

During all that weary journey his old rifle had not banged once,
although few eyes save those of timberwolf and lynx were sharper in the
hunt than Sacobie’s. The Indian was reeling with hunger and weakness,
but he held bravely on.

A white man, no matter how courageous and sinewy, would have been prone
in the snow by that time.

But Sacobie, with his head down and his round snowshoes padding!
padding! like the feet of a frightened duck, raced with death toward
the haven of Archer’s cabin.

Archer was dreaming of a Christmas-time in a great faraway city when he
was startled by a rattle of snowshoes at his threshold and a soft
beating on his door, like weak blows from mittened hands. He sprang
across the cabin and pulled open the door.

A short, stooping figure shuffled in and reeled against him. A rifle in
a woollen case clattered at his feet.

“Mer’ Christmas! How-do?” said a weary voice.

“Merry Christmas, brother!” replied Archer. Then, “Bless me, but it’s
Sacobie Bear! Why, what’s the matter, Sacobie?”

“Heap tired! Heap hungry!” replied the Micmac, sinking to the floor.
Archer lifted the Indian and carried him over to the bunk at the
farther end of the room. He filled his iron-pot spoon with brandy, and
inserted the point of it between Sacobie’s unresisting jaws. Then he
loosened the Micmac’s coat and shirt and belt.

He removed his moccasins and stockings and rubbed the straight thin
feet with brandy.

After a while Sacobie Bear opened his eyes and gazed up at Archer.

“Good!” he said. “John Archer, he heap fine man, anyhow. Mighty good to
poor Injun Sacobie, too. Plenty tobac, I s’pose. Plenty rum, too.”

“No more rum, my son,” replied Archer, tossing what was left in the mug
against the log wall, and corking the bottle. “and no smoke until you
have had a feed. What do you say to bacon and tea! Or would tinned beef
suit you better?”

“Bacum,” replied Sacobie.

He hoisted himself to his elbow, and wistfully sniffed the fumes of
brandy that came from the direction of his bare feet. “Heap waste of
good rum, me t’ink,” he said.

“You ungratefu’ little beggar!” laughed Archer, as he pulled a frying
pan from under the bunk.

By the time the bacon was fried and the tea steeped, Sacobie was
sufficiently revived to leave the bunk and take a seat by the fire.
He ate as all hungry Indians do; and Archer looked on in wonder and
whimsical regret, remembering the miles and miles he had tramped with
that bacon on his back.

“Sacobie, you will kill yourself!” he protested.

“Sacobie no kill himself now,” replied the Micmac, as he bolted a brown
slice and a mouthful of hard bread. “Sacobie more like to kill himself
when he empty. Want to live when he chock-full. Good fun. T’ank you for
more tea.”

Archer filled the extended mug and poured in the molasses–”long
sweet’nin’” they call it in that region.

“What brings you so far from Fox Harbor this time of year?” inquired
Archer.

“Squaw sick. Papoose sick. Bote empty. Wan’ good bacum to eat.”

Archer smiled at the fire. “Any luck trapping?” he asked.

His guest shook his head and hid his face behind the upturned mug.
“Not much,” he replied, presently.

He drew his sleeve across his mouth, and then produced a clay pipe from
a pocket in his shirt.

“Tobac?” he inquired.

Archer passed him a dark and heavy plug of tobacco.

“Knife?” queried Sacobie.

“Try your own knife on it,” answered Archer, grinning.

With a sigh Sacobie produced his sheath-knife.

“You t’ink Sacobie heap big t’ief,” he said, accusingly.

“Knives are easily lost–in people’s pockets,” replied Archer.

The two men talked for hours. Sacobie Bear was a great gossip for one
of his race. In fact, he had a Micmac nickname which, translated, meant
“the man who deafens his friends with much talk.” Archer, however, was
pleased with his ready chatter and unforced humour.

But at last they both began to nod. The white man made up a bed on the
floor for Sacobie with a couple of caribou skins and a heavy blanket.
Then he gathered together a few plugs of tobacco, some tea, flour, and
dried fish.

Sacobie watched him with freshly aroused interest.

“More tobac, please,” he said. “Squaw, he smoke, too.”

Archer added a couple of sticks of the black leaf to the pile.

“Bacum, too,” said the Micmac. “Bacum better nor fish, anyhow.”
Archer shook his head.

“You’ll have to do with the fish,” he replied; “but I’ll give you a tin
of condensed milk for the papoose.”

“Ah, ah! Him good stuff!” exclaimed Sacobie.

Archer considered the provisions for a second or two. Then, going over
to a dunnage bag near his bunk, he pulled its contents about until he
found a bright red silk handkerchief and a red flannel shirt. Their
colour was too gaudy for his taste. “These things are for your squaw,”
he said.

Sacobie was delighted. Archer tied the articles into a neat pack and
stood it in the corner, beside his guest’s rifle.

“Now you had better turn in,” he said, and blew out the light.
In ten minutes both men slept the sleep of the weary. The fire, a great
mass of red coals, faded and flushed like some fabulous jewel. The wind
washed over the cabin and fingered the eaves, and brushed furtive hands
against the door.

It was dawn when Archer awoke. He sat up in his bunk and looked about
the quiet, gray-lighted room. Sacobie Bear was nowhere to be seen.
He glanced at the corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He
looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. It,
too, was gone.

He jumped out of his bunk and ran to the door. Opening it, he looked
out. Not a breath of air stirred. In the east, saffron and scarlet,
broke the Christmas morning, and blue on the white surface of the world
lay the imprints of Sacobie’s round snowshoes.

For a long time the trapper stood in the doorway in silence, looking
out at the stillness and beauty.

“Poor Sacobie!” he said, after a while. “Well, he’s welcome to the
bacon, even if it is all I had.”

He turned to light the fire and prepare breakfast. Something at the
foot of his bunk caught his eye. He went over and took it up. It was a
cured skin –a beautiful specimen of fox. He turned it over, and on the
white hide an uncultured hand had written, with a charred stick,

“Archer.”

“Well, bless that old red-skin! “exclaimed the trapper, huskily. “Bless
his puckered eyes! Who’d have thought that I should get a Christmas
present?”

* From “Christmastide,” published by the Chicago Kindergarten College,
copyright 1902.

The following story is one of many which has drifted down to us from
the story-loving nurseries and hearthstones of Germany. I cannot recall
when I first had it told to me as a child, varied, of course, by
different tellers, but always leaving that sweet, tender impression of
God’s loving care for the least of his children. I have since read
different versions of it in at least a half-dozen story books for
children.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, far away across the great ocean, in
a country called Germany, there could be seen a small log hut on the
edge of a great forest, whose fir-trees extended for miles and miles to
the north. This little house, made of heavy hewn logs, had but one room
in it. A rough pine door gave entrance to this room, and a small square
window admitted the light. At the back of the house was built an
old-fashioned stone chimney, out of which in winter usually curled a
thin, blue smoke, showing that there was not very much fire within.

Small as the house was, it was large enough for the two people who
lived in it. I want to tell you a story to-day about these two people.
One was an old, gray-haired woman, so old that the little children of
the village, nearly half a mile away, often wondered whether she had
come into the world with the huge mountains, and the great fir-trees,
which stood like giants back of her small hut. Her face was wrinkled
all over with deep lines, which, if the children could only have read
aright, would have told them of many years of cheerful, happy,
self-sacrifice, of loving, anxious watching beside sick-beds, of quiet
endurance of pain, of many a day of hunger and cold, and of a thousand
deeds of unselfish love for other people; but, of course, they could
not read this strange handwriting. They only knew that she was old and
wrinkled, and that she stooped as she walked. None of them seemed to
fear her, for her smile was always cheerful, and she had a kindly word
for each of them if they chanced to meet her on her way to and from the
village. With this old, old woman lived a very little girl. So bright
and happy was she that the travellers who passed by the lonesome little
house on the edge of the forest often thought of a sunbeam as they saw
her. These two people were known in the village as Granny Goodyear and
Little Gretchen.

The winter had come and the frost had snapped off many of the smaller
branches from the pine-trees in the forest. Gretchen and her Granny
were up by daybreak each morning. After their simple breakfast of
oatmeal, Gretchen would run to the little closet and fetch Granny’s old
woollen shawl, which seemed almost as old as Granny herself. Gretchen
always claimed the right to put the shawl over her Granny’s head, even
though she had to climb onto the wooden bench to do it. After carefully
pinning it under Granny’s chin, she gave her a good-bye kiss, and
Granny started out for her morning’s work in the forest. This work was
nothing more nor less than the gathering up of the twigs and branches
which the autumn winds and winter frosts had thrown upon the ground.
These were carefully gathered into a large bundle which Granny tied
together with a strong linen band. She then managed to lift the bundle
to her shoulder and trudged off to the village with it. Here she sold
the fagots for kindling wood to the people of the village. Sometimes
she would get only a few pence each day, and sometimes a dozen or more,
but on this money little Gretchen and she managed to live; they had
their home, and the forest kindly furnished the wood for the fire which
kept them warm in cold weather.

In the summer time Granny had a little garden at the back of the hut
where she raised, with little Gretchen’s help, a few potatoes and
turnips and onions. These she carefully stored away for winter use. To
this meagre supply, the pennies, gained by selling the twigs from the
forest, added the oatmeal for Gretchen and a little black coffee for
Granny. Meat was a thing they never thought of having. It cost too much
money. Still, Granny and Gretchen were very happy, because they loved
each other dearly. Sometimes Gretchen would be left alone all day long
in the hut, because Granny would have some work to do in the village
after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long
days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the
wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the
chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be
mistaken for a bird’s voice; she learned to dance as the swaying
shadows did, and even to talk. to the stars which shone through the
little square window when Granny came home too late or too tired to
talk.

Sometimes, when the weather was fine, or her Granny had an extra bundle
of newly knitted stockings to take to the village, she would let little
Gretchen go along with her. It chanced that one of these trips to the
town came just the week before Christmas, and Gretchen’s eyes were
delighted by the sight of the lovely Christmas-trees which stood in the
window of the village store. It seemed to her that she would never tire
of looking at the knit dolls, the woolly lambs, the little wooden shops
with their queer, painted men and women in them, and all the other fine
things. She had never owned a plaything in her whole life; therefore,
toys which you and I would not think much of, seemed to her to be very
beautiful.

That night, after their supper of baked potatoes was over, and little
Gretchen had cleared away the dishes and swept up the hearth, because
Granny dear was so tired, she brought her own small wooden stool and
placed it very near Granny’s feet and sat down upon it, folding her
hands on her lap. Granny knew that this meant she wanted to talk about
something, so she smilingly laid away the large Bible which she had
been reading, and took up her knitting, which was as much as to say:
“Well, Gretchen, dear, Granny is ready to listen.”

“Granny,” said Gretchen slowly, “it’s almost Christmas time, isn’t it?”
“Yes, dearie,” said Granny, “only five more days now,” and then she
sighed, but little Gretchen was so happy that she did not notice
Granny’s sigh.

“What do you think, Granny, I’ll get this Christmas?” said she, looking
up eagerly into Granny’s face.

“Ah, child, child,” said Granny, shaking her head, “you’ll have no
Christmas this year. We are too poor for that.”

“Oh, but, Granny,” interrupted little Gretchen, “think of all the
beautiful toys we saw in the village to-day. Surely Santa Claus has
sent enough for every little child.”

“Ah, dearie,” said Granny, “those toys are for people who can pay money
for them, and we have no money to spend for Christmas toys.”
“Well, Granny,” said Gretchen, “perhaps some of the little children who
live in the great house on the hill at the other end of the village
will be willing to share some of their toys with me. They will be so
glad to give some to a little girl who has none.”

“Dear child, dear child,” said Granny, leaning forward and stroking the
soft, shiny hair of the little girl, “your heart is full of love. You
would be glad to bring a Christmas to every child; but their heads are
so full of what they are going to get that they forget all about
anybody else but themselves.” Then she sighed and shook her head.
“Well, Granny,” said Gretchen, her bright, happy tone of voice growing
a little less joyous, “perhaps the dear Santa Claus will show some of
the village children how to make presents that do not cost money, and
some of them may surprise me Christmas morning with a present. And,
Granny, dear,” added she, springing up from her low stool, “can’t I
gather some of the pine branches and take them to the old sick man who
lives in the house by the mill, so that he can have the sweet smell of
our pine forest in his room all Christmas day?”

“Yes, dearie,” said Granny, “you may do what you can to make the
Christmas bright and happy, but you must not expect any present
yourself.”

“Oh, but, Granny,” said little Gretchen, her face brightening, “you
forget all about the shining Christmas angels, who came down to earth
and sang their wonderful song the night the beautiful Christ-Child was
born! They are so loving and good that they will not forget any little
child. I shall ask my dear stars to-night to tell them of us. You
know,” she added, with a look of relief, “the stars are so very high
that they must know the angels quite well, as they come and go with
their messages from the loving God.”

Granny sighed, as she half whispered, “Poor child, poor child!” but
Gretchen threw her arm around Granny’s neck and gave her a hearty kiss,
saying as she did so: “Oh, Granny, Granny, you don’t talk to the stars
often enough, else you wouldn’t be sad at Christmas time.” Then she
danced all around the room, whirling her little skirts about her to
show Granny how the wind had made the snow dance that day. She looked
so droll and funny that Granny forgot her cares and worries and laughed
with little Gretchen over her new snow-dance. The days passed on, and
the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the
little room–for Granny had taught her to be a careful little
housewife–was off to the forest, singing a birdlike song, almost as
happy and free as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day,
preparing a surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most
beautiful of the fir branches within her reach to take the next morning
to the old sick man who lived by the mill. The day was all too short
for the happy little girl. When Granny came trudging wearily home that
night, she found the frame of the doorway covered with green pine
branches.

“It’s to welcome you, Granny! It’s to welcome you!” cried Gretchen;
“our old dear home wanted to give you a Christmas welcome. Don’t you
see, the branches of evergreen make it look as if it were smiling all
over, and it is trying to say, ‘A happy Christmas’ to you, Granny!”
Granny laughed and kissed the little girl, as they opened the door and
went in together. Here was a new surprise for Granny. The four posts of
the wooden bed, which stood in one corner of the room, had been trimmed
by the busy little fingers, with smaller and more flexible branches of
the pine-trees. A small bouquet of red mountain-ash berries stood at
each side of the fireplace, and these, together with the trimmed posts
of the bed, gave the plain old room quite a festival look. Gretchen
laughed and clapped her hands and danced about until the house seemed
full of music to poor, tired Granny, whose heart had been sad as she
turned toward their home that night, thinking of the disappointment
which must come to loving little Gretchen the next morning.

After supper was over little Gretchen drew her stool up to Granny’s
side, and laying her soft, little hands on Granny’s knee, asked to be
told once again the story of the coming of the Christ-Child; how the
night that he was born the beautiful angels had sung their wonderful
song, and how the whole sky had become bright with a strange and
glorious light, never seen by the people of earth before. Gretchen had
heard the story many, many times before, but she never grew tired of
it, and now that Christmas Eve had come again, the happy little child
wanted to hear it once more.

When Granny had finished telling it the two sat quiet and silent for a
little while thinking it over; then Granny rose and said that it was
time for them to go to bed. She slowly took off her heavy wooden shoes,
such as are worn in that country, and placed them beside the hearth.
Gretchen looked thoughtfully at them for a minute or two, and then she
said, “Granny, don’t you think that somebody in all this wide world
will think of us to-night?”

“Nay, Gretchen,” said Granny, “I don’t think any one will.”

“Well, then, Granny,” said Gretchen, “the Christmas angels will, I
know; so I am going to take one of your wooden shoes, and put it on the
windowsill outside, so that they may see it as they pass by. I am sure
the stars will tell the Christmas angels where the shoe is.”

“Ah, you foolish, foolish child,” said Granny, “you are only getting
ready for a disappointment To-morrow morning there will be nothing
whatever in the shoe. I can tell you that now.”

But little Gretchen would not listen. She only shook her head and cried
out: “Ah, Granny, you don’t talk enough to the stars.” With this she
seized the shoe, and, opening the door, hurried out to place it on the
windowsill. It was very dark without, and something soft and cold
seemed to gently kiss her hair and face. Gretchen knew by this that it
was snowing, and she looked up to the sky, anxious to see if the stars
were in sight, but a strong wind was tumbling the dark, heavy
snow-clouds about and had shut away all else.

“Never mind,” said Gretchen softly to herself, “the stars are up there,
even if I can’t see them, and the Christmas angels do not mind
snowstorms.”

Just then a rough wind went sweeping by the little girl, whispering
something to her which she could not understand, and then it made a
sudden rush up to the snow-clouds and parted them, so that the deep,
mysterious sky appeared beyond, and shining down out of the midst of it
was Gretchen’s favourite star.

“Ah, little star, little star!” said the child, laughing aloud, “I knew
you were there, though I couldn’t see you. Will you whisper to the
Christmas angels as they come by that little Gretchen wants so very
much to have a Christmas gift to-morrow morning, if they have one to
spare, and that she has put one of Granny’s shoes upon the windowsill
ready for it?”

A moment more and the little girl, standing on tiptoe, had reached the
windowsill and placed the shoe upon it, and was back again in the house
beside Granny and the warm fire.

The two went quietly to bed, and that night as little Gretchen knelt to
pray to the Heavenly Father, she thanked him for having sent the
Christ-Child into the world to teach all mankind how to be loving and
unselfish, and in a few moments she was quietly sleeping, dreaming of
the Christmas angels.

The next morning, very early, even before the sun was up, little
Gretchen was awakened by the sound of sweet music coming from the
village. She listened for a moment and then she knew that the
choir-boys were singing the Christmas carols in the open air of the
village street. She sprang up out of bed and began to dress herself as
quickly as possible, singing as she dressed. While Granny was slowly
putting on her clothes, little Gretchen, having finished dressing
herself, unfastened the door and hurried out to see what the Christmas
angels had left in the old wooden shoe.

The white snow covered everything–trees, stumps, roads, and
pastures–until the whole world looked like fairyland. Gretchen climbed
up on a large stone which was beneath the window and carefully lifted
down the wooden shoe. The snow tumbled off of it in a shower over the
little girl’s hands, but she did not heed that; she ran hurriedly back
into the house, putting her hand into the toe of the shoe as she ran.
“Oh, Granny! Oh, Granny!” she exclaimed, “you didn’t believe the
Christmas angels would think about us, but see, they have, they have!
Here is a dear little bird nestled down in the toe of your shoe! Oh,
isn’t he beautiful?”

Granny came forward and looked at what the child was holding lovingly
in her hand. There she saw a tiny chick-a-dee, whose wing was evidently
broken by the rough and boisterous winds of the night before, and who
had taken shelter in the safe, dry toe of the old wooden shoe. She
gently took the little bird out of Gretchen’s hands, and skilfully
bound his broken wing to his side, so that he need not hurt himself by
trying to fly with it. Then she showed Gretchen how to make a nice warm
nest for the little stranger, close beside the fire, and when their
breakfast was ready she let Gretchen feed the little bird with a few
moist crumbs.

Later in the day Gretchen carried the fresh, green boughs to the old
sick man by the mill, and on her way home stopped to see and enjoy the
Christmas toys of some other children whom she knew, never once wishing
that they were hers. When she reached home she found that the little
bird had gone to sleep. Soon, however, he opened his eyes and stretched
his head up, saying just as plain as a bird could say, “Now, my new
friends, I want you to give me something more to eat.” Gretchen gladly
fed him again, and then, holding him in her lap, she softly and gently
stroked his gray feathers until the little creature seemed to lose all
fear of her. That evening Granny taught her a Christmas hymn and told
her another beautiful Christmas story. Then Gretchen made up a funny
little story to tell to the birdie. He winked his eyes and turned his
head from side to side in such a droll fashion that Gretchen laughed
until the tears came.

As Granny and she got ready for bed that night, Gretchen put her arms
softly around Granny’s neck, and whispered: “What a beautiful Christmas
we have had to-day, Granny! Is there anything in the world more lovely
than Christmas?”

“Nay, child, nay,” said Granny, “not to such loving hearts as yours.”

*This story was first printed in the Youth’s Companion, vol. 76.

The outside door swung open suddenly, letting a cloud of steam into the
small, hot kitchen. Charlie Moore, a milk pail in one hand, a lantern
in the other, closed the door behind him with a bang, set the pail on
the table and stamped the snow from his feet.

“There’s the milk, and I near froze gettin’ it,” said he, addressing
his partner, who was chopping potatoes in a pan on the stove.

“Dose vried bodadoes vas burnt,” said the other, wielding his knife
vigorously.

“Are, eh? Why didn’t you watch ‘em instead of readin’ your old
Scandinavian paper?” answered Charlie, hanging his overcoat and cap
behind the door and laying his mittens under the stove to dry. Then he
drew up a chair and with much exertion pulled off his heavy felt boots
and stood them beside his mittens.

“Why didn’t you shut the gate after you came in from town? The cows got
out and went up to Roney’s an’ I had to chase ‘em; ’tain’t any joke
runnin’ round after cows such a night as this.” Having relieved his
mind of its grievance, Charlie sat down before the oven door, and,
opening it, laid a stick of wood along its outer edge and thrust his
feet into the hot interior, propping his heels against the stick.

“Look oud for dese har biscuits!” exclaimed his partner, anxiously.

“Oh, hang the biscuits!” was Charlie’s hasty answer. “I’ll watch ‘em.
Why didn’t you?”

“Ay tank Ay fergit hem.”

“Well, you don’t want to forget. A feller forgot his clothes once, an’
he got froze.”

“Ay gass dose taller vas ketch in a sbring snowstorm. Vas dose biscuits
done, Sharlie?”

“You bet they are, Nels,” replied Charlie, looking into the pan.

“Dan subbar vas ready. Yom on!”

Nels picked up the frying-pan and Charlie the biscuits, and set them on
the oilcloth-covered table, where a plate of butter, a jar of plum
jelly, and a coffee-pot were already standing.

Outside the frozen kitchen window the snow-covered fields and meadows
stretched, glistening and silent, away to the dark belt of timber by
the river. Along the deep-rutted road in front a belated lumber-wagon
passed slowly, the wheels crunching through the packed snow with a
wavering, incessant shriek.

The two men hitched their chairs up to the table, and without ceremony
helped themselves liberally to the steaming food. For a few moments
they seemed oblivious to everything but the demands of hunger. The
potatoes and biscuits disappeared with surprising rapidity, washed down
by large drafts of coffee. These men, labouring steadily through the
short daylight hours in the dry, cold air of the Dakota winter, were
like engines whose fires had burned low–they were taking fuel.
Presently, the first keen edge of appetite satisfied, they ate more
slowly, and Nels, straightening up with a sigh, spoke:
“Ay seen Seigert in town ta-day. Ha vants von hundred fifty fer dose
team.”

“Come down, eh?” commented Charlie. “Well, they’re worth that. We’d
better take ‘em, Nels. We’ll need ‘em in the spring if we break the
north forty.”

“Yas, et’s a nice team,” agreed Nels. “Ha vas driven ham ta-day.”

“Is he haulin’ corn?”

“Na; he had his kids oop gettin’ Christmas bresents.”

“Chris–By gracious! to-morrow’s Christmas!”

Nels nodded solemnly, as one possessing superior knowledge. Charlie
became thoughtful.

“We’ll come in sort of slim on it here, I reckon, Nels. Christmas ain’t
right, somehow, out here. Back in Wisconsin, where I came from, there’s
where you get your Christmas!” Charlie spoke with the unswerving
prejudice of mankind for the land of his birth.

“Yas, dose been right. En da ol’ kontry dey havin’ gret times
Christmas.”

Their thoughts were all bent now upon the holiday scenes of the past.
As they finished the meal and cleared away and washed the dishes they
related incidents of their boyhood’s time, compared, reiterated, and
embellished. As they talked they grew jovial, and laughed often.

“The skee broke an’ you went over kerplunk, hey? Haw, haw! That reminds
me of one time in Wisconsin–”

Something of the joyous spirit of the Christmastide seemed to have
entered into this little farmhouse set in the midst of the lonely,
white fields. In the hearts of these men, moving about in their
dim-lighted room, was reechoed the joyous murmur of the great world
without: the gayety of the throngs in city streets, where the brilliant
shop-windows, rich with holiday spoils, smile out upon the passing
crowd, and the clang of street-cars and roar of traffic mingle with the
cries of street-venders. The work finished, they drew their chairs to
the stove, and filled their pipes, still talking.

“Well, well,” said Charlie, after the laugh occasioned by one of Nels’
droll stories had subsided. “It’s nice to think of those old times. I’d
hate to have been one of these kids that can’t have any fun. Christmas
or any other time,”

“Ay gass dere ain’t anybody much dot don’d have someding dis tams a
year.”

“Oh, yes, there are, Nels! You bet there are!”

Charlie nodded at his partner with serious conviction.

“Now, there’s the Roneys,” he waved his pipe over his shoulder. “The
old man told me to-night when I was up after the cows that he’s sold
all the crops except what they need for feedin’–wheat, and corn, and
everything, and some hogs besides–and ain’t got hardly enough now for
feed and clothes for all that family. The rent and the lumber he had to
buy to build the new barn after the old one burnt ate up the money like
fury. He kind of laughed, and said he guessed the children wouldn’t get
much Christmas this year. I didn’t think about it’s being so close when
he told me.”

“No Christmas!” Nels’ round eyes widened with astonishment. “Ay tank
dose been pooty bad!” He studied the subject for a few moments, his
stolid face suddenly grown thoughtful. Charlie stared at the stove. Far
away by the river a lonely coyote set up his quick, howling yelp.

“Dere’s been seven kids oop dere,” said Nels at last, glancing up as it
for corroboration.

“Yes, seven,” agreed Charlie.

“Say, do ve need Seigert’s team very pad?”

“Well, now that depends,” said Charlie. “Why not?”

“Nothin’, only Ay vas tankin’ ve might tak’ some a das veat we vas
goin’ to sell and–and–”

“Yep, what?”

“And dumb it on Roney’s granary floor to-night after dere been asleeb.”
Charlie stared at his companion for a moment in silence. Then he rose,
and, approaching Nels, examined his partner’s face with solemn scrutiny.

“By the great horn spoon,” he announced, finally, “you’ve got a head on
you like a balloon, my boy! Keep on gettin’ ideas like that, and you’ll
land in Congress or the poor-farm before many years!”
Then, abandoning his pretense of gravity, he slapped the other on the
back.

“Why didn’t I think of that? It’s the best yet. Seigert’s team? Oh,
hang Seigert’s team. We don’t need it. We’ll have a little merry
Christmas out of this yet. Only they mustn’t know where it came from.
I’ll write a note and stick it under the door, ‘You’ll find some merry
wheat–’No, that ain’t it. ‘You’ll find some wheat in the granary to
give the kids a merry Christmas with,’ signed, ‘Santa Claus.’”

He wrote out the message in the air with a pointing forefinger. He had
entered into the spirit of the thing eagerly.

“It’s half-past nine now,” he went on, looking at the clock. “It’ll be
eleven time we get the stuff loaded and hauled up there. Let’s go out
and get at it. Lucky the bobs are on the wagon; they don’t make such a
racket as wheels.”

He took the lantern from its nail behind the door and lighted it, after
which he put on his boots, cap, and mittens, and flung his overcoat
across his shoulders. Nels, meanwhile, had put on his outer garments,
also.

“Shut up the stove, Nels.” Charlie blew out the light and opened the
door. “There, hang it!” he exclaimed, turning back. “I forgot the note.
Ought to be in ink, I suppose. Well, never mind now; we won’t put on
any style about it.”

He took down a pencil from the shelf, and, extracting a bit of wrapping
paper from a bundle behind the woodbox, wrote the note by the light of
the lantern.

“There, I guess that will do,” he said, finally. “Come on!”

Outside, the night air was cold and bracing, and in the black vault of
the sky the winter constellations flashed and throbbed. The shadows of
the two men, thrown by the lantern, bobbed huge and grotesque across
the snow and among the bare branches of the cottonwoods, as they moved
toward the barn.

“Ay tank ve put on dose extra side poards and make her an even fifty
pushel,” said Nels, after they had backed the wagon up to the granary
door. “Ve might as vell do it oop right, skence ve’re at it.”
Having carried out this suggestion, the two shovelled steadily, with
short intervals of rest, for three quarters of an hour, the dark pile
of grain in the wagon-box rising gradually until it stood flush with
the top.

Good it was to look upon, cold and soft and yielding to the touch, this
heaped-up wealth from the inexhaustible treasure-house of the mighty
West. Charlie and Nels felt something of this as they viewed the
results of their labours for a moment before hitching up the team.

“It’s A number one hard,” said Charlie, picking up a handful and
sifting it slowly through his fingers, “and it’ll fetch seventy-four
cents. But you can’t raise any worse on this old farm of ours if you
try,” he added, a little proudly. “Nor anywhere else in the Jim River
Valley, for that matter.”

As they approached the Roney place, looking dim and indistinct in the
darkness, their voices hushed apprehensively, and the noise of the
sled-runners slipping through the snow seemed to them to increase from
a purr to a roar.

“Here, stob a minute!” whispered Nels, in agony of discovery. “Ve’re
magin’ an awful noise. Ay’ll go und take a beek.”

He slipped away and cautiously approached the house. “Et’s all right,”
he whispered, hoarsely, returning after a moment; “dere all asleeb. But
go easy; Ay tank ve pest go easy.” They seemed burdened all at once
with the consciences of criminals, and went forward with almost guilty
timidity.

“Thunder, dere’s a bump! Vy don’d you drive garefuller, Sharlie?”

“Drive yourself, if you think you can do any better!” As they came into
the yard a dog suddenly ran out from the barn, barking furiously.

Charlie reined up with an ejaculation of despair; “Look there, the dog!
We’re done for now, sure! Stop him, Nels! Throw somethin’ at ‘im!”
The noise seemed to their excited ears louder than the crash of
artillery. Nels threw a piece of snow crust. The dog ran back a few
steps, but his barking did not diminish.

“Here, hold the lines. I’ll try to catch ‘im.” Charlie jumped from the
wagon and approached the dog with coaxing words: “Come, doggie, good
doggie, nice boy, come!”

His manoeuvre, however, merely served to increase the animal’s frenzy.
As Charlie approached the dog retired slowly toward the house, his head
thrown back, and his rapid barking increased to a long-drawn howl.
“Good boy, come! Bother the brute! He’ll wake up the whole household!
Nice doggie! Phe-e–”

The noise, however, had no apparent effect upon the occupants of the
house. All remained as dark and silent as ever.

“Sharlie, Sharlie, let him go!” cried Nels, in a voice smothered with
laughter. “Ay go in dose parn; maype ha’ll chase me.”

His hope was well founded. The dog, observing this treacherous
occupation by the enemy of his last harbour of refuge, gave pursuit and
disappeared within the door, which Charlie, hard behind him, closed
with a bang. There was the sound of a hurried scuffle within. The dog’s
barking gave place to terrified whinings, which in turn were suddenly
quenched to a choking murmur.

“Gome in, Sharlie, kvick!”

“You got him?” queried.”

“Na, yust ma mitten. Gat a sack or someding da die him oop in.”

A sack was procured from somewhere, into which the dog, now silenced
from sheer exhaustion and fright, was unceremoniously thrust, after
which the sack was tied and flung into the wagon. This formidable
obstacle overcome and the Roneys still slumbering peacefully, the rest
was easy. The granary door was pried open and the wheat shovelled
hurriedly in upon the empty floor. Charlie then crept up to the house
and slipped his note under the door.

The sack was lifted from the now empty wagon and opened before the
barn, whereupon its occupant slipped meekly out and retreated at once
to a far corner, seemingly too much incensed at his discourteous
treatment even to fling a volley of farewell barks at his departing
captors.

“Vell,” remarked Nels, with a sigh of relief as they gained the road,

“Ay tank dose Roneys pelieve en Santa Claus now. Dose peen funny vay
fer Santa Claus to coom.”

Charlie’s laugh was good to hear. “He didn’t exactly come down the
chimney, that’s a fact, but it’ll do at a pinch. We ought to have told
them to get a present for the dog–collar and chain. I reckon he
wouldn’t hardly be thankful for it, though, eh?”

“Ay gass not. Ha liges ta haf hes nights ta hemself.”

“Well, we had our fun, anyway. Sort of puts me in mind of old
Wisconsin, somehow.”

From far off over the valley, with its dismantled cornfields and
snow-covered haystacks, beyond the ice-bound river, floated slow, and
sonorous, the mellow clanging of church bells. They were ushering in
the Christmas morn. Overhead the starlit heavens glistened, brooding
and mysterious, looking down with luminous, loving eyes upon these
humble sons of men doing a good deed, from the impulse of simple,
generous hearts, as upon that other Christmas morning, long ago, when
the Jewish shepherds, guarding their flocks by night, read in their
shining depths that in Bethlehem of Judea the Christ-Child was born.
The rising sun was touching the higher hilltops with a faint rush of
crimson the next morning when the back door of the Roney house opened
with a creak, and Mr. Roney, still heavy-eyed with sleep, stumbled out
upon the porch, stretched his arms above his head, yawned, blinked at
the dazzling snow, and then shambled off toward the barn. As he
approached, the dog ran eagerly out, gambolled meekly around his feet
and caressed his boots. The man patted him kindly.

“Hello, old boy! What were you yappin’ around so for last night, huh?
Grain-thieves? You needn’t worry about them. There ain’t nothin’ left
for them to steal. No, sir! If they got into that granary they’d have
to take a lantern along to find a pint of wheat. I don’t suppose,” he
added, reflectively, “that I could scrape up enough to feed the
chickens this mornin’, but I guess I might’s well see.”

He passed over to the little building. What he saw when he looked
within seemed for a moment to produce no impression upon him whatever.
He stared at the hillock of grain in motionless silence. Finally Mr.
Roney gave utterance to a single word, “Geewhilikins!” and started for
the house on a run. Into the kitchen, where his wife was just starting
the fire, the excited man burst like a whirlwind.

“Come out here, Mary!” he cried. “Come out here, quick!”
The worthy woman, unaccustomed to such demonstrations, looked at him in
amazement.

“For goodness sake, what’s come over you, Peter Roney?” she exclaimed.
“Are you daft? Don’t make such a noise! You’ll wake the young ones, and
I don’t want them waked till need be, with no Christmas for ‘em, poor
little things!”

“Never mind the young ‘uns,” he replied. “Come on!”

As they passed out he noticed the slip of paper under the door and
picked it up, but without comment.

He charged down upon the granary, his wife, with a shawl over her head,
close behind.

She peered in, apprehensively at first, then with eyes of widening
wonder.

“Why, Peter!” she said, turning to him. “Why, Peter! What does–I
thought–”

“You thought!” he broke in. “Me, too. But it ain’t so. It means that
we’ve got some of the best neighbours that ever was, a thinkin’ of our
young ‘uns this way! Read that!” and he thrust the paper into her hand.
“Why, Peter!” she ejaculated again, weakly. Then suddenly she turned,
and laying her head on his shoulder, began to sob softly.

“There, there,” he said, patting her arm awkwardly.

“Don’t you go and cry now. Let’s just be thankful to the good Lord for
puttin’ such fellers into the world as them fellers down the road. And
now you run in and hurry up breakfast while I do up the chores. Then
we’ll hitch up and get into town ‘fore the stores close. Tell the young
‘uns Santy didn’t get round last night with their things, but we’ve got
word to meet him in town. Hey? Yes, I saw just the kind of sled Pete
wants when I was up yesterday, and that china doll for Mollie. Yes,
tell ‘em anything you want. Twon’t be too big. Santy Claus has come to
Roney’s ranch this year, sure!”

* Reprinted with the permission of the Henry Altemus Company.

It was getting very near to Christmas time, and all the boys at Miss
Ware’s school were talking about going home for the holidays.
“I shall go to the Christmas festival,” said Bertie Fellows,” and my
mother will have a party, and my Aunt will give another. Oh! I shall
have a splendid time at home.”

“My Uncle Bob is going to give me a pair of skates,” remarked Harry
Wadham.

“My father is going to give me a bicycle,” put in George Alderson.

“Will you bring it back to school with you?” asked Harry.

“Oh! yes, if Miss Ware doesn’t say no.”

“Well, Tom,” cried Bertie, “where are you going to spend your holidays?”

“I am going to stay here,” answered Tom in a very forlorn voice.

“Here–at school–oh, dear! Why can’t you go home?”

“I can’t go home to India,” answered Tom.

“Nobody said you could. But haven’t you any relatives anywhere?”
Tom shook his head. “Only in India,” he said sadly.

“Poor fellow! That’s hard luck for you. I’ll tell you what it is, boys,
if I couldn’t go home for the holidays, especially at Christmas–I
think I would just sit down and die.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t,” said Tom. “You would get ever so homesick, but
you wouldn’t die. You would just get through somehow, and hope
something would happen before next year, or that some kind fairy
would–”

“There are no fairies nowadays,” said Bertie.

“See here, Tom, I’ll write and ask my mother to invite you to go home
with me for the holidays.”

“Will you really?”

“Yes, I will. And if she says yes, we shall have such a splendid time.
We live in London, you know, and have lots of parties and fun.”

“Perhaps she will say no?” suggested poor little Tom.

“My mother isn’t the kind that says no,” Bertie declared loudly.
In a few days’ time a letter arrived from Bertie’s mother. The boy
opened it eagerly. It said:

My own dear Bertie:

I am very sorry to tell you that little Alice is ill with scarlet
fever. And so you cannot come for your holidays. I would have been glad
to have you bring your little friend with you if all had been well here.
Your father and I have decided that the best thing that you can do is
to stay at Miss Ware’s. We shall send your Christmas present to you as
well as we can.

It will not be like coming home, but I am sure you will try to be
happy, and make me feel that you are helping me in this sad time.
Dear little Alice is very ill, very ill indeed. Tell Tom that I am
sending you a box for both of you, with two of everything. And tell him
that it makes me so much happier to know that you will not be alone.
Your own mother.

When Bertie Fellows received this letter, which ended all his Christmas
hopes and joys, he hid his face upon his desk and sobbed aloud. The
lonely boy from India, who sat next to him, tried to comfort his friend
in every way he could think of. He patted his shoulder and whispered
many kind words to him.

At last Bertie put the letter into Tom’s hands. “Read it,” he sobbed.
So then Tom understood the cause of Bertie’s grief. “Don’t fret over
it,” he said at last. “It might be worse. Why, your father and mother
might be thousands of miles away, like mine are. When Alice is better,
you will be able to go home. And it will help your mother if she thinks
you are almost as happy as if you could go now.”

Soon Miss Ware came to tell Bertie how sorry she was for him.
“After all,” said she, smiling down on the two boys, “it is an ill wind
that blows nobody good. Poor Tom has been expecting to spend his
holidays alone, and now he will have a friend with him–Try to look on
the bright side, Bertie, and to remember how much worse it would have
been if there had been no boy to stay with you.”

“I can’t help being disappointed, Miss Ware,” said Bertie, his eyes
filling with tears.

“No; you would be a strange boy if you were not. But I want you to try
to think of your poor mother, and write her as cheerfully as you can.”

“Yes,” answered Bertie; but his heart was too full to say more.

The last day of the term came, and one by one, or two by two, the boys
went away, until only Bertie and Tom were left in the great house. It
had never seemed so large to either of them before.

“It’s miserable,” groaned poor Bertie, as they strolled into the
schoolroom. “Just think if we were on our way home now–how different.”

“Just think if I had been left here by myself,” said Tom.

“Yes,” said Bertie, “but you know when one wants to go home he never
thinks of the boys that have no home to go to.”

The evening passed, and the two boys went to bed. They told stories to
each other for a long time before they could go to sleep. That night
they dreamed of their homes, and felt very lonely. Yet each tried to be
brave, and so another day began.

This was the day before Christmas. Quite early in the morning came the
great box of which Bertie’s mother had spoken in her letter. Then, just
as dinner had come to an end, there was a peal of the bell, and a voice
was heard asking for Tom Egerton.

Tom sprang to his feet, and flew to greet a tall, handsome lady,
crying, “Aunt Laura! Aunt Laura!”

And Laura explained that she and her husband had arrived in London only
the day before. “I was so afraid, Tom,” she said, “that we should not
get here until Christmas Day was over and that you would be
disappointed. So I would not let your mother write you that we were on
our way home. You must get your things packed up at once, and go back
with me to London. Then uncle and I will give you a splendid time.”

For a minute or two Tom’s face shone with delight. Then he caught sight
of Bertie and turned to his aunt.

“Dear Aunt Laura,” he said, “I am very sorry, but I can’t go.”

“Can’t go? and why not?”

“Because I can’t go and leave Bertie here all alone,” he said stoutly.

“When I was going to be alone he wrote and asked his mother to let me
go home with him. She could not have either of us because Bertie’s
sister has scarlet fever. He has to stay here, and he has never been
away from home at Christmas time before, and I can’t go away and leave
him by himself, Aunt Laura.”

For a minute Aunt Laura looked at the boy as if she could not believe
him. Then she caught him in her arms and kissed him.

“You dear little boy, you shall not leave him. You shall bring him
along, and we shall all enjoy ourselves together. Bertie, my boy, you
are not very old yet, but I am going to teach you a lesson as well as I
can. It is that kindness is never wasted in this world.”

And so Bertie and Tom found that there was such a thing as a fairy
after all.

* This story was first published in Wide Awake, vol. 26.

There was just enough of December in the air and of May in the sky to
make the Yuletide of the year of grace 1611 a time of pleasure and
delight to every boy and girl in “Merrie England” from the princely
children in stately Whitehall to the humblest pot-boy and scullery-girl
in the hall of the country squire.

And in the palace at Whitehall even the cares of state gave place to
the sports of this happy season. For that “Most High and Mighty Prince
James, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and
Ireland”–as you will find him styled in your copy of the Old Version,
or what is known as “King James’ Bible”–loved the Christmas
festivities, cranky, crabbed, and crusty though he was. And this year
he felt especially gracious. For now, first since the terror of the Guy
Fawkes plot which had come to naught full seven years before, did the
timid king feel secure on his throne; the translation of the Bible, on
which so many learned men had been for years engaged, had just been
issued from the press of Master Robert Baker; and, lastly, much profit
was coming into the royal treasury from the new lands in the Indies and
across the sea.

So it was to be a Merry Christmas in the palace at Whitehall. Great
were the preparations for its celebration, and the Lord Henry, the
handsome, wise and popular young Prince of Wales, whom men hoped some
day to hail as King Henry of England, was to take part in a jolly
Christmas mask, in which, too, even the little Prince Charles was to
perform for the edification of the court when the mask should be shown
in the new and gorgeous banqueting hall of the palace.

And to-night it was Christmas Eve. The Little Prince Charles and the
Princess Elizabeth could scarcely wait for the morrow, so impatient
were they to see all the grand devisings that were in store for them.
So good Master Sandy, under-tutor to the Prince, proposed to wise
Archie Armstrong, the King’s jester, that they play at snapdragon for
the children in the royal nursery.

The Prince and Princess clamoured for the promised game at once, and
soon the flicker from the flaming bow lighted up the darkened nursery
as, around the witchlike caldron, they watched their opportunity to
snatch the lucky raisin. The room rang so loudly with fun and laughter
that even the King himself, big of head and rickety of legs, shambled
in good-humouredly to join in the sport that was giving so much
pleasure to the royal boy he so dearly loved, and whom he always called
“Baby Charles.”

But what was snapdragon, you ask? A simple enough game, but dear for
many and many a year to English children. A broad and shallow bowl or
dish half-filled with blazing brandy, at the bottom of which lay
numerous toothsome raisins–a rare tidbit in those days–and one of
these, pierced with a gold button, was known as the “lucky raisin.”

Then, as the flaming brandy flickered and darted from the yawning bowl,
even as did the flaming poison tongues of the cruel dragon that St.
George of England conquered so valiantly, each one of the revellers
sought to snatch a raisin from the burning bowl without singe or scar.
And he who drew out the lucky raisin was winner and champion, and could
claim a boon or reward for his superior skill. Rather a dangerous game,
perhaps it seems, but folks were rough players in those old days and
laughed at a burn or a bruise, taking them as part of the fun.

So around Master Sandy’s Snapdragon danced the royal children, and even
the King himself condescended to dip his royal hands in the flames,
while Archie Armstrong the jester cried out: “Now fair and softly,
brother Jamie, fair and softly, man. There’s ne’er a plum in all that
plucking so worth the burning as there was in Signer Guy Fawkes’
snapdragon when ye proved not to be his lucky raisin.” For King’s
jesters were privileged characters in the old days, and jolly Archie
Armstrong could joke with the King on this Guy Fawkes scare as none
other dared.

And still no one brought out the lucky raisin, though the Princess
Elizabeth’s fair arm was scotched and good Master Sandy’s peaked beard
was singed, and my Lord Montacute had dropped his signet ring in the
fiery dragon’s mouth, and even His Gracious Majesty the King was
nursing one of his royal fingers.

But just as through the parted arras came young Henry, Prince of Wales,
little Prince Charles gave a boyish shout of triumph.

“Hey, huzzoy!” he cried, “’tis mine, ’tis mine! Look, Archie; see, dear
dad; I have the lucky raisin! A boon, good folk; a boon for me!” And
the excited lad held aloft the lucky raisin in which gleamed the golden
button.

“Rarely caught, young York,” cried Prince Henry, clapping his hands in
applause. “I came in right in good time, did I not, to give you luck,
little brother? And now, lad, what is the boon to be?”

And King James, greatly pleased at whatever his dear “Baby Charles”
said or did, echoed his eldest son’s question. “Ay lad, ’twas a rare
good dip; so crave your boon. What does my bonny boy desire?”

But the boy hesitated. What was there that a royal prince, indulged as
was he, could wish for or desire? He really could think of nothing, and
crossing quickly to his elder brother, whom, boy-fashion, he adored, he
whispered, “Ud’s fish, Hal, what DO I want?”

Prince Henry placed his hand upon his brother’s shoulder and looked
smilingly into his questioning eyes, and all within the room glanced
for a moment at the two lads standing thus.

And they were well worth looking at. Prince Henry of Wales, tall,
comely, open-faced, and well-built, a noble lad of eighteen who called
to men’s minds, so “rare Ben Jonson” says, the memory of the hero of
Agincourt, that other
thunderbolt of war,
Harry the Fifth, to whom in face you are
So like, as Fate would have you so in worth;

Prince Charles, royal Duke of York, Knight of the Garter and of the
Bath, fair in face and form, an active, manly, daring boy of
eleven–the princely brothers made so fair a sight that the King,
jealous and suspicious of Prince Henry’s popularity though he was,
looked now upon them both with loving eyes. But how those loving eyes
would have grown dim with tears could this fickle, selfish, yet
indulgent father have foreseen the sad and bitter fates of both his
handsome boys.

But, fortunately, such foreknowledge is not for fathers or mothers,
whatever their rank or station, and King James’s only thought was one
of pride in the two brave lads now whispering together in secret
confidence. And into this he speedily broke.

“Come, come, Baby Charles,” he cried, “stand no more parleying, but out
and over with the boon ye crave as guerdon for your lucky plum. Ud’s
fish, lad, out with it; we’d get it for ye though it did rain jeddert
staves here in Whitehall.”

“So please your Grace,” said the little Prince, bowing low with true
courtier-like grace and suavity, “I will, with your permission, crave
my boon as a Christmas favor at wassail time in to-morrow’s revels.”
And then he passed from the chamber arm-in-arm with his elder brother,
while the King, chuckling greatly over the lad’s show of courtliness
and ceremony, went into a learned discussion with my lord of Montacute
and Master Sandy as to the origin of the snapdragon, which he, with his
customary assumption of deep learning, declared was “but a modern
paraphrase, my lord, of the fable which telleth how Dan Hercules did
kill the flaming dragon of Hesperia and did then, with the apple of
that famous orchard, make a fiery dish of burning apple brandy which he
did name ’snapdragon.’”

For King James VI of Scotland and I of England was, you see, something
too much of what men call a pendant.

Christmas morning rose bright and glorious. A light hoarfrost whitened
the ground and the keen December air nipped the noses as it hurried the
song-notes of the score of little waifs who, gathered beneath the
windows of the big palace, sung for the happy awaking of the young
Prince Charles their Christmas carol and their Christmas noel:

A child this day is born,
A child of great renown;
Most worthy of a sceptre,
A sceptre and a crown.
Noel, noel, noel,
Noel sing we may
Because the King of all Kings
Was born this blessed day.

These tidings shepherds heard
In field watching their fold,
Were by an angel unto them
At night revealed and told.
Noel, noel, noel,
Noel sing we may
Because the King of all Kings
Was born this blessed day.

He brought unto them tidings
Of gladness and of mirth,
Which cometh to all people by
This holy infant’s birth.

Noel, noel, noel,
Noel sing we may
Because the King of all Kings
Was born this blessed day.

The “blessed day” wore on. Gifts and sports filled the happy hours. In
the royal banqueting hall the Christmas dinner was royally set and
served, and King and Queen and Princes, with attendant nobles and
holiday guests, partook of the strong dishes of those old days of
hearty appetites.

“A shield of brawn with mustard, boyl’d capon, a chine of beef roasted,
a neat’s tongue roasted, a pig roasted, chewets baked, goose, swan and
turkey roasted, a haunch of venison roasted, a pasty of venison, a kid
stuffed with pudding, an olive-pye, capons and dowsets, sallats and
fricases”–all these and much more, with strong beer and spiced ale to
wash the dinner down, crowned the royal board, while the great boar’s
head and the Christmas pie, borne in with great parade, were placed on
the table joyously decked with holly and rosemary and bay. It was a
great ceremony–this bringing in of the boar’s head. First came an
attendant, so the old record tells us,

“attyr’d in a horseman’s coat with a Boares-speare in his hande; next
to him another huntsman in greene, with a bloody faulchion drawne; next
to him two pages in tafatye sarcenet, each of them with a messe of
mustard; next to whom came hee that carried the Boareshead, crosst with
a greene silk scarfe, by which hunge the empty scabbard of the
faulchion which was carried before him.”

After the dinner–the boar’s head having been wrestled for by some of
the royal yeomen–came the wassail or health-drinking. Then the King
said:

“And now, Baby Charles, let us hear the boon ye were to crave of us at
wassail as the guerdon for the holder of the lucky raisin in Master
Sandy’s snapdragon.”

And the little eleven-year-old Prince stood up before the company in
all his brave attire, glanced at his brother Prince Henry, and then
facing the King said boldly:

“I pray you, my father and my Hege, grant me as the boon I ask–the
freeing of Walter Raleigh.”

At this altogether startling and unlooked-for request, amazement and
consternation appeared on the faces around the royal banqueting board,
and the King put down his untasted tankard of spiced ale, while
surprise, doubt and anger quickly crossed the royal face. For Sir
Walter Raleigh, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, the lord-proprietor
and colonizer of the American colonies, and the sworn foe to Spain, had
been now close prisoner in the Tower for more than nine years, hated
and yet dreaded by this fickle King James, who dared not put him to
death for fear of the people to whom the name and valour of Raleigh
were dear.

“Hoot, chiel!” cried the King at length, spluttering wrathfully in the
broadest of his native Scotch, as was his habit when angered or
surprised. “Ye reckless fou, wha hae put ye to sic a jackanape trick?
Dinna ye ken that sic a boon is nae for a laddie like you to meddle
wi’? Wha hae put ye to’t, I say?”

But ere the young Prince could reply, the stately and solemn-faced
ambassador of Spain, the Count of Gondemar, arose in the place of
honour he filled as a guest of the King.

“My Lord King,” he said, “I beg your majesty to bear in memory your
pledge to my gracious master King Philip of Spain, that naught save
grave cause should lead you to liberate from just durance that arch
enemy of Spain, the Lord Raleigh.”

“But you did promise me, my lord,” said Prince Charles, hastily, “and
you have told me that the royal pledge is not to be lightly broken.”
“Ma certie, lad,” said King James, “ye maunay learn that there is nae
rule wi’out its aicciptions.” And then he added, “A pledge to a boy in
play, like to ours of yester-eve, Baby Charles, is not to be kept when
matters of state conflict.” Then turning to the Spanish ambassador, he
said: “Rest content, my lord count. This recreant Raleigh shall not yet
be loosed.”

“But, my liege,” still persisted the boy prince, “my brother Hal did
say–”

The wrath of the King burst out afresh.

“Ay, said you so? Brother Hal, indeed!” he cried.

“I thought the wind blew from that quarter,” and he angrily faced his
eldest son. “So, sirrah; ’twas you that did urge this foolish boy to
work your traitorous purpose in such coward guise!”

“My liege,” said Prince Henry, rising in his place, “traitor and coward
are words I may not calmly hear even from my father and my king. You
wrong me foully when you use them thus. For though I do bethink me that
the Tower is but a sorry cage in which to keep so grandly plumed a bird
as my Lord of Raleigh, I did but seek–”

“Ay, you did but seek to curry favour with the craven crowd,” burst out
the now thoroughly angry King, always jealous of the popularity of this
brave young Prince of Wales. “And am I, sirrah, to be badgered and
browbeaten in my own palace by such a thriftless ne’er-do-weel as you,
ungrateful boy, who seekest to gain preference with the people in this
realm before your liege lord the King? Quit my presence, sirrah, and
that instanter, ere that I do send you to spend your Christmas where
your great-grandfather, King Henry, bade his astrologer spend his–in
the Tower, there to keep company with your fitting comrade, Raleigh,
the traitor!”

Without a word in reply to this outburst, with a son’s submission, but
with a royal dignity, Prince Henry bent his head before his father’s
decree and withdrew from the table, followed by the gentlemen of his
household.

But ere he could reach the arrased doorway, Prince Charles sprang to
his side and cried, valiantly: “Nay then, if he goes so do I! ‘Twas
surely but a Christmas joke and of my own devising. Spoil not our
revel, my gracious liege and father, on this of all the year’s
red-letter days, by turning my thoughtless frolic into such bitter
threatening. I did but seek to test the worth of Master Sandy’s lucky
raisin by asking for as wildly great a boon as might be thought upon.
Brother Hal too, did but give me his advising in joke even as I did
seek it. None here, my royal father, would brave your sovereign
displeasure by any unknightly or unloyal scheme.”

The gentle and dignified words of the young prince–for Charles Stuart,
though despicable as a king, was ever loving and loyal as a
friend–were as oil upon the troubled waters. The ruffled temper of the
ambassador of Spain–who in after years really did work Raleigh’s
downfall and death–gave place to courtly bows, and the King’s quick
anger melted away before the dearly loved voice of his favourite son.
“Nay, resume your place, son Hal,” he said, “and you, gentlemen all,
resume your seats, I pray. I too did but jest as did Baby Charles
here–a sad young wag, I fear me, is this same young Prince.”

But as, after the wassail, came the Christmas mask, in which both
Princes bore their parts, Prince Charles said to Archie Armstrong, the
King’s jester:

“Faith, good Archie; now is Master Sandy’s snapdragon but a false beast
withal, and his lucky raisin is but an evil fruit that pays not for the
plucking.”

And wise old Archie only wagged his head and answered, “Odd zooks,
Cousin Charlie, Christmas raisins are not the only fruit that burns the
fingers in the plucking, and mayhap you too may live to know that a
mettlesome horse never stumbleth but when he is reined.”

Poor “Cousin Charlie” did not then understand the full meaning of the
wise old jester’s words, but he did live to learn their full intent.

For when, in after years, his people sought to curb his tyrannies with
a revolt that ended only with his death upon the scaffold, outside this
very banqueting house at Whitehall, Charles Stuart learned all too late
that a “mettlesome horse” needed sometimes to be “reined,” and heard,
too late as well, the stern declaration of the Commons of England that
“no chief officer might presume for the future to contrive the
enslaving and destruction of the nation with impunity.”

But though many a merry and many a happy day had the young Prince
Charles before the dark tragedy of his sad and sorry manhood, he lost
all faith in lucky raisins. Not for three years did Sir Walter
Raleigh–whom both the Princes secretly admired–obtain release from
the Tower, and ere three more years were past his head fell as a
forfeit to the stern demands of Spain. And Prince Charles often
declared that naught indeed could come from meddling with luck saving
burnt fingers, “even,” he said, “as came to me that profitless night
when I sought a boon for snatching the lucky raisin from good Master
Sandy’s Christmas snapdragon.”

* Reprinted by permission of Moffat, Yird & Co., from Christmas. R.H.
Schauffler, Editor.

“I hate holidays,” said Bachelor Bluff to me, with some little
irritation, on a Christmas a few years ago. Then he paused an instant,
after which he resumed: “I don’t mean to say that I hate to see people
enjoying themselves. But I hate holidays, nevertheless, because to me
they are always the saddest and dreariest days of the year. I shudder
at the name of holiday. I dread the approach of one, and thank heaven
when it is over. I pass through, on a holiday, the most horrible
sensations, the bitterest feelings, the most oppressive melancholy; in
fact, I am not myself at holiday-times.”

“Very strange,” I ventured to interpose.

“A plague on it!” said he, almost with violence. “I’m not inhuman. I
don’t wish anybody harm. I’m glad people can enjoy themselves. But I
hate holidays all the same. You see, this is the reason: I am a
bachelor; I am without kin; I am in a place that did not know me at
birth. And so, when holidays come around, there is no place anywhere
for me. I have friends, of course; I don’t think I’ve been a very
sulky, shut-in, reticent fellow; and there is many a board that has a
place for me–but not at Christmastime. At Christmas, the dinner is a
family gathering; and I’ve no family. There is such a gathering of
kindred on this occasion, such a reunion of family folk, that there is
no place for a friend, even if the friend be liked. Christmas, with all
its kindliness and charity and good-will, is, after all, deuced
selfish. Each little set gathers within its own circle; and people like
me, with no particular circle, are left in the lurch. So you see, on
the day of all the days in the year that my heart pines for good cheer,
I’m without an invitation.

“Oh, it’s because I pine for good cheer,” said the bachelor, sharply,
interrupting my attempt to speak, “that I hate holidays. If I were an
infernally selfish fellow, I wouldn’t hate holidays. I’d go off and
have some fun all to myself, somewhere or somehow. But, you see, I hate
to be in the dark when all the rest of the world is in light. I hate
holidays because I ought to be merry and happy on holidays and can’t.
“Don’t tell me,” he cried, stopping the word that was on my lips; “I
tell you, I hate holidays. The shops look merry, do they, with their
bright toys and their green branches? The pantomime is crowded with
merry hearts, is it? The circus and the show are brimful of fun and
laughter, are they? Well, they all make me miserable. I haven’t any
pretty-faced girls or bright-eyed boys to take to the circus or the
show, and all the nice girls and fine boys of my acquaintance have
their uncles or their grand-dads or their cousins to take them to those
places; so, if I go, I must go alone. But I don’t go. I can’t bear the
chill of seeing everybody happy, and knowing myself so lonely and
desolate. Confound it, sir, I’ve too much heart to be happy under such
circumstances! I’m too humane, sir!

And the result is, I hate holidays. It’s miserable to be out, and yet I
can’t stay at home, for I get thinking of Christmases past. I can’t
read–the shadow of my heart makes it impossible. I can’t walk–for I
see nothing but pictures through the bright windows, and happy groups
of pleasure-seekers. The fact is, I’ve nothing to do but to hate
holidays. But will you not dine with me?”

Of course, I had to plead engagement with my own family circle, and I
couldn’t quite invite Mr. Bluff home that day, when Cousin Charles and
his wife, and Sister Susan and her daughter, and three of my wife’s kin
had come in from the country, all to make a merry Christmas with us. I
felt sorry, but it was quite impossible, so I wished Mr. Bluff a “Merry
Christmas,” and hurried homeward through the cold and nipping air.
I did not meet Bachelor Bluff again until a week after Christmas of the
next year, when I learned some strange particulars of what occurred to
him after our parting on the occasion just described. I will let
Bachelor Bluff tell his adventure for himself.

“I went to church,” said he, “and was as sad there as everywhere else.
Of course, the evergreens were pretty, and the music fine; but all
around me were happy groups of people, who could scarcely keep down
merry Christmas long enough to do reverence to sacred Christmas. And
nobody was alone but me. Every happy paterfamilias in his pew
tantalized me, and the whole atmosphere of the place seemed so much
better suited to every one else than me that I came away hating
holidays worse than ever. Then I went to the play, and sat down in a
box all alone by myself. Everybody seemed on the best of terms with
everybody else, and jokes and banter passed from one to another with
the most good-natured freedom. Everybody but me was in a little group
of friends. I was the only person in the whole theatre that was alone.
And then there was such clapping of hands, and roars of laughter, and
shouts of delight at all the fun going on upon the stage, all of which
was rendered doubly enjoyable by everybody having somebody with whom to
share and interchange the pleasure, that my loneliness got simply
unbearable, and I hated holidays infinitely worse than ever.

“By five o’clock the holiday became so intolerable that I said I’d go
and get a dinner. The best dinner the town could provide. A sumptuous
dinner for one. A dinner with many courses, with wines of the finest
brands, with bright lights, with a cheerful fire, with every condition
of comfort–and I’d see if I couldn’t for once extract a little
pleasure out of a holiday!

“The handsome dining-room at the club looked bright, but it was empty.
Who dines at this club on Christmas but lonely bachelors? There was a
flutter of surprise when I ordered a dinner, and the few attendants
were, no doubt, glad of something to break the monotony of the hours.
“My dinner was well served. The spacious room looked lonely; but the
white, snowy cloths, the rich window hangings, the warm tints of the
walls, the sparkle of the fire in the steel grate, gave the room an air
of elegance and cheerfulness; and then the table at which I dined was
close to the window, and through the partly drawn curtains were visible
centres of lonely, cold streets, with bright lights from many a window,
it is true, but there was a storm, and snow began whirling through the
street. I let my imagination paint the streets as cold and dreary as it
would, just to extract a little pleasure by way of contrast from the
brilliant room of which I was apparently sole master.

“I dined well, and recalled in fancy old, youthful Christmases, and
pledged mentally many an old friend, and my melancholy was mellowing
into a low, sad undertone, when, just as I was raising a glass of wine
to my lips, I was startled by a picture at the windowpane. It was a
pale, wild, haggard face, in a great cloud of black hair, pressed
against the glass. As I looked it vanished. With a strange thrill at my
heart, which my lips mocked with a derisive sneer, I finished the wine
and set down the glass. It was, of course, only a beggar-girl that had
crept up to the window and stole a glance at the bright scene within;
but still the pale face troubled me a little, and threw a fresh shadow
on my heart. I filled my glass once more with wine, and was again about
to drink, when the face reappeared at the window. It was so white, so
thin, with eyes so large, wild, and hungry-looking, and the black,
unkempt hair, into which the snow had drifted, formed so strange and
weird a frame to the picture, that I was fairly startled. Replacing,
untasted, the liquor on the table, I rose and went close to the pane.

The face had vanished, and I could see no object within many feet of
the window. The storm had increased, and the snow was driving in wild
gusts through the streets, which were empty, save here and there a
hurrying wayfarer. The whole scene was cold, wild, and desolate, and I
could not repress a keen thrill of sympathy for the child, whoever it
was, whose only Christmas was to watch, in cold and storm, the rich
banquet ungratefully enjoyed by the lonely bachelor. I resumed my place
at the table; but the dinner was finished, and the wine had no further
relish. I was haunted by the vision at the window, and began, with an
unreasonable irritation at the interruption, to repeat with fresh
warmth my detestation of holidays. One couldn’t even dine alone on a
holiday with any sort of comfort, I declared. On holidays one was
tormented by too much pleasure on one side, and too much misery on the
other. And then, I said, hunting for justification of my dislike of the
day, ‘How many other people are, like me, made miserable by seeing the
fullness of enjoyment others possess!’

“Oh, yes, I know,” sarcastically replied the bachelor to a comment of
mine; “of course, all magnanimous, generous, and noble-souled people
delight in seeing other people made happy, and are quite content to
accept this vicarious felicity. But I, you see, and this dear little
girl–”

“Dear little girl?”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Bachelor Bluff, blushing a little, in spite of a
desperate effort not to do so. “I didn’t tell you. Well, it was so
absurd! I kept thinking, thinking of the pale, haggard, lonely little
girl on the cold and desolate side of the window-pane, and the
over-fed, discontented, lonely old bachelor on the splendid side of the
window-pane, and I didn’t get much happier thinking about it, I can
assure you. I drank glass after glass of the wine–not that I enjoyed
its flavour any more, but mechanically, as it were, and with a sort of
hope thereby to drown unpleasant reminders. I tried to attribute my
annoyance in the matter to holidays, and so denounced them more
vehemently than ever. I rose once in a while and went to the window,
but could see no one to whom the pale face could have belonged.
“At last, in no very amiable mood, I got up, put on my wrappers, and
went out; and the first thing I did was to run against a small figure
crouching in the doorway. A face looked up quickly at the rough
encounter, and I saw the pale features of the window-pane. I was very
irritated and angry, and spoke harshly; and then, all at once, I am
sure I don’t know how it happened, but it flashed upon me that I, of
all men, had no right to utter a harsh word to one oppressed with so
wretched a Christmas as this poor creature was. I couldn’t say another
word, but began feeling in my pocket for some money, and then I asked a
question or two, and then I don’t quite know how it came about–isn’t
it very warm here?” exclaimed Bachelor Bluff, rising and walking about,
and wiping the perspiration from his brow.

“Well, you see,” he resumed nervously, “it was very absurd, but I did
believe the girl’s story–the old story, you know, of privation and
suffering, and just thought I’d go home with the brat and see if what
she said was all true. And then I remembered that all the shops were
closed, and not a purchase could be made. I went back and persuaded the
steward to put up for me a hamper of provisions, which the half-wild
little youngster helped me carry through the snow, dancing with delight
all the way. And isn’t this enough?”

“Not a bit, Mr. Bluff. I must have the whole story.”

“I declare,” said Bachelor Bluff, “there’s no whole story to tell. A
widow with children in great need, that was what I found; and they had
a feast that night, and a little money to buy them a load of wood and a
garment or two the next day; and they were all so bright, and so merry,
and so thankful, and so good, that, when I got home that night, I was
mightily amazed that, instead of going to bed sour at holidays, I was
in a state of great contentment in regard to holidays. In fact, I was
really merry. I whistled. I sang. I do believe I cut a caper. The poor
wretches I had left had been so merry over their unlooked-for Christmas
banquet that their spirits infected mine.

“And then I got thinking again. Of course, holidays had been miserable
to me, I said. What right had a well-to-do, lonely old bachelor
hovering wistfully in the vicinity of happy circles, when all about
there were so many people as lonely as he, and yet oppressed with want?
‘Good gracious!’ I exclaimed, ‘to think of a man complaining of
loneliness with thousands of wretches yearning for his help and
comfort, with endless opportunities for work and company, with hundreds
of pleasant and delightful things to do. Just to think of it! It put me
in a great fury at myself to think of it. I tried pretty hard to escape
from myself and began inventing excuses and all that sort of thing, but
I rigidly forced myself to look squarely at my own conduct. And then I
reconciled my confidence by declaring that, if ever after that day I
hated a holiday again, might my holidays end at once and forever!
“Did I go and see my proteges again? What a question! Why–well, no
matter. If the widow is comfortable now, it is because she has found a
way to earn without difficulty enough for her few wants. That’s no
fault of mine. I would have done more for her, but she wouldn’t let me.

But just let me tell you about New Year’s–the New-Year’s day that
followed the Christmas I’ve been describing. It was lucky for me there
was another holiday only a week off. Bless you! I had so much to do
that day I was completely bewildered, and the hours weren’t half long
enough. I did make a few social calls, but then I hurried them over;
and then hastened to my little girl, whose face had already caught a
touch of colour; and she, looking quite handsome in her new frock and
her ribbons, took me to other poor folk, and,–well, that’s about the
whole story.

“Oh, as to the next Christmas. Well, I didn’t dine alone, as you may
guess. It was up three stairs, that’s true, and there was none of that
elegance that marked the dinner of the year before; but it was merry,
and happy, and bright; it was a generous, honest, hearty Christmas
dinner, that it was, although I do wish the widow hadn’t talked so much
about the mysterious way a turkey had been left at her door the night
before. And Molly–that’s the little girl–and I had a rousing
appetite. We went to church early; then we had been down to the Five
Points to carry the poor outcasts there something for their Christmas
dinner; in fact, we had done wonders of work, and Molly was in high
spirits, and so the Christmas dinner was a great success.

“Dear me, sir, no! Just as you say. Holidays are not in the least
wearisome any more. Plague on it! When a man tells me now that he hates
holidays, I find myself getting very wroth. I pin him by the buttonhole
at once, and tell him my experience. The fact is, if I were at dinner
on a holiday, and anybody should ask me for a sentiment, I should say,
‘God bless all holidays!’”

*From “Kristy’s Queer Christmas,” Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1904.

It was just before Christmas, and Mr. Barnes was starting for the
nearest village. The family were out at the door to see him start, and
give him the last charges.

“Don’t forget the Christmas dinner, papa,” said Willie.

‘”Specially the chickens for the pie!” put in Nora.

“An’ the waisins,” piped up little Tot, standing on tiptoe to give papa
a good-bye kiss.

“I hate to have you go, George,” said Mrs. Barnes anxiously. “It looks
to me like a storm.”

“Oh, I guess it won’t be much,” said Mr. Barnes lightly; “and the
youngsters must have their Christmas dinner, you know.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Barnes, “remember this, George: if there is a bad
storm don’t try to come back. Stay in the village till it is over. We
can get along alone for a few days, can’t we, Willie?” turning to the
boy who was giving the last touches to the harness of old Tim, the
horse.

“Oh, yes! Papa, I can take care of mamma,” said Willie earnestly.

“And get up the Christmas dinner out of nothing?” asked papa, smiling.

“I don’t know,” said Willie, hesitating, as he remembered the proposed
dinner, in which he felt a deep interest.

“What could you do for the chicken pie?” went on papa with a roguish
look in his eye, “or the plum-pudding?”

“Or the waisins?” broke in Tot anxiously.

“Tot has set her heart on the raisins,” said papa, tossing the small
maiden up higher than his head, and dropping her all laughing on the
door-step, “and Tot shall have them sure, if papa can find them in S–.
Now good-bye, all! Willie, remember to take care of mamma, and I depend
on you to get up a Christmas dinner if I don’t get back. Now, wife,
don’t worry!” were his last words as the faithful old horse started
down the road.

Mrs. Barnes turned one more glance to the west, where a low, heavy bank
of clouds was slowly rising, and went into the little house to attend
to her morning duties.

“Willie,” she said, when they were all in the snug little log-cabin in
which they lived, “I’m sure there’s going to be a storm, and it may be
snow. You had better prepare enough wood for two or three days; Nora
will help bring it in.”

“Me, too!” said grave little Tot.

“Yes, Tot may help too,” said mamma.

This simple little home was a busy place, and soon every one was hard
at work. It was late in the afternoon before the pile of wood, which
had been steadily growing all day, was high enough to satisfy Willie,
for now there was no doubt about the coming storm, and it would
probably bring snow; no one could guess how much, in that country of
heavy storms.

“I wish the village was not so far off, so that papa could get back
to-night,” said Willie, as he came in with his last load.

Mrs. Barnes glanced out of the window. Broad scattering snowflakes were
silently falling; the advance guard, she felt them to be, of a numerous
host.

“So do I,” she replied anxiously, “or that he did not have to come over
that dreadful prairie, where it is so easy to get lost.”

“But old Tim knows the way, even in the dark,” said Willie proudly. “I
believe Tim knows more’n some folks.”

“No doubt he does, about the way home,” said mamma, “and we won’t worry
about papa, but have our supper and go to bed. That’ll make the time
seem short.”

The meal was soon eaten and cleared away, the fire carefully covered up
on the hearth, and the whole little family quietly in bed. Then the
storm, which had been making ready all day, came down upon them in
earnest.

The bleak wind howled around the corners, the white flakes by millions
and millions came with it, and hurled themselves upon that house. In
fact, that poor little cabin alone on the wide prairie seemed to be the
object of their sport. They sifted through the cracks in the walls,
around the windows, and under the door, and made pretty little drifts
on the floor. They piled up against it outside, covered the steps, and
then the door, and then the windows, and then the roof, and at last
buried it completely out of sight under the soft, white mass.

And all the time the mother and her three children lay snugly covered
up in their beds fast asleep, and knew nothing about it.

The night passed away and morning came, but no light broke through the
windows of the cabin. Mrs. Barnes woke at the usual time, but finding
it still dark and perfectly quiet outside, she concluded that the storm
was over, and with a sigh of relief turned over to sleep again. About
eight o’clock, however, she could sleep no more, and became wide awake
enough to think the darkness strange. At that moment the clock struck,
and the truth flashed over her.

Being buried under snow is no uncommon thing on the wide prairies, and
since they had wood and cornmeal in plenty, she would not have been
much alarmed if her husband had been home. But snow deep enough to bury
them must cover up all landmarks, and she knew her husband would not
rest till he had found them. To get lost on the trackless prairie was
fearfully easy, and to suffer and die almost in sight of home was no
unusual thing, and was her one dread in living there.

A few moments she lay quiet in bed, to calm herself and get control of
her own anxieties before she spoke to the children.

“Willie,” she said at last, “are you awake?”

“Yes, mamma,” said Willie; “I’ve been awake ever so long; isn’t it most
morning?”

“Willie,” said the mother quietly, “we mustn’t be frightened, but I
think–I’m afraid–we are snowed in.”

Willie bounded to his feet and ran to the door. “Don’t open it!” said
mamma hastily; “the snow may fall in. Light a candle and look out the
window.”

In a moment the flickering rays of the candle fell upon the window.
Willie drew back the curtain. Snow was tightly banked up against it to
the top.

“Why, mamma,” he exclaimed, “so we are! and how can papa find us? and
what shall we do?”

“We must do the best we can,” said mamma, in a voice which she tried to
make steady, “and trust that it isn’t very deep, and that Tim and papa
will find us, and dig us out.”

By this time the little girls were awake and inclined to be very much
frightened, but mamma was calm now, and Willie was brave and hopeful.
They all dressed, and Willie started the fire. The smoke refused to
rise, but puffed out into the room, and Mrs. Barnes knew that if the
chimney were closed they would probably suffocate, if they did not
starve or freeze.

The smoke in a few minutes choked them, and, seeing that something must
be done, she put the two girls, well wrapped in blankets, into the shed
outside the back door, closed the door to keep out the smoke, and then
went with Willie to the low attic, where a scuttle door opened onto the
roof.

“We must try,” she said, “to get it open without letting in too much
snow, and see if we can manage to clear the chimney.”

“I can reach the chimney from the scuttle with a shovel,” said Willie.

“I often have with a stick.”

After much labour, and several small avalanches of snow, the scuttle
was opened far enough for Willie to stand on the top round of the short
ladder, and beat a hole through to the light, which was only a foot
above. He then shovelled off the top of the chimney, which was
ornamented with a big round cushion of snow, and then by beating and
shovelling he was able to clear the door, which he opened wide, and
Mrs. Barnes came up on the ladder to look out. Dreary indeed was the
scene! Nothing but snow as far as the eye could reach, and flakes still
falling, though lightly.

The storm was evidently almost over, but the sky was gray and overcast.
They closed the door, went down, and soon had a fire, hoping that the
smoke would guide somebody to them.

Breakfast was taken by candle-light, dinner–in time–in the same way,
and supper passed with no sound from the outside world.

Many times Willie and mamma went to the scuttle door to see if any one
was in sight, but not a shadow broke the broad expanse of white over
which toward night the sun shone. Of course there were no signs of the
roads, for through so deep snow none could be broken, and until the sun
and frost should form a crust on top there was little hope of their
being reached.

The second morning broke, and Willie hurried up to his post of lookout
the first thing. No person was in sight, but he found a light crust on
the snow, and the first thing he noticed was a few half-starved birds
trying in vain to pick up something to eat. They looked weak and almost
exhausted, and a thought struck Willie.

It was hard to keep up the courage of the little household. Nora had
openly lamented that to-night was Christmas Eve, and no Christmas
dinner to be had. Tot had grown very tearful about her “waisins,” and
Mrs. Barnes, though she tried to keep up heart, had become very pale
and silent.

Willie, though he felt unbounded faith in papa, and especially in Tim,
found it hard to suppress his own complaints when he remembered that
Christmas would probably be passed in the same dismal way, with fears
for papa added to their own misery.

The wood, too, was getting low, and mamma dared not let the fire go
out, as that was the only sign of their existence to anybody; and
though she did not speak of it, Willie knew, too, that they had not
many candles, and in two days at farthest they would be left in the
dark.

The thought that struck Willie pleased him greatly, and he was sure it
would cheer up the rest. He made his plans, and went to work to carry
them out without saying anything about it.

He brought out of a corner of the attic an old boxtrap he had used in
the summer to catch birds and small animals, set it carefully on the
snow, and scattered crumbs of corn-bread to attract the birds.

In half an hour he went up again, and found to his delight he had
caught bigger game–a poor rabbit which had come from no one knows
where over the crust to find food.

This gave Willie a new idea; they could save their Christmas dinner
after all; rabbits made very nice pies.

Poor Bunny was quietly laid to rest, and the trap set again. This time
another rabbit was caught, perhaps the mate of the first. This was the
last of the rabbits, but the next catch was a couple of snowbirds.

These Willie carefully placed in a corner of the attic, using the trap
for a cage, and giving them plenty of food and water.

When the girls were fast asleep, with tears on their cheeks for the
dreadful Christmas they were going to have, Willie told mamma about his
plans. Mamma was pale and weak with anxiety, and his news first made
her laugh and then cry. But after a few moments given to her long
pent-up tears, she felt much better and entered into his plans heartily.

The two captives up in the attic were to be Christmas presents to the
girls, and the rabbits were to make the long anticipated pie. As for
plum-pudding, of course that couldn’t be thought of.

“But don’t you think, mamma,” said Willie eagerly, “that you could make
some sort of a cake out of meal, and wouldn’t hickory nuts be good in
it? You know I have some left up in the attic, and I might crack them
softly up there, and don’t you think they would be good?” he concluded
anxiously.

“Well, perhaps so,” said mamma, anxious to please him and help him in
his generous plans. “I can try. If I only had some eggs–but seems to
me I have heard that snow beaten into cake would make it light–and
there’s snow enough, I’m sure,” she added with a faint smile, the first
Willie had seen for three days.

The smile alone he felt to be a great achievement, and he crept
carefully up the ladder, cracked the nuts to the last one, brought them
down, and mamma picked the meats out, while he dressed the two rabbits
which had come so opportunely to be their Christmas dinner. “Wish you
Merry Christmas!” he called out to Nora and Tot when they waked. “See
what Santa Claus has brought you!”

Before they had time to remember what a sorry Christmas it was to be,
they received their presents, a live bird, for each, a bird that was
never to be kept in a cage, but fly about the house till summer came,
and then to go away if it wished.

Pets were scarce on the prairie, and the girls were delighted. Nothing
papa could have brought them would have given them so much happiness.

They thought no more of the dinner, but hurried to dress themselves and
feed the birds, which were quite tame from hunger and weariness. But
after a while they saw preparations for dinner, too. Mamma made a crust
and lined a deep dish–the chicken pie dish–and then she brought a
mysterious something out of the cupboard, all cut up so that it looked
as if it might be chicken, and put it in the dish with other things,
and then she tucked them all under a thick crust, and set it down in a
tin oven before the fire to bake. And that was not all. She got out
some more cornmeal, and made a batter, and put in some sugar and
something else which she slipped in from a bowl, and which looked in
the batter something like raisins; and at the last moment Willie
brought her a cup of snow and she hastily beat it into the cake, or
pudding, whichever you might call it, while the children laughed at the
idea of making a cake out of snow. This went into the same oven and
pretty soon it rose up light and showed a beautiful brown crust, while
the pie was steaming through little fork holes on top, and sending out
most delicious odours.

At the last minute, when the table was set and everything ready to come
up, Willie ran up to look out of the scuttle, as he had every hour of
daylight since they were buried. In a moment came a wild shout down the
ladder.

“They’re coming! Hurrah for old Tim!”

Mamma rushed up and looked out, and saw–to be sure–old Tim slowly
coming along over the crust, drawing after him a wood sled on which
were two men.

“It’s papa!” shouted Willie, waving his arms to attract their attention.

“Willie!” came back over the snow in tones of agony. “Is that you? Are
all well?”

“All well!” shouted Willie, “and just going to have our Christmas
dinner.”

“Dinner?” echoed papa, who was now nearer.

“Where is the house, then?”

“Oh, down here!” said Willie, “under the snow; but we’re all right,
only we mustn’t let the plum-pudding spoil.”

Looking into the attic, Willie found that mamma had fainted away, and
this news brought to her aid papa and the other man, who proved to be a
good friend who had come to help.

Tim was tied to the chimney, whose thread of smoke had guided them
home, and all went down into the dark room. Mrs. Barnes soon recovered,
and while Willie dished up the smoking dinner, stories were told on
both sides.

Mr. Barnes had been trying to get through the snow and to find them all
the time, but until the last night had made a stiff crust he had been
unable to do so. Then Mrs. Barnes told her story, winding up with the
account of Willie’s Christmas dinner. “And if it hadn’t been for his
keeping up our hearts I don’t know what would have become of us,” she
said at last.

“Well, my son,” said papa, “you did take care of mamma, and get up a
dinner out of nothing, sure enough; and now we’ll eat the dinner, which
I am sure is delicious.”

So it proved to be; even the cake, or pudding, which Tot christened
snow pudding, was voted very nice, and the hickory nuts as good as
raisins. When they had finished, Mr. Barnes brought in his packages,
gave Tot and the rest some “sure-enough waisins,” and added his
Christmas presents to Willie’s; but though all were overjoyed, nothing
was quite so nice in their eyes as the two live birds.

After dinner the two men and Willie dug out passages from the doors,
through the snow, which had wasted a good deal, uncovered the windows,
and made a slanting way to his shed for old Tim. Then for two or three
days Willie made tunnels and little rooms under the snow, and for two
weeks, while the snow lasted, Nora and Tot had fine times in the little
snow playhouses.

“On Christmas day in Seventy-six,
Our gallant troops with bayonets fixed,
To Trenton marched away.”

Children, have any of you ever thought of what little people like you
were doing in this country more than a hundred years ago, when the
cruel tide of war swept over its bosom? From many homes the fathers
were absent, fighting bravely for the liberty which we now enjoy, while
the mothers no less valiantly struggled against hardships and
discomforts in order to keep a home for their children, whom you only
know as your great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, dignified
gentlemen and beautiful ladies, whose painted portraits hang upon the
walls in some of your homes. Merry, romping children they were in those
far-off times, yet their bright faces must have looked grave sometimes,
when they heard the grown people talk of the great things that were
happening around them. Some of these little people never forgot the
wonderful events of which they heard, and afterward related them to
their children and grandchildren, which accounts for some of the
interesting stories which you may still hear, if you are good children.

The Christmas story that I have to tell you is about a boy and girl who
lived in Bordentown, New Jersey. The father of these children was a
soldier in General Washington’s army, which was encamped a few miles
north of Trenton, on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River.

Bordentown, as you can see by looking on your map, if you have not
hidden them all away for the holidays, is about seven miles south of
Trenton, where fifteen hundred Hessians and a troop of British light
horse were holding the town. Thus you see that the British, in force,
were between Washington’s army and Bordentown, besides which there were
some British and Hessian troops in the very town. All this seriously
interfered with Captain Tracy’s going home to eat his Christmas dinner
with his wife and children. Kitty and Harry Tracy, who had not lived
long enough to see many wars, could not imagine such a thing as
Christmas without their father, and had busied themselves for weeks in
making everything ready to have a merry time with him. Kitty, who loved
to play quite as much as any frolicsome Kitty of to-day, had spent all
her spare time in knitting a pair of thick woollen stockings, which
seems a wonderful feat for a little girl only eight years old to
perform! Can you not see her sitting by the great chimney-place, filled
with its roaring, crackling logs, in her quaint, short-waisted dress,
knitting away steadily, and puckering up her rosy, dimpled face over
the strange twists and turns of that old stocking? I can see her, and I
can also hear her sweet voice as she chatters away to her mother about
“how ’sprised papa will be to find that his little girl can knit like a
grown-up woman,” while Harry spreads out on the hearth a goodly store
of shellbarks that he has gathered and is keeping for his share of the
’sprise.

“What if he shouldn’t come?” asks Harry, suddenly.

“Oh, he’ll come! Papa never stays away on Christmas,” says Kitty,
looking up into her mother’s face for an echo to her words. Instead she
sees something very like tears in her mother’s eyes.

“Oh, mamma, don’t you think he’ll come?”

“He will come if he possibly can,” says Mrs. Tracy; “and if he cannot,
we will keep Christmas whenever dear papa does come home.”
“It won’t be half so nice,” said Kitty, “nothing’s so nice as REALLY
Christmas, and how’s Kriss Kringle going to know about it if we change
the day?”
“We’ll let him come just the same, and if he brings anything for papa
we can put it away for him.”

This plan, still, seemed a poor one to Miss Kitty, who went to her bed
in a sober mood that night, and was heard telling her dear dollie,
Martha Washington. that “wars were mis’able, and that when she married
she should have a man who kept a candy-shop for a husband, and not a
soldier–no, Martha, not even if he’s as nice as papa!” As Martha made
no objection to this little arrangement, being an obedient child, they
were both soon fast asleep. The days of that cold winter of 1776 wore
on; so cold it was that the sufferings of the soldiers were great,
their bleeding feet often leaving marks on the pure white snow over
which they marched. As Christmas drew near there was a feeling among
the patriots that some blow was about to be struck; but what it was,
and from whence they knew not; and, better than all, the British had no
idea that any strong blow could come from Washington’s army, weak and
out of heart, as they thought, after being chased through Jersey by
Cornwallis.

Mrs. Tracy looked anxiously each day for news of the husband and father
only a few miles away, yet so separated by the river and the enemy’s
troops that they seemed like a hundred. Christmas Eve came, but brought
with it few rejoicings. The hearts of the people were too sad to be
taken up with merrymaking, although the Hessian soldiers in the town,
good-natured Germans, who only fought the Americans because they were
paid for it, gave themselves up to the feasting and revelry.

“Shall we hang up our stockings?” asked Kitty, in rather a doleful
voice.

“Yes,” said her mother, “Santa Claus won’t forget you, I am sure,
although he has been kept pretty busy looking after the soldiers this
winter.”

“Which side is he on?” asked Harry.

“The right side, of course,” said Mrs. Tracy, which was the most
sensible answer she could possibly have given. So:

“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.”

Two little rosy faces lay fast asleep upon the pillow when the good old
soul came dashing over the roof about one o’clock, and after filling
each stocking with red apples, and leaving a cornucopia of sugar-plums
for each child, he turned for a moment to look at the sleeping faces,
for St. Nicholas has a tender spot in his great big heart for a
soldier’s children. Then, remembering many other small folks waiting
for him all over the land, he sprang up the chimney and was away in a
trice.

Santa Claus, in the form of Mrs. Tracy’s farmer brother, brought her a
splendid turkey; but because the Hessians were uncommonly fond of
turkey, it came hidden under a load of wood. Harry was very fond of
turkey, too, as well as of all other good things; but when his mother
said, “It’s such a fine bird, it seems too bad to eat it without
father,” Harry cried out, “Yes, keep it for papa!” and Kitty, joining
in the chorus, the vote was unanimous, and the turkey was hung away to
await the return of the good soldier, although it seemed strange, as
Kitty told Martha Washington, “to have no papa and no turkey on
Christmas Day.”

The day passed and night came, cold with a steady fall of rain and
sleet. Kitty prayed that her “dear papa might not be out in the storm,
and that he might come home and wear his beautiful blue stockings”;
“And eat his turkey,” said Harry’s sleepy voice; after which they were
soon in the land of dreams. Toward morning the good people in
Bordentown were suddenly aroused by firing in the distance, which
became more and more distinct as the day wore on. There was great
excitement in the town; men and women gathered together in little
groups in the streets to wonder what it was all about, and neighbours
came dropping into Mrs. Tracy’s parlour, all day long, one after the
other, to say what they thought of the firing. In the evening there
came a body of Hessians flying into the town, to say that General
Washington had surprised the British at Trenton, early that morning,
and completely routed them, which so frightened the Hessians in
Bordentown that they left without the slightest ceremony.

It was a joyful hour to the good town people when the red-jackets
turned their backs on them, thinking every moment that the patriot army
would be after them. Indeed, it seemed as if wonders would never cease
that day, for while rejoicings were still loud, over the departure of
the enemy, there came a knock at Mrs. Tracy’s door, and while she was
wondering whether she dared open it, it was pushed ajar, and a tall
soldier entered. What a scream of delight greeted that soldier, and how
Kitty and Harry danced about him and clung to his knees, while Mrs.
Tracy drew him toward the warm blaze, and helped him off with his damp
cloak!

Cold and tired Captain Tracy was, after a night’s march in the streets
and a day’s fighting; but he was not too weary to smile at the dear
faces around him, or to pat Kitty’s head when she brought his warm
stockings and would put them on the tired feet, herself.

Suddenly there was a sharp, quick bark outside the door. “What’s that?”

cried Harry

“Oh, I forgot. Open the door. Here, Fido, Fido!”

Into the room there sprang a beautiful little King Charles spaniel,
white, with tan spots, and ears of the longest, softest, and silkiest.

“What a little dear!” exclaimed Kitty; “where did it come from?”

“From the battle of Trenton,” said her father. “His poor master was
shot. After the red-coats had turned their backs, and I was hurrying
along one of the streets where the fight had been the fiercest, I heard
a low groan, and, turning, saw a British officer lying among a number
of slain. I raised his head; he begged for some water, which I brought
him, and bending down my ear I heard him whisper, ‘Dying–last
battle–say a prayer.’ He tried to follow me in the words of a prayer,
and then, taking my hand, laid it on something soft and warm, nestling
close up to his breast–it was this little dog. The gentleman–for he
was a real gentleman–gasped out, ‘Take care of my poor Fido;
good-night,’ and was gone. It was as much as I could do to get the
little creature away from his dead master; he clung to him as if he
loved him better than life. You’ll take care of him, won’t you,
children? I brought him home to you, for a Christmas present.”

“Pretty little Fido,” said Kitty, taking the soft, curly creature in
her arms; “I think it’s the best present in the world, and to-morrow is
to be real Christmas, because you are home, papa.”

“And we’ll eat the turkey,” said Harry, “and shellbarks, lots of them,
that I saved for you. What a good time we’ll have! And oh, papa, don’t
go to war any more, but stay at home, with mother and Kitty and Fido
and me.”

“What would become of our country if we should all do that, my little
man? It was a good day’s work that we did this Christmas, getting the
army all across the river so quickly and quietly that we surprised the
enemy, and gained a victory, with the loss of few men.”

Thus it was that some of the good people of 1776 spent their Christmas,
that their children and grandchildren might spend many of them as
citizens of a free nation.

Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present stood in the city streets on
Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a
rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow
from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of
their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come
plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little
snowstorms.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,
contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and
with the dirtier snow upon the ground, which last deposit had been
ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons;
furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where
the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels, hard to
trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and
the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed,
halF frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty
atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent,
caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear heart’s content. There
was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there
an air of cheerfulness abroad that the dearest summer air and brightest
summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.

For the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial
and full of glee, calling out to one another from the parapets, and now
and then exchanging a facetious snowball–better-natured missile far
than many a wordy jest–laughing heartily if it went right, and not
less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half
open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were
great, round, potbellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the
waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling
out into the street in their apoplectic opulence.

There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in
the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking, from
their shelves, in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and
glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples,
clustering high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes,
made, in the shop-keeper’s benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous
hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there
were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance,
ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep
through withered leaves; there were Norfolk biffins, squab and swarthy,
setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching
to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold
and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though
members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that
there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and
round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The grocers’! oh, the grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two
shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not
alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or
that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the
canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that
the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or
even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other
spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with
molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint, and
subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or
that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly
decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its
Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in
the hopeful promise of the day that they tumbled up against each other
at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their
purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and
committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible;
while the grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the
polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have
been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas
daws to peck at, if they chose.

But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and
away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and
with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores
of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people,
carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor
revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood, with
Scrooge beside him, in a baker’s doorway, and, taking off the covers as
their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his
torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when
there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled
each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their
good-humour was restored directly. For they said it was a shame to
quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there
was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the progress of
their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven,
where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.

“Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?”
asked Scrooge.

“There is. My own.”

“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.

“To any kindly given. To a poor one most.”

“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.

“Because it needs it most.”

They went on, invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of
the town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had
observed at the baker’s) that, notwithstanding his gigantic size, he
could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood
beneath a low roof quite as gracefully, and like a supernatural
creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this
power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and
his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s
clerk’s; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his
robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch.

Think of that! Bob had but fifteen “bob” a week himself; he pocketed on
Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost
of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out but poorly in
a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a
goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda
Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master
Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt-collar (Bob’s private
property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into
his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned
to show his linen in the fashionable parks. And now two smaller
Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the
baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own, and,
basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits
danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies,
while he (not proud, although his collar nearly choked him) blew the
fire, until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the
saucepan lid to be let out and peeled.

“What has ever got your precious father, then?” said Mrs. Cratchit.

“And your brother, Tiny Tim? And Martha warn’t as late last Christmas
Day by half an hour!”

“Here’s Martha, mother!” said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

“Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two young Cratchits. “Hurrah!

There’s such a goose, Martha!”

“Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!” said Mrs.
Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and
bonnet for her with officious zeal.

“We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” replied the girl, “and
had to clear away this morning, mother!”

“Well, never mind so long as you are come,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit ye
down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!”

“No, no! There’s father coming!” cried the two young Cratchits, who
were everywhere at once.

“Hide, Martha, hide!”

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at
least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down
before him, and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look
seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore
a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!

“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit, looking around.

“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit.

“Not coming?” said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits;
for he had been Tim’s blood horse all the way from the church, and had
come home rampant. “Not coming upon Christmas Day?”

Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so
she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his
arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off
into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the
copper.

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had
rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his
heart’s content.

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful,
sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever
heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the
church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to
remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men
see.”

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more
when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny
Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister
to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs–as
if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more
shabby–compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and
stirred it round and round, and put it on the hob to simmer, Master
Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose,
with which they soon returned in high procession.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of
all birds–a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter
of course–and in truth it was something very like it in that house.
Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot
plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the
two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting
themselves, and, mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came
to be helped. At last the dishes were set on. and grace was said. It
was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly
all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it into the breast; but
when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth,
one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle
of his knife, and feebly cried, “Hurrah!”

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was
such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness,
were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and
mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;
indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet
every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were
steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being
changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone–too nervous
to bear witnesses–to take the pudding up, and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough? Suppose it should break in
turning out? Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the
backyard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose–a
supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of
horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A
smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating
house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s
next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
entered–flushed, but smiling proudly–with the pudding, like a
speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of
half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly
stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he
regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody thought or said it
was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat
heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a
thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and
considered perfect, tipples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a
one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass–two
tumblers and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks,
while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
proposed:

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”

Which all the family reechoed.

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

“From Stone and Fickett’s “Every Day Life in the Colonies;” copyrighted
1905, by D. C. Heath & Co. Used by permission.

It was a warm and pleasant Saturday–that twenty-third of December,
1620. The winter wind had blown itself away in the storm of the day
before, and the air was clear and balmy. The people on board the
Mayflower were glad of the pleasant day. It was three long months since
they had started from Plymouth, in England, to seek a home across the
ocean. Now they had come into a harbour that they named New Plymouth,
in the country of New England.

Other people called these voyagers Pilgrims, which means wanderers. A
long while before, the Pilgrims had lived in England; later they made
their home with the Dutch in Holland; finally they had said goodbye to
their friends in Holland and in England, and had sailed away to America.
There were only one hundred and two of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower,
but they were brave and strong and full of hope. Now the Mayflower was
the only home they had; yet if this weather lasted they might soon have
warm log-cabins to live in. This very afternoon the men had gone ashore
to cut down the large trees.

The women of the Mayflower were busy, too. Some were spinning, some
knitting, some sewing. It was so bright and pleasant that Mistress Rose
Standish had taken out her knitting and had gone to sit a little while
on deck. She was too weak to face rough weather, and she wanted to
enjoy the warm sunshine and the clear salt air. By her side was
Mistress Brewster, the minister’s wife. Everybody loved Mistress
Standish and Mistress Brewster, for neither of them ever spoke unkindly.

The air on deck would have been warm even on a colder day, for in one
corner a bright fire was burning. It would seem strange now, would it
not, to see a fire on the deck of a vessel? But in those days, when the
weather was pleasant, people on shipboard did their cooking on deck.
The Pilgrims had no stoves, and Mistress Carver’s maid had built this
fire on a large hearth covered with sand. She had hung a great kettle
on the crane over the fire, where the onion soup for supper was now
simmering slowly.

Near the fire sat a little girl, busily playing and singing to herself.
Little Remember Allerton was only six years old, but she liked to be
with Hannah, Mistress Carver’s maid. This afternoon Remember had been
watching Hannah build the fire and make the soup. Now the little girl
was playing with the Indian arrowheads her father had brought her the
night before. She was singing the words of the old psalm:

“Shout to Jehovah, all the earth,

Serve ye Jehovah with gladness; before
Him bow with singing mirth.”

“Ah, child, methinks the children of Old England are singing different
words from those to-day,” spoke Hannah at length, with a faraway look
in her eyes.

“Why, Hannah? What songs are the little English children singing now?”
questioned Remember in surprise.

“It lacks but two days of Christmas, child, and in my old home
everybody is singing Merry Christmas songs.”

“But thou hast not told me what is Christmas!’ persisted the child.

“Ah, me! Thou dost not know, ’tis true. Christmas, Remember, is the
birthday of the Christ-Child, of Jesus, whom thou hast learned to
love,” Hannah answered softly.

“But what makes the English children so happy then? And we are English,
thou hast told me, Hannah. Why don’t we keep Christmas, too?”

“In sooth we are English, child. But the reason why we do not sing the
Christmas carols or play the Christmas games makes a long, long story,
Remember. Hannah cannot tell it so that little children will
understand. Thou must ask some other, child.”

Hannah and the little girl were just then near the two women on the
deck, and Remember said:

“Mistress Brewster, Hannah sayeth she knoweth not how to tell why Love
and Wrestling and Constance and the others do not sing the Christmas
songs or play the Christmas games. But thou wilt tell me wilt thou
not?” she added coaxingly.

A sad look came into Mistress Brewster’s eyes, and Mistress Standish
looked grave, too. No one spoke for a few seconds, until Hannah said
almost sharply:

“Why could we not burn a Yule log Monday, and make some meal into
little cakes for the children?”

“Nay, Hannah,” answered the gentle voice of Mistress Brewster. “Such
are but vain shows and not for those of us who believe in holier
things. But,” she added, with a kind glance at little Remember,
“wouldst thou like to know why we have left Old England and do not keep
the Christmas Day? Thou canst not understand it all, child, and yet it
may do thee no harm to hear the story. It may help thee to be a brave
and happy little girl in the midst of our hard life.”

“Surely it can do no harm, Mistress Brewster,” spoke Rose Standish,
gently. “Remember is a little Pilgrim now, and she ought, methinks, to
know something of the reason for our wandering. Come here, child, and
sit by me, while good Mistress Brewster tells thee how cruel men have
made us suffer. Then will I sing thee one of the Christmas carols.”
With these words she held out her hands to little Remember, who ran
quickly to the side of Mistress Standish, and eagerly waited for the
story to begin.

“We have not always lived in Holland, Remember. Most of us were born in
England, and England is the best country in the world. ‘Tis a land to
be proud of, Remember, though some of its rulers have been wicked and
cruel.

“Long before you were born, when your mother was a little girl, the
English king said that everybody in the land ought to think as he
thought, and go to a church like his. He said he would send us away
from England if we did not do as he ordered. Now, we could not think as
he did on holy matters, and it seemed wrong to us to obey him. So we
decided to go to a country where we might worship as we pleased.”

“What became of that cruel king, Mistress Brewster?”

“He ruleth England now. But thou must not think too hardly of him. He
doth not understand, perhaps. Right will win some day, Remember, though
there may be bloody war before peace cometh. And I thank God that we,
at least, shall not be called on to live in the midst of the strife,”
she went on, speaking more to herself than to the little girl.

“We decided to go to Holland, out of the reach of the king. We were not
sure whether it was best to move or not, but our hearts were set on
God’s ways. We trusted Him in whom we believed. Yes,” she went on, “and
shall we not keep on trusting Him?”

And Rose Standish, remembering the little stock of food that was nearly
gone, the disease that had come upon many of their number, and the five
who had died that month, answered firmly: “Yes. He who has led us thus
far will not leave us now.”

They were all silent a few seconds. Presently Remember said: “Then did
ye go to Holland, Mistress Brewster?”

“Yes,” she said. “Our people all went over to Holland, where the Dutch
folk live and the little Dutch children clatter about with their wooden
shoes. There thou wast born, Remember, and my own children, and there
we lived in love and peace.”

“And yet, we were not wholly happy. We could not talk well with the
Dutch, and so we could not set right what was wrong among them. ‘Twas
so hard to earn money that many had to go back to England. And worst of
all, Remember, we were afraid that you and little Bartholomew and Mary
and Love and Wrestling and all the rest would not grow to be good girls
and boys. And so we have come to this new country to teach our children
to be pure and noble.”

After another silence Remember spoke again: “I thank thee, Mistress
Brewster. And I will try to be a good girl. But thou didst not tell me
about Christmas after all.”

“Nay, child, but now I will. There are long services on that day in
every church where the king’s friends go. But there are parts of these
services which we cannot approve; and so we think it best not to follow
the other customs that the king’s friends observe on Christmas.

“They trim their houses with mistletoe and holly so that everything
looks gay and cheerful. Their other name for the Christmas time is the
Yuletide, and the big log that is burned then is called the Yule log.
The children like to sit around the hearth in front of the great,
blazing Yule log, and listen to stories of long, long ago.

“At Christmas there are great feasts in England, too. No one is allowed
to go hungry, for the rich people on the day always send meat and cakes
to the poor folk round about.

“But we like to make all our days Christmas days, Remember. We try
never to forget God’s gifts to us, and they remind us always to be good
to other people.”

“And the Christmas carols, Mistress Standish? What are they?”

“On Christmas Eve and early on Christmas morning,” Rose Standish
answered, “little children go about from house to house, singing
Christmas songs. ‘Tis what I like best in all the Christmas cheer. And
I promised to sing thee one, did I not?”

Then Mistress Standish sang in her dear, sweet voice the quaint old
English words:

As Joseph was a-walking,

He heard an angel sing:

“This night shall be the birth-time
Of Christ, the heavenly King.

“He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox’s stall.

“He neither shall be clothed
In purple nor in pall,
But in the fair white linen
That usen babies all.

“He neither shall be rocked
In silver nor in gold,
But in a wooden manger
That resteth in the mould.”
As Joseph was a-walking
There did an angel sing,
And Mary’s child at midnight
Was born to be our King.
Then be ye glad, good people,
This night of all the year,
And light ye up your candles,
For His star it shineth clear.

Before the song was over, Hannah had come on deck again, and was
listening eagerly. “I thank thee, Mistress Standish,” she said, the
tears filling her blue eyes. “‘Tis long, indeed, since I have heard
that song.”

“Would it be wrong for me to learn to sing those words, Mistress
Standish?” gently questioned the little girl.

“Nay, Remember, I trow not. The song shall be thy Christmas gift.”
Then Mistress Standish taught the little girl one verse after another
of the sweet old carol, and it was not long before Remember could say
it all.

The next day was dull and cold, and on Monday, the twenty-fifth, the
sky was still overcast. There was no bright Yule log in the Mayflower,
and no holly trimmed the little cabin.

The Pilgrims were true to the faith they loved. They held no special
service. They made no gifts.

Instead, they went again to the work of cutting the trees, and no one
murmured at his hard lot.

“We went on shore,” one man wrote in his diary, “some to fell timber,
some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry; so no man rested all that
day.”

As for little Remember, she spent the day on board the Mayflower. She
heard no one speak of England or sigh for the English home across the
sea. But she did not forget Mistress Brewster’s story; and more than
once that day, as she was playing by herself, she fancied that she was
in front of some English home, helping the English children sing their
Christmas songs. And both Mistress Allerton and Mistress Standish, whom
God was soon to call away from their earthly home, felt happier and
stronger as they heard the little girl singing:

He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of Paradise,
But in an ox’s stall.