by A. A. Milne
Didn’t they all have a good time? Old Joe Roe, the black fiddler, from Beaver Brook, Mill Village, was over there; and how he did play! how they did dance! Commonly, as the young folks said, he could play only one tune, “Joe Roe and I;” for it is true that his sleepy violin did always seem to whine out, “Joe Roe and I, Joe Roe and I, Joe Roe and I.” But now the old fiddle was wide awake. He cut capers on it; and made it laugh, and cry, and whistle, and snort, and scream. He held it close to his ear, and rolled up the whites of his eyes, and laughed a great, loud, rollicking laugh; and he made his fiddle laugh, too, right out.
The young people had their games. Boston, Puss in the Corner, Stir you must, Hunt the Squirrel round the Woods, Blind Man’s Buff, and Jerusalem. Mr. Atkins, who built the hall, and was a strict Orthodox man a Know-nothing, got them to play “Break the Pope’s neck,” which made a deal of fun. The oldest people sung some of the old New England tunes, in the old New England way. How well they went off! in particular,
“How beauteous are their feet Who stand on Zion’s Hill; And bring salvation on their tongues, And words of peace reveal.”
But the great triumph of all was the Christmas Tree. How big it was! a large stout Spruce in the upper part of the hall. It bore a gift for every child in the town. Two little girls had the whooping cough, and could not come out; but there were two playthings for them also, given to their brothers to be taken home. St. Nicolas— it was Almira Weldon’s lover— distributed the gifts.
Squire Stovepipe came in late, without any of the “family” that he was so busy in “establishing,” but was so cold that it took him a good while to warm up to the general temperature of the meeting. But he did at length; and talked with the Widow Wheeler, and saw all her well-managed children, and felt ashamed of his meanness only ten days before. Deacon Willberate saw his son Ned dancing with Squire Allen’s rosy daughter, Matilda,— for the young people cared more for each other than for all the allusions to slavery in all the prayers and sermons too, of the whole world,— and it so reminded him of the time when he also danced withhis Matilda,— not openly at Christmas celebrations, but by stealth,— that he went straight up to his neighbor; “Squire Allen,” said he, “give me your hand. New Year’s is a good day to square just accounts; Christmas is not a bad time to settle needles quarrels. I suppose you and I, both of us, may be wrong. I know I have been for one. Let by-gones be by-gones.” “Exactly so,” said the Squire. “I am sorry, for my part. Let us wipe out the old score, and chalk up nothing for the future but good feelings. If a prayer parted, perhaps a benediction will unite us; for Katie and Ned look as if they meant we should be more than mere neighbors. Let us begin by becoming friends.”
Colonel Stone took his youngest daughter, who had a club-foot, up to the Christmas tree for her present, and there met face to face with his enemy’s oldest girl, who was just taking the gift for her youngest brother, Robert,— holding him up in her bare arms that he might reach it himself. But she could not raise him quite high enough, and so the Colonel lifted up the little fellow till he clutched the prize; and when he set him down, his hands full of sugar-cake, asked him, “Whose bright little five-year-old is this? What is your name, blue eyes?” “Bobbie Nilkinson,” was the answer. It went right to the Colonel’s heart. “It is Christmas,” said he; “and the dear Jesus himself said, ’Suffer little children to come unto me.’ Well, well, he said something to us old folks, too: ‘If thy brother trespass against thee,’ &c., and ’If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remember that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.’” He walked about awhile, thinking, and then found his neighbor. “Mr. Wilkinson,” said he, “it is bad enough that you and I should quarrel in law, but let us be friends in the gospel. As I looked at your little boy, and held him up in my arms, and found out whose son he was, I felt ashamed that I had ever quarreled with his father. Here is my hand, if you think fit to take it.” “With all my heart,” said Wilkinson. “I fear I was more to blame than you. But we can’t help the past; let us make amends for the future. I hope we shall have many a merry Christmas together in this world and the next. Perhaps Uncle Nathan can settle our land-quarrel better than any jury in Worcester county.”
Mr. Smith, the Know-nothing representative, was struck with the bright face of one of the little girls who wore a school-medal, and asked her name. “Bridget O’Brien, your honor,” was the answer. “Well, well,” said he, “I guess Uncle Nathan is half right; ‘it’s all prejudice.’ I don’t like the Irish, politically. But after all, the Pope will have to make a pretty long arm to reach round Aunt Kindly, and clear through the Union School-house and spoil Miss Bridget,— a pretty long arm to do all that.”
So it went on all round the room. “That is what I call the Christian Sacrament,” said Deacon Jackson to Captain Weldon. “Ah, yes,” replied the blacksmith; “it is a feast of love. Look there; Colonel Stearns and John Wilkinson have not spoken for years. Now it is all made up. Both have forgotten that little strip of Beaver-gray meadow, which has cost them so much money and hard words and in itself is not worth the lawyer’s fees.”
How the children played! how they all did dance! And of the whole sportive company not one footed the measure so neat as little Hattie Tidy, the black man’s daughter. “What a shame to enslave a race of such persons,” said Mr. Stovepipe. “Yet I went in for the Fugitive Slave Bill, and was one of Marshal Tukey’s ’fifteen hundred gentlemen of property and standing.’ My God forgive me!” “Amen,” said Mr. Broadside, a great, stout, robust farmer; “I stood by till the Nebraska Bill put slavery into Kansas, then I went right square over to the anti-slavery side. I shall stick there forever. Dr Lord may try and excuse slavery just as much as he likes. I know what all that means. He don’t catch old birds with chaff.”
Uncle Nathan went about the room talking with the men and women; they all knew him, and felt well acquainted with such a good-natured face; while Aunt Kindly, with the nicer tact of a good woman, introduced the right persons to each other, and so promoted happiness among those too awkward to obtain it alone or unhelped. Besides this, she took special care of the boys and girls from the poor-house.
What an appetite the little folks had for the good things! How the old ones helped them dispose of these creature comforts! while such as were half way between, were too busy with other matters to think much of the eatables. Solomon Jenkins and Katie Edmunds had had a falling out. He was the miller at Stony Brook; but the “course of true love never did run smooth” with him; he could not coax Katie’s to brook into his stream; it would turn off some other way. But that night Katie herself broke down the hindrance, and the two little brooks became one great stream of love, and flowed on together, inseparable; now dimpling, deepening, and whirling away full of beauty towards the great ocean of eternity.
Uncle Nathan and Aunt Kindly, how happy they were, seeing the joy of all the company! they looked like two new Redeemers,— which indeed they were. The minister said,— “Well, I have been preaching charity and forgiveness and a cheerful happiness all my life, now I see signs of the ‘good time coming.’ There’s forgiveness of injuries,” pointing to Colonel Stearns and Mr. Wilkinson; “old enemies reconciled. All my sermons don’t seem to accomplish so much as your Christmas Festival, Mr. Robinson,” said he, addressing Uncle Nathan. “We only watered the ground,” said Aunt Kindly, “where the seed was long since sown by other hands; only it does seem to come up abundantly, and all at once.” Then the minister told the people a new Christmas story; and before they went home they all joined together and sung this hymn to the good tune of Old Hundred:
“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun Does his successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more.
Blessings abound where’er he reigns; The prisoner leaps to loose his chains; The weary find eternal rest, And all the sons of want are bless’d
.”
A Hymn for Christmas Day
Thomas Chatterton
A Hymn for Christmas Day
Almighty Framer of the Skies!
O let our pure devotion rise,
Like Incense in thy Sight!
Wrapt in impenetrable Shade
The Texture of our Souls were made
Till thy Command gave light.
The Sun of Glory gleam'd the Ray,
Refin'd the Darkness into Day,
And bid the Vapours fly;
Impell'd by his eternal Love
He left his Palaces above
To cheer our gloomy Sky.
* * *
How shall we celebrate the day,
When God appeared in mortal clay,
The mark of worldly scorn;
When the Archangel's heavenly Lays,
Attempted the Redeemer's Praise
And hail'd Salvation's Morn!
* * *
A Humble Form the Godhead wore,
The Pains of Poverty he bore,
To gaudy Pomp unknown;
Tho' in a human walk he trod
Still was the Man Almighty God
In Glory all his own.
* * *
Despis'd, oppress'd, the Godhead bears
The Torments of this Vale of tears;
Nor bade his Vengeance rise;
He saw the Creatures he had made,
Revile his Power, his Peace invade;
He saw with Mercy's Eyes.
* * *
How shall we celebrate his Name,
Who groan'd beneath a Life of shame
In all Afflictions tried!
The Soul is raptured to concieve
A Truth, which Being must believe,
The God Eternal died.
* * *
My Soul exert thy Powers, adore,
Upon Devotion's plumage sar
To celebrate the Day;
The God from whom Creation sprung
Shall animate my grateful Tongue;
From him I'll catch the Lay!
The Oxen
Thomas Hardy
The Oxen
CHRISTMAS EVE, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
* * *
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
* * *
So fair a fancy few believe
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve
"Come; see the oxen kneel
* * *
In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
Christmas
Thomas Hill
Christmas
Hark! What glad voices are joyfully ringing
Through the stillness of morn o’er the yet sleeping earth! ‘T is a chorus of angels in harmony singing,
“The Saviours of sinners to-day has his birth.
“Glory to God in the highest be given,
Peace and good be proclaimed upon earth,
Jesus, Messiah anointed of Heaven,
To-day of a virgin in Bethlehem has birth.”
Jesus! we hail thee, bright star of the morning,
We join with the angels in singing thy birth,
Soon may thy beams, the mid-heaven adorning,
Enlighten all people and gild the whole earth.
Then shall the built of our wars and oppression,
That sully and darken the face of the earth,
No longer demand our repentant confession,
When we sing on the day of Emmanuel’s birth.
How the Captain Made Christmas
Thomas Nelson Page
How the Captain Made Christmas
It was just a few days before Christmas, and the men around the large fireplace at the club had, not unnaturally, fallen to talking of Christmas. They were all men in the prime of life, and all or nearly all of them were from other parts of the country; men who had come to the great city to make their way in life, and who had, on the whole, made it in one degree or another, achieving sufficient success in different fields to allow of all being called successful men. Yet, as the conversation had proceeded, it had taken a reminiscent turn. When it began, only three persons were engaged in it, two of whom, McPheeters and Lesponts, were in lounging-chairs, with their feet stretched out towards the log fire, while the third, Newton, stood with his back to the great hearth, and his coat-tails well divided. The other men were scattered about the room, one or two writing at tables, three or four reading the evening papers, and the rest talking and sipping whiskey and water, or only talking or only sipping whiskey and water. As the conversation proceeded around the fireplace, however, one after another joined the group there, until the circle included every man in the room.
* * *
It had begun by Lesponts, who had been looking intently at Newton for some moments as he stood before the fire with his legs well apart and his eyes fastened on the carpet, breaking the silence by asking, suddenly: "Are you going home?"
* * *
"I don't know," said Newton, doubtfully, recalled from somewhere in dreamland, but so slowly that a part of his thoughts were still lingering there. "I haven't made up my mind -- I'm not sure that I can go so far as Virginia, and I have an invitation to a delightful place -- a house-party near here."
* * *
"Newton, anybody would know that you were a Virginian," said McPheeters, "by the way you stand before that fire."
* * *
Newton said, "Yes," and then, as the half smile the charge had brought up died away, he said, slowly, "I was just thinking how good it felt, and I had gone back and was standing in the old parlor at home the first time I ever noticed my father doing it; I remember getting up and standing by him, a little scrap of a fellow, trying to stand just as he did, and I was feeling the fire, just now, just as I did that night. That was -- thirty-three years ago," said Newton, slowly, as if he were doling the years from his memory.
* * *
"Newton, is your father living?" asked Lesponts. "No, but my mother is," he said; "she still lives at the old home in the country."
* * *
From this the talk had gone on, and nearly all had contributed to it, even the most reticent of them, drawn out by the universal sympathy which the subject had called forth. The great city, with all its manifold interests, was forgotten, and the men of the world went back to their childhood and early life in little villages or on old plantations, and told incidents of the time when the outer world was unknown, and all things had those strange and large proportions which the mind of childhood gives. Old times were ransacked and Christmas experiences in them were given without stint, and the season was voted, without dissent, to have been far ahead of Christmas now. Presently, one of the party said: "Did any of you ever spend a Christmas on the cars? If you have not, thank Heaven, and pray to be preserved from it henceforth, for I've done it, and I tell you it's next to purgatory. I spent one once, stuck in a snow-drift, or almost stuck, for we were ten hours late, and missed all connections, and the Christmas I had expected to spend with friends, I passed in a nasty car with a surly Pullman conductor, an impudent mulatto porter, and a lot of fools, all of whom could have murdered each other, not to speak of a crying baby whose murder was perhaps the only thing all would have united on."
* * *
This harsh speech showed that the subject was about exhausted, and someone, a man who had come in only in time to hear the last speaker, had just hazarded the remark, in a faint imitation of an English accent, that the sub-officials in this country were a surly, ill-conditioned l
ot, anyhow, and always were as rude as they dared to be, when Lesponts, who had looked at the speaker lazily, said:
* * *
"Yes, I have spent a Christmas on a sleeping-car, and, strange to say, I have a most delightful recollection of it."
* * *
This was surprising enough to have gained him a hearing anyhow, but the memory of the occasion was evidently sufficiently strong to carry Lesponts over obstacles, and he went ahead.
* * *
"Has any of you ever taken the night train that goes from here South through the Cumberland and Shenandoah Valleys, or from Washington to strike that train?"
