Various

“ At last McCurdie unbent his black brows and said hoarsely:
“It was not the Angel of Death, Boyne, but another Messenger that drew us here.”
The tiredness seemed to pass away from the great administrator’s face, and he nodded his head with the calm of a man who has come to the quiet heart of a perplexing mystery.
“It’s true,” he murmured. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. Unto the three of us.”
Biggleswade took off his great round spectacles and wiped them.
“Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar. But where are the gold, frankincense and myrrh?”
“In our hearts, man,” said McCurdie. ”

“ There is the sound of talking, laughing voices passing outside. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, of many feet in the snow. People going to the entertainment. The little church up the street is all alight. It is time to go! They start out in the fresh, frosty air. Father follows her and Mother along the narrow snowy path, humming the Holly Song softly to himself.
All at once there was a shrill persistent ringing. It was not of a church bell or passing sleighs. It kept on ringing. The woman in the chair before the desk littered with Christmas cards came slowly back to her surroundings. ”

“ He himself had rebelled at the unwelcome prospect of Christmas eve and Christmas day in a sleeping-car—he, without even nephews and nieces to lighten the gloom of his lonely house. The warm human sympathy of the man and the sweet traditions of his youth rose in protest against this spectacle of a lonely child, travelling through the night toward some distant home which she had never seen, and where coldness, even neglect, might await her. ”

“ The sad shepherd saluted him and told his name.
“I am Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth,” replied the man. “Have you also seen the angels of whom your brother shepherds came to tell us?”
“I have seen no angels,” answered Ammiel, “nor have I any brothers among the shepherds. But I would fain see what they have seen.”
“It is our first-born son,” said Joseph, “and the Most High has sent him to us. He is a marvellous child: great things are foretold of him. You may go in, but quietly, for the child and his mother Mary are asleep.” ”

“ A succession of long-drawn, ecstatic breaths and happy gurgles awoke the passengers on car Floradora at an unseemly hour Christmas morning, and a small white figure, clad informally in a single garment, danced up and down the aisle, dragging carts and woolly lambs behind it. Occasionally there was the squeak of a talking doll, and always there was the patter of small feet and the soft cooing of a child’s voice, punctuated by the exquisite music of a child’s laughter. ”

“ But only a little later, the invalid fell, as it chanced, into the most restful sleep he had known for weeks, and Mary, creeping away to her car, under the cold, high moon, and hearing the Christmas bells ring midnight as she went over the muffling snow toward her own room and her own bed, could only promise that when she had had a bath, and some sleep, she would come back and perhaps be beside him when he awakened. ”

“ The light fall of snow was not enough to admit of sleighing, but enough to make as good an excuse for using a Christmas sled as a child could wish. Out there, on the thin glistening rime of snow was Cora Roseberry, dragging a superfine sled, gaudily painted and named “Snow Bird.” Cora wore a set of furs, although the muff was dreadfully in her way. It was a Christmas present. She also wore a bright red cloak lined with plaid, another Christmas present, and on one hand a kid glove. ”

“ He led his wife and the child, now sleeping, as many centuries before another had led a woman and a sleeping babe; the beauty and wonder and mystery of it was not changed, not lessened because he led them through the snow on a modern dispeller of distance, instead of through burning wastes on a patient beast. She had taken the child from a manger on this Christmas eve; and it seemed a very gift of God. ”

“ Martha Morris, Granny’s “help,” had never known her mistress to be so concerned about the crispness of the pepper-cakes, the spiciness of the pig and horse ginger cookies, the brownness of the twisted doughnuts, or the flakiness of the mince pies that were resting by noon in savory richness on the pantry shelf. Then, when dinner was over and the dishes washed, Granny demanded that she herself be taken in hand.
“Law, Granny, you ain’t goin’ up town in such a snow as this!” protested Martha, as she lovingly tucked the thin white hair under the velvet cap and folded the kerchief about her neck. ”

“ But because the average Christian is an unreasoning creature, and, like the ox, bending his neck to the yoke because the yoke offers, plods the way along unquestioning beneath it, the preceding mad rush means Christmas too, and the feverish dream wherein, for instance, the long strand of embroidery silk forever pulls through, unknotted. And it is expected that the bones should ache at Christmas, and the flesh cry out for weariness, and the brain be fagged to the excluding of more than a blurred impression of The Day when it is come. ”

“ And there upon the rostrum in all its glory, tall, straight, and beautiful, twinkling with candles, festooned with strings of popcorn and cranberries, glittering with tinsel stars and silver crowns, adorned with bobinet stockings cubby and knubby with candy and nuts, hung with packages big and little, stood the tree, the tree!
“Let me set down till I get my breath, Marthy,” cackled Granny, excitedly. “Jest get my specks out of my pocket, will you, child? My, my! if only John an’ ’Rastus an’ little Mary was here now!” ”

“ Because we long have associated certain things with Christmas we have come to believe them integrant. The blended odor of orange peel, lighted tapers, and evergreens rushing upon us as the Church door opens means Christmas, even as much as the murmuring voices of the children within, each pew a variegated flower-bed of faces up-lifted to the light and tinsel of a giant tree.
Aromatic odors, other than frankincense and myrrh, mean Christmas, cedar, spices ”

“ Then these three wise, lonely, childless men who, in furtherance of their own greatness, had cut themselves adrift from the sweet and simple things of life and from the kindly ways of their brethren, and had grown old in unhappy and profitless wisdom, knew that an inscrutable Providence had led them as it had led three Wise Men of old, on a Christmas morning long ago, to a nativity which should give them a new wisdom, a new link with humanity, a new spiritual outlook, a new hope. ”

“ The eyes of Anne, lifting from the page, sought a niche where, in a golden frame, hung a picture, royal in indigo, purple and scarlet. It was a copy, but it was an honest one. The Baby’s head seemed verily to rest, to press, into the curve of Mary’s arm. The little head! And the brooding, jealous ecstasy in Mary’s face, and the little hand Mary was playfully uplifting! Was she dreaming great, beautiful dreams for the little son’s life to come? Does every woman dream mighty deeds for her man-child’s doing? ”

“ But Falcontent was not abnormally conscious of having a soul. Nobody in Falcontent’s world acknowledged the possession of a soul. Falcontent’s soul took care of itself; it did not trouble him. And had such a phantom of his childhood lingered to distress him—to cry out for the bread and water of attention,—Falcontent would with caution have concealed its aggravating habits from the normal fellows with whom he was accustomed to mingle upon terms of the most normally jovial good-fellowship. ”

“ A silence fell upon them as they sat round by the blaze with the new-born babe wrapped in its odd swaddling clothes asleep on the pile of fur coats, and it lasted until Sir Angus McCurdie looked at his watch.
“Good Lord,” said he, “it’s twelve o’clock.”
“Christmas morning,” said Biggleswade.
“A strange Christmas,” mused Boyne.
McCurdie put up his hand. “There it is again! The beating of wings.” And they listened like men spellbound. ”

“ Suddenly she picked up an alien from the carefully chosen mass that lay about her, a cheap little card that she knew she had never bought. Either she or the sales girl must have caught it up by mistake with some of the others. It was a commonplace little card of the folder variety that carries a sentimental verse inside. Alice opened it mechanically before tossing it into the waste basket. And there beneath her eyes were these words:
Oh what, my dear, of Christmas cheer could any one wish more,
Than candle-light and you within, and holly at the door! ”

“ If there is a dear saint on earth, who has stood by us in our sorrows an’ our joys, who’s hovered over our death-beds and welcomed our babies, it’s Granny Simmers. If there’s a soul of honor, a childlike conscience, and one of the Lord’s own, it is this blessed little woman. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but my heart’s ’most broke for the poor little soul. Ain’t no more sin in her gentle little heart than there is in a baby’s.”
[234]
“Amen!” came from every side.
But Brother Sutton, his face beaming with tenderness, had come swiftly down the aisle and was bending over Granny. ”

“ When old man Trimble stood before the fireplace at midnight that night, stuffing little parcels into the deep, borrowed stocking, he chuckled noiselessly, and glanced with affection towards the corner of the room where his young wife lay sleeping. He was a fat old man, and as he stood with shaking sides in his loose, home-made pajamas, he would have done credit to a more conscious impersonation of old Santa himself. ”

“ Falcontent looked forward. Hope was his; also faith.
“Anyhow,” he determined, “little Jimmie has got to take his chance. I took mine.”
Having so determined, Falcontent’s muse merged into a grinning reminiscence of New England days—long-ago times of top-boots and mufflers and chapped hands and drowsy sermons. Had Falcontent’s next neighbor on the right peered over his spectacles and all at once demanded, “What is the chief end of man?” Falcontent would promptly have replied, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever!” ”

“ When the audience-chamber was still she said, “I am Anitra the Beggar-girl. But I do not praise the King for his kindness, for though he let me stay on his throne he is letting me die of hunger. And I do not praise the King for his justice, for in his court the man who deserts his child and his child’s mother walks free, and the woman who deserts her child must die in prison. And in his court the King pardons one man and condemns another for exactly the same fault.”
Then the two shepherds walked up the steps of the throne. ”