Chapter VIII: When All the World Is Kin

Christmas
Christmas Night of '62
Merry Christmas in the Tenements
Christmas at Sea
The First Christmas Tree in the Legation Compound, at Tokyo, Japan
Christmas in India
A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession
Christmas at the Cape
The "Good Night" in Spain
Christmas in Rome
Christmas in Burgundy
Christmas in Germany
Christmas Dinner in a Clipper's Fo'c'sle
Christmas in Jail
Colonel Carter's Christmas Tree

But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination,--it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavors is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well that he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Christmas Night of '62

The wintry blast goes wailing by,
The snow is falling overhead;
I hear the lonely sentry's tread,
And distant watch-fires light the sky.

Dim forms go flitting through the gloom;
The soldiers cluster round the blaze
To talk of other Christmas days,
And softly speak of home and home.

My sabre swinging overhead,
Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow,
And memory leads me to the dead.

My thoughts go wandering to and fro,
Vibrating 'twixt the Now and Then;
I see the low-browed home agen,
The old hall wreathed with mistletoe.

And sweetly from the far off years
Comes borne the laughter faint and low,
The voices of the Long Ago!
My eyes are wet with tender tears.

I feel agen the mother kiss,
I see agen the glad surprise
That lighted up the tranquil eyes
And brimmed them o'er with tears of bliss,

As, rushing from the old hall-door,
She fondly clasped her wayward boy--
Her face all radiant with the joy
She felt to see him home once more.

My sabre swinging on the bough
Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow
Aslant upon my saddened brow.

Those cherished faces all are gone!
Asleep within the quiet graves
Where lies the snow in drifting waves,--
And I am sitting here alone.

There's not a comrade here to-night
But knows that loved ones far away
On bended knees this night will pray:
"God bring our darling from the fight."

But there are none to wish me back,
For me no yearning prayers arise.
The lips are mute and closed the eyes--
My home is in the bivouac.

In the Army of Northern Virginia.

WILLIAM G. MCCABE

Quoted from W. P. Trent's _Southern Writers_

Merry Christmas in the Tenements

It was just a sprig of holly, with scarlet berries showing against the green, stuck in, by one of the office boys probably, behind the sign that pointed the way up to the editorial rooms. There was no reason why it should have made me start when I came suddenly upon it at the turn of the stairs; but it did. Perhaps it was because that dingy hall, given over to dust and draughts all the days of the year, was the last place in which I expected to meet with any sign of Christmas; perhaps it was because I myself had nearly forgotten the holiday. Whatever the cause, it gave me quite a turn.

I stood, and stared at it. It looked dry, almost withered. Probably it had come a long way. Not much holly grows about Printing-House Square, except in the colored supplements, and that is scarcely of a kind to stir tender memories. Withered and dry, this did. I thought, with a twinge of conscience, of secret little conclaves of my children, of private views of things hidden from mamma at the bottom of drawers, of wild flights when papa appeared unbidden in the door, which I had allowed for once to pass unheeded. Absorbed in the business of the office, I had hardly thought of Christmas coming on, until now it was here. And this sprig of holly on the wall that had come to remind me,--come nobody knew how far,--did it grow yet in the beechwood clearings, as it did when I gathered it as a boy, tracking through the snow? "Christ-thorn" we called it in our Danish tongue. The red berries, to our simple faith, were the drops of blood that fell from the Saviour's brow as it dropped under its cruel crown upon the cross....

* * * * *

The lights of the Bowery glow like a myriad twinkling stars upon the ceaseless flood of humanity that surges ever through the great highway of the homeless. They shine upon long rows of lodging-houses, in which hundreds of young men, cast helpless upon the reef of the strange city, are learning their first lessons of utter loneliness; for what desolation is there like that of the careless crowd when all the world rejoices? They shine upon the tempter setting his snares there, and upon the missionary and the Salvation Army lass, disputing his catch with him; upon the police detective going his rounds with coldly observant eye intent upon the outcome of the contest; upon the wreck that is past hope, and upon the youth pausing on the verge of the pit in which the other has long ceased to struggle. Sights and sounds of Christmas there are in plenty in the Bowery. Balsam and hemlock and fir stand in groves along the busy thoroughfare, and garlands of green embower mission and dive impartially. Once a year the old street recalls its youth with an effort. It is true that it is largely a commercial effort; that the evergreen, with an instinct that is not of its native hills, haunts saloon-corners by preference; but the smell of the pine woods is in the air, and--Christmas is not too critical--one is grateful for the effort. It varies with the opportunity. At "Beefsteak John's" it is content with artistically embalming crullers and mince-pies in green cabbage under the window lamp. Over yonder, where the mile-post of the old lane still stands,--in its unhonored old age become the vehicle of publishing the latest "sure cure" to the world,--a florist, whose undenominational zeal for the holiday and trade outstrips alike distinction of creed and property, has transformed the sidewalk and the ugly railroad structure into a veritable bower, spanning it with a canopy of green, under which dwell with him, in neighborly good-will, the Young Men's Christian Association and the Jewish tailor next door....

Down at the foot of the Bowery is the "panhandlers' beat," where the saloons elbow one another at every step, crowding out all other business than that of keeping lodgers to support them. Within call of it, across the square, stands a church which, in the memory of men yet living, was built to shelter the fashionable Baptist audiences of a day when Madison Square was out in the fields, and Harlem had a foreign sound. The fashionable audiences are gone long since. To-day the church, fallen into premature decay, but still handsome in its strong and noble lines, stands as a missionary outpost in the land of the enemy, its builders would have said, doing a greater work than they planned. To-night is the Christmas festival of its English-speaking Sunday-school, and the pews are filled. The banners of United Italy, of modern Hellas, of France and Germany and England, hang side by side with the Chinese dragon and the starry flag-signs of the cosmopolitan character of the congregation. Greek and Roman Catholics, Jews and joss-worshippers, go there; few Protestants, and no Baptists. It is easy to pick out the children in their seats by nationality, and as easy to read the story of poverty and suffering that stands written in more than one mother's haggard face, now beaming with pleasure at the little ones' glee. A gayly decorated Christmas tree has taken the place of the pulpit. At its foot is stacked a mountain of bundles, Santa Claus's gifts to the school. A self-conscious young man with soap-locks had just been allowed to retire, amid tumultuous applause, after blowing "Nearer, my God, to Thee" on his horn until his cheeks swelled almost to bursting. A trumpet ever takes the Fourth Ward by storm. A class of little girls is climbing upon the platform. Each wears a capital letter on her breast, and together they spell its lesson. There is momentary consternation: one is missing. As the discovery is made, a child pushes past the doorkeeper, hot and breathless. "I am in 'Boundless Love,'" she says, and makes for the platform, where her arrival restores confidence and the language.

In the audience the befrocked visitor from up-town sits cheek by jowl with the pigtailed Chinaman and the dark-browed Italian. Up in the gallery, farthest from the preacher's desk and the tree, sits a Jewish mother with three boys, almost in rags. A dingy and threadbare shawl partly hides her poor calico wrap and patched apron. The woman shrinks in the pew, fearful of being seen; her boys stand upon the benches, and applaud with the rest. She endeavors vainly to restrain them. "Tick, tick!" goes the old clock over the door through which wealth and fashion went out long years ago, and poverty came in....

Within hail of the Sullivan Street school camps a scattered little band, the Christmas customs of which I had been trying for years to surprise. They are Indians, a handful of Mohawks and Iroquois, whom some ill wind has blown down from their Canadian reservation, and left in these West Side tenements to eke out such a living as they can, weaving mats and baskets, and threading glass pearls on slippers and pin-cushions, until one after another they have died off and gone to happier hunting-grounds than Thompson Street. There were as many families as one could count on the fingers of both hands when I first came upon them, at the death of old Tamenund, the basket maker. Last Christmas there were seven. I had about made up my mind that the only real Americans in New York did not keep the holiday at all, when one Christmas eve they showed me how. Just as dark was setting in, old Mrs. Benoit came from her Hudson Street attic--where she was known among the neighbors, as old and poor as she, as Mrs. Ben Wah, and was believed to be the relict of a warrior of the name of Benjamin Wah--to the office of the Charity Organization Society, with a bundle for a friend who had helped her over a rough spot--the rent, I suppose. The bundle was done up elaborately in blue cheese-cloth, and contained a lot of little garments which she had made out of the remnants of blankets and cloth of her own from a younger and better day. "For those," she said, in her French patois, "who are poorer than myself;" and hobbled away. I found out, a few days later, when I took her picture weaving mats in the attic room, that she had scarcely food in the house that Christmas day and not the car fare to take her to church! Walking was bad, and her old limbs were stiff. She sat by the window through the winter evening and watched the sun go down behind the western hills, comforted by her pipe. Mrs. Ben Wah, to give her her local name, is not really an Indian; but her husband was one, and she lived all her life with the tribe till she came here. She is a philosopher in her own quaint way. "It is no disgrace to be poor," said she to me, regarding her empty tobacco-pouch; "but it is sometimes a great inconvenience." Not even the recollection of the vote of censure that was passed upon me once by the ladies of the Charitable Ten for surreptitiously supplying an aged couple, the special object of their charity, with army plug, could have deterred me from taking the hint....

In a hundred places all over the city, when Christmas comes, as many open-air fairs spring suddenly into life. A kind of Gentile Feast of Tabernacles possesses the tenement districts especially. Green-embowered booths stand in rows at the curb, and the voice of the tin trumpet is heard in the land. The common source of all the show is down by the North River, in the district known as "the Farm." Down there Santa Claus establishes headquarters early in December and until past New Year. The broad quay looks then more like a clearing in a pine forest than a busy section of the metropolis. The steamers discharge their loads of fir trees at the piers until they stand stacked mountain high, with foot-hills of holly and ground-ivy trailing off toward the land side. An army train of wagons is engaged in carting them away from early morning till late at night; but the green forest grows, in spite of it all, until in places it shuts the shipping out of sight altogether. The air is redolent with the smell of balsam and pine. After nightfall, when the lights are burning in the busy market, and the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy burdens of Christmas greens jostle one another with good-natured banter,--nobody is ever cross down here in the holiday season,--it is good to take a stroll through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet to the hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. But it is when the moonlight is upon the water and upon the dark phantom forest, when the heavy breathing of some passing steamer is the only sound that breaks the stillness of the night, and the watchman smokes his only pipe on the bulwark, that the Farm has a mood and an atmosphere all its own, full of poetry which some day a painter's brush will catch and hold....

Farthest down town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the sombre-hued colony of Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it that in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York the corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it? Even the floral cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox church is long withered and dead; it has been there since Easter, and it is yet twelve days to Christmas by the belated reckoning of the Greek Church. But if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within there is nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting. There are enough of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest follow the custom of the country. The men go from house to house, laugh, shake hands, and kiss one another on both cheeks, with the salutation, "Kol am va antom Salimoon." "Every year and you are safe," the Syrian guide renders it into English; and a non-professional interpreter amends it: "May you grow happier year by year." Arrack made from grapes and flavored with aniseseed, and candy baked in little white balls like marbles, are served with the indispensable cigarette; for long callers, the pipe....

The bells in old Trinity chime the midnight hour. From dark hallways men and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the loft of the dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of brass. The priest, in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on the back, chants the ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in the aisles, shrouding their heads in their shawls; a surpliced acolyte swings his censer; the heavy perfume of burning incense fills the hall.

The band at the anarchists' ball is tuning up for the last dance. Young and old float to the happy strains, forgetting injustice, oppression, hatred. Children slide upon the waxed floor, weaving fearlessly in and out between couples--between fierce, bearded men and short-haired women with crimson-bordered kerchiefs. A Punch-and-Judy show in the corner evokes shouts of laughter.

Outside the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and corner, softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the spotless mantle of charity over the blemishes, the shortcomings. Christmas morning will dawn pure and white.

JACOB RIIS in _Children of the Tenements_ (abridged)

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea,
And the cliffs and spouting breakers were the only thing a-lee.

We heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day,
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck, instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coast-guard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out,
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer,
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coast-guard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I know the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O a wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas day!

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose top-gallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate, Jackson, cried.
"It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

_By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons_

The First Christmas Tree in the Legation Compound at Tokyo, Japan

A huge Christmas tree, the first that had ever grown in our compound, for the children of our servants and writers and employés, who make up the number of our Legation population to close on two hundred, beginning with H----, and ending with the last jinriksha coolie's youngest baby. I could not have the tree on Christmas Day, owing to various engagements; so it was fixed for January 3d, and was quite the most successful entertainment I ever gave!

When I undertook it, I confess that I had no idea how many little ones belonged to the compound. I sent our good Ogita round to invite them all solemnly to come to Ichiban (Number One) on the 3d at five o'clock. Ogita threw himself into the business with delighted goodwill, having five little people of his own to include in the invitation; but all the servants were eager to help as soon as they knew we were preparing a treat for the children. That is work which would always appeal to Japanese of any age or class. No trouble is too great, if it brings pleasure to the "treasure flowers," as the babies are called. I am still too ignorant of their special tastes to trust my own judgment in the matter of presents; so Mr. G---- left the dictionary and the Chancery for two or three afternoons, and helped me to collect an appropriate harvest for the little hands to glean. Some of them were not little, and these were more difficult to buy for; but after many cold hours passed in the different bazaars, it seemed to me that there must be something for everybody, although we had really spent very little money.

The wares were so quaint and pretty that it was a pleasure to sort and handle them. There were workboxes in beautiful polished woods, with drawers fitting so perfectly that when you closed one the compressed air at once shot out another. There were mirrors enclosed in charming embroidered cases; for where mirrors are mostly made of metal, people learn not to let them get scratched. There were dollies of every size, and dolls' houses and furniture, kitchens, farmyards, rice-pounding machines--all made in the tiniest proportions, such as it seemed no human fingers could really have handled. For the elder boys we bought books, school-boxes with every school requisite contained in a square the size of one's hand, and penknives and scissors, which are greatly prized as being of foreign manufacture. For decorations we had an abundant choice of materials. I got forests of willow branches decorated with artificial fruits; pink and white balls made of rice paste, which are threaded on the twigs; surprise shells of the same paste, two lightly stuck together in the form of a double scallop shell, and full of miniature toys; kanzashi, or ornamental hairpins for the girls, made flowers of gold and silver among my dark pine branches; and I wasted precious minutes in opening and shutting these dainty roses--buds until you press a spring, when they open suddenly into a full-blown rose. But the most beautiful things on my tree were the icicles, which hung in scores from its sombre foliage, catching rosy gleams of light from our lamps as we worked late into the night. These were--chopsticks, long glass chopsticks, which I discovered in the bazaar; and I am sure Santa Klaus himself could not have told them from icicles. Of course every present must be labelled with a child's name, and here my troubles began. Ogita was told to make out a correct list of names and ages, with some reference to the calling of the parents; for even here rank and precedence must be observed, or terrible heart-burnings might follow. The list came at last; and if it were not so long, I would send it to you complete, for it was a curiosity. Imagine such complicated titles as these: "Minister's second cook's girl. Umé, age 2; Minister's servant's cousin's boy. Age 11"; "Student interpreter's teacher's girl"; "Vice-Consul's jinriksha-man's boy." And so it went on, till there were fifty-eight of them of all ages, from one year up to nineteen. Some of them, indeed, were less than a year old; and I was amused on the evening of the 2d at having the list brought back to me with this note (Ogita's English is still highly individual!): "Marked X is declined to the invitation." On looking down the column, I found that ominous-looking cross only against one name, that of Yasu, daughter of Ito Kanejiro, Mr. G----'s cook. This recalcitrant little person turned out to be six weeks old--an early age for parties even nowadays. Miss Yasu, having been born in November, was put down in the following January as two years old, after the puzzling Japanese fashion. Then I found that they would write boys as girls, girls as boys, grown-ups as babies, and so on. Even at the last moment a doll had to be turned into a sword, a toy tea-set into a workbox, a history of Europe into a rattle; but people who grow Christmas trees are prepared for such small contingencies, and no one knew anything about it when on Friday afternoon the great tree slowly glowed into a pyramid of light, and a long procession of little Japs was marshalled in, with great solemnity and many bows, till they stood, a delighted, wide-eyed crowd, round the beautiful shining thing, the first Christmas tree any one of them had ever seen. It was worth all the trouble, to see the gasp of surprise and delight, the evident fear that the whole thing might be unreal and suddenly fade away. One little man of two fell flat on his back with amazement, tried to rise and have another look, and in so doing rolled over on his nose, where he lay quite silent till his relatives rescued him. Behind the children stood the mothers, quite as pleased as they, and with them one very old lady with a little child on her back. She turned out to be the Vice-Consul's jinriksha-man's grandmother; the wife of that functionary was dead, and the old lady had to take her place in carrying about the poor little V. C. J. R. S. M.'s boy baby.

The children stood, the little ones in front and the taller ones behind, in a semicircle, and the many lights showed their bright faces and gorgeous costumes, for no one would be outdone by another in smartness--I fancy the poorer women had borrowed from richer neighbours--and the result was picturesque in the extreme. The older girls had their heads beautifully dressed, with flowers and pins and rolls of scarlet crape knotted in between the coils; their dresses were pale green or blue, with bright linings and stiff silk obis; but the little ones were a blaze of scarlet, green, geranium pink, and orange, their long sleeves sweeping the ground, and the huge flower patterns of their garments making them look like live flowers as they moved about on the dark velvet carpet. When they had gazed their fill, they were called up to me one by one, Ogita addressing them all as "San" (Miss or Mr.), even if they could only toddle, and I gave them their serious presents with their names, written in Japanese and English, tied on with red ribbon--an attention which, as I was afterwards told, they appreciated greatly. It seemed to me that they never would end; their size varied from a wee mite who could not carry its own toys to a tall handsome student of sixteen, or a gorgeous young lady in green and mauve crape and a head that must have taken the best part of a day to dress.

In one thing they were all alike: their manners were perfect. There was no pushing or grasping, no glances of envy at what other children received, no false shyness in their sweet happy way of expressing their thanks. I had for my helpers two somewhat antagonistic volunteers--Sir Edwin Arnold, basking in Buddhistic calms, and Bishop Bickersteth, intensely Anglican, severe-looking, ascetic. There had already been some polite theological encounters at our table, and I did not feel sure that the combination would prove a happy one. But each man is a wonder of kind-heartedness in his own way; and my doubts were replaced by sunshiny certainties, when I saw how they both began by beaming at the children, and ended by beaming on one another. I was puzzled by one thing about the children: although we kept giving them sweets and oranges off the tree, every time I looked round the big circle all were empty-handed again, and it really seemed as if they must have swallowed the gifts, gold paper and ribbon and all. But at last I noticed that their square hanging sleeves began to have a strange lumpy appearance, like a conjurer's waistcoat just before he produces twenty-four bowls of live goldfish from his internal economy; and then I understood that the plunder was at once dropped into these great sleeves so as to leave hands free for anything else that Okusama might think good to bestow. One little lady, O'Haru San, aged three, got so overloaded with goodies and toys that they kept rolling out of her sleeves, to the great delight of the Brown Ambassador Dachshund, Tip, who pounced on them like lightning, and was also convicted of nibbling at cakes on the lower branches of the tree.

The bigger children would not take second editions of presents, and answered, "Honourable thanks, I have!" if offered more than they thought their share; but babies are babies all the world over! When the distribution was finished at last, I got a Japanese gentleman to tell them the story of Christmas, the children's feast; and then they came up one by one to say "Sayonara" ("Since it must be," the Japanese farewell), and "Arigato gozaimasu" ("The honourable thanks").

"Come back next year," I said; and then the last presents were given out--beautiful lanterns, red, lighted, and hung on what Ogita calls bumboos, to light the guests home with. One tiny maiden refused to go, and flung herself on the floor in a passion of weeping, saying that Okusama's house was too beautiful to leave, and she would stay with me always--yes, she would! Only the sight of the lighted lantern, bobbing on a stick twice as long as herself, persuaded her to return to her own home in the servants' quarters. I stood on the step, the same step where I had set the fireflies free one warm night last summer, and watched the little people scatter over the lawns, and disappear into the dark shrubberies, their round red lights dancing and shifting as they went, just as if my fireflies had come back, on red wings this time, to light my little friends to bed.

MARY CRAWFORD FRASER

Christmas in India

Dim dawn behind the tamarisks--the sky is saffron-yellow--
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers over earth!
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry--
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day behind the tamarisks--the sky is blue and staring--
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly--
Call on Rama--he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our Psalters we appeal to other altars
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"

High noon behind the tamarisks--the sun is hot above us--
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner--those who tell us how they love
us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that needs no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap--wherefore we sold it. Gold was good--we hoped to hold
it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.

Gray dusk behind the tamarisks--the parrots fly together--
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether
That drags us back howe'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment--she in ancient, tattered raiment--
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If the year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is shut--we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks--the owls begin their chorus--
As the conches from the temples cream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors--let us feast with friends and
neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

RUDYARD KIPLING

_By permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen & Co._

A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession

A certain stir and bustle in the street evidently portended some important event. Spectators, market-women; workmen and bloused peasants, homeward bound with baskets emptied of eggs, chickens and shapeless lumps of butter, began to congregate, mingling with some score or so of that minor bourgeoisie that lives frugally on its modest income and having overmuch leisure is greedy for a sight of any street spectacle. There were idle troopers too belonging to the cavalry, whose trumpets rang out shrilly ever and anon from the barracks hard by; while a milk-woman on her rounds, with glittering brass cans in the little green cart that her sturdy mastiff with his brass-studded harness and red worsted tassels drew so easily, forgot her customers as she secured for herself a place in the foremost rank. Then children suddenly appeared, basket-laden, strewing the street with flowers and cut fragments of colored paper until the rough paving-stones all but disappeared beneath an irregular mosaic of red and green and blue. The bells of neighboring churches sent forth with common accord a joyous peal which was echoed by those of a monastery on the farther side of my hotel, and through the gate of which I had often seen the poor--such beggars as Sterne depicted--going in for their daily dole of bread and soup. From afar came the boom and clang of music, blended with the deep rich notes of chanting, as the head of a procession came in sight.

It was difficult to believe that the town could have contained so many girls--young, well dressed and pretty, as had been, by ecclesiastical influence, or by social considerations, induced to walk in that procession. They were of all ages, from the lisping child ill at ease in her starched frock and white shoes, to the tall maiden, carrying a heavy flag with the air of a Joan of Arc; but there they were--squadrons of girls in white; bevies of girls in blue; companies of girls in pink or lilac or maize color; all either actually bearing some emblem or badge, or feigning to assist the progress of some shrine or reliquary, or colossal crucifix, or group of images, by grasping the end of one of the hundreds of bright ribbons that were attached to these the central features and rallying points of the show. On, on they streamed, walking demurely to the musical bassoon and serpent cornet and drum, of clashing cymbal and piping clarionet, while the musicians, collected from many a parish of city and suburbs, beat and blew their best. Anon the music was hushed, and nothing broke the silence save the deep voices of the chanting priests, and then arose the shrill singing of many children as school after school, well drilled and officered by nuns or friars, as the case might be,--marched on to swell the apparently interminable array.

A marvellous effect was there of color and grouping, and a rare display too of treasures ecclesiastic that seldom see the light of day. There is nothing now in the market, were an empress the bidder, to equal that old point lace just drawn forth from the oaken chest in which it usually reposes, and which was the pious work of supple fingers that crumbled to dust two centuries ago. Where can you find such goldsmith's work as yonder casket, that in bygone ages was consecrated as the receptacle of some wonder-working relic; or see such a triumph of art as that jewelled chalice, the repoussé work of which was surely wrought by fairy hammers, so light and delicate is the tracery?

... On, and onwards still, as if the whole feminine population of the kingdom--between the ages of seven, say, and seven-and-twenty--had been pressed into the service, swept the procession. Fresh bands of music, new companies of chanting priests, of deep-voiced deacons whose scarlet robes were all but hidden by costly lace, awakened the echoes of the quiet streets. Chariots with bleeding hearts conspicuously borne aloft; chariots with gigantic crucifixes; chariots resplendent as the sun, with lavish display of cloth of gold, and tenanted by venerated images, went lumbering by.

And still the children sang and the diapason of the chanting rolled out like solemn thunder on the air, while at every instant some novel feature of the ever varying spectacle claimed its meed of praise. Prettiest, perhaps, of all the sights there was a little--a very little--child, a beautiful boy with golden curls, fantastically clad in raiment of camel's hair, who carried a tiny cross and led by a blue ribbon a white lamb, highly trained, no doubt, since it followed with perfect docility and exemplary meekness. A more charming model of innocent infancy than this youthful representative of John the Baptist, as with filleted head, small limbs seemingly bare, and blue eyes that never wandered to the right or left, he slowly stepped on, none of the great Italian masters ever drew....

The spectators, I noticed, behaved very variously. There were _esprit forts_ clearly among the bourgeoisie looking on, who seemed coldly indifferent to what they saw, if not actually hostile, and who declined to doff their hats as the holiest images and the most hallowed emblems were borne by. But the peasants one and all bared their heads in reverence; and the milk-woman, with her cart and her cans, had pulled her rosary, with its dark beads and brass medals, out of her capacious pocket and was telling her beads as devoutly as her own great-grandmother could have done.

Some rivalry there may possibly have been between the different parishes which had sent forth their boys and girls, their bands and flags, and the jealously guarded treasures from crypt and chancel and sacristy to swell the pomp--Saint Jossé, with its famed old church, to which pilgrims resort even from the banks of Loire and Rhine, could not permit itself to be outshone by fashionable Saint Jacques, where it is easy for a bland abbé, who knows the world of the salons, to collect subscriptions that are less missed by the givers than a lost bet on the races, or a luckless stake at baccarat. And Saint Ursula, grim patroness of a network of ancient streets, where aristocratic mansions of the mediæval type are elbowed by mean shops and hucksters' stalls, yet tries to avoid the disgrace of being overcrowded by moneyed, pushing parvenu All Saints, where tall new houses, radiant with terra cotta and plate glass, shelter the rich proprietors of the still taller brick chimneys that dominate a mass of workmen's dwellings on the outskirts of the parish. But such a spirit of emulation only serves to enhance the glitter of the show.

And now the clashing cymbals, and the boom and bray of the brass instruments lately at their loudest, are hushed, that the rich thunder of the chanting may be the better heard, and the spectators press forward, or stand on tiptoe, to peer over the shoulders of those in the foremost rank. Something was plainly to be looked for that was regarded as the central pivot, or kernel, of the show. And here it comes,--surrounded by chanting priests, and preceded by scarlet capped and white robed acolytes swinging weighty censers, under his canopy of state borne over his head by four stronger men, some dignitary of the Church goes by. He wears no mitre--not even that of a bishop _in partibus infidelium_--and therefore I conjecture him to be a dean. He is at any rate splendid as jewels, and gold embroideries, and antique lace can make him; and he walks beneath his gorgeous baldaquin of gold and purple, chanting too, but in a thin reedy voice, for he is old, and his hair, silver white, contrasts somewhat plaintively with the magnificence that environs him as amidst clouds of steaming incense he totters on. The bystanders begin to disperse, for it is getting late and cold, and the shadows are beginning to creep from darkling nooks and corners, and the spectacle is over. The procession is out of sight, and fainter grow the sounds of the music and of the chanting. The last spectator to depart was a young monk, with a pale face and dreamy eyes, clad in the brown robes of his order, who during all this time had knelt on the cold stones at the monastery gate, his lips moving as his lean fingers grasped his rosary, and an expression of rapt devotion on his wan countenance, that would have done credit to some hermit saint of a thousand years ago when the crown of martyrdom was easy to find.

From _All the Year Round_

Christmas at the Cape

Your Christmas comes with holly leaves
And snow about your doors and eaves;
Our lighted windows, open wide,
Let in our summer Christmas tide;
And where the drifting moths may go--
Behold our tiny flakes of snow;

But carol, carol in the cold;
And carol, carol as ye may,--
We sing the merry songs of old
As merrily on Christmas Day.

Your hills are wrapped in rainy cloud,
Your sea in anger roars aloud;
But here our hills are veiled with haze
In harmonies of blues and grays;
The waters of two oceans meet
With friendly murmurs by our feet;

But carol, carol, Christmas Waits,
And carol, carol, as ye may,--
The Crickets by our doors and gates
Sing in the grace of Christmas Day.

The rain and sunshine of the Cape
Lie folded in the ripening grape,
And Stellenbosch and Drakenstein,
With bounteous orchard, field of vine,
And every spot that we pass by--
Lie burnished 'neath our Christmas sky;

So carol, carol in your snow
And carol, carol as ye may,--
We carol 'mid our blooms ablow,
The grace of Summer's Christmas Day.

JOHN RUNCIE

The "Good Night" in Spain

Who is he that has seen a Nativity and has not felt it? Who has not found himself in his own home, in his own domain, there in that fantastic world of cork and gummed paper, with its shadowy caves, where a saintly anchorite prays before a crucifix--sweet and simple anachronism, like that of the hunter who in a thicket of rosemary shrubs aims his gun at a partridge large as a stork perched on the tower of a hermitage, or that of the smuggler with his Spanish cloak and slouch hat, who with a load of tobacco hides behind a paper rock to give free passage to the three kings journeying in all their glory along the lofty summits of those cork Alps? Who does not feel an inexplicable pleasure at seeing that little donkey, laden with firewood, passing over a proud bridge of paper stone? And that meadow of milled green baize in which feed so tranquilly those little white lambs! Does not that hoar frost so well imitated with steel filings turn you cold? Do you not take comfort in the heat of that ruddy bonfire which the shepherds are kindling to warm the Holy Child? Who is not startled to discover, under the strips of glass which represent so well a frozen river, the fish, the tortoises, the crabs, reposing with all ease upon a bed of golden sand and swollen to dimensions unknown to naturalists? Here is a crab under whose claws can pass an eel, his neighbor, as under the arch of a bridge. Here is a colossal rat regarding with a bullying air a diminutive and peaceful kitten. Over yonder a donkey is disputing with a rabbit about the respective magnificence of their ears, which are, in fact, of the same size, and a bull is holding a similar discussion, on the subject of horns, with a snail, while a stout duck refuses to yield the honors to a rickety swan. And these birds of all colors, gladdening that profound forest of little evergreens which forms the background of this enchanting scene, would you not think that they had gathered here from the four quarters of the earth? Does it not make you happy to see the shepherds dance? And, above all, do you not adore with tender reverence the Divine Mystery contained in that humble porch with its thatch of straw and, in its depths, a halo or glory of light? I say it frankly,--on that holy and merry Christmas Eve, all these things seem to me to live and feel; these little figures of clay, shaped by clumsy hands, placed there with such faith and such devotion, seem to me to receive breath and being from the joy and enthusiasm that reign. The star which guides the Magi, tinsel and glass though it is, seems to me to shine and shoot forth rays. The aureole surrounding the manger where the Holy Child is lying seems to glow not as a transparency with candles placed behind it, but with a reflection of celestial light. The tambourines and drums and songs give out melodies as simple and as pleasing as if they were echoes of those heard by the shepherds on that first blest Christmas Eve.

Could there be a festival more joyous, more natural, more tender in appeal and at the same time more exalted in significance--the birth of the Child in the rude stable, with only shepherds to wish him joy; innocence, poverty, simplicity, the very foundations of the magnificent structure of Christianity? Well may children and the poor keep a merry Christmas. They bring to God the gifts which please him best,--purity, faith and love. O, night, well called in Spain "The Good Night," blither than the carnival and holy as Holy Week itself!

From _Holy Night_, by FERNAN CABALLERO. Translated by Katharine Lee Bates

Christmas in Rome

What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep the feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I stood one Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence....

The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome by Siena, still and brown, uplifted mid her russet hills and wilderness of rolling plain; by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a dead and unknown people; through the chestnut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's rock, Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the Ciminian heights, from which one looks across the broad Lake of Bolsena and the Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like that of a day in late September, shone upon the landscape, and I thought--Can this be Christmas? Are they bringing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the towns in far-off England? Is it clear and frosty there, with the tramp of heels upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy, with a round red sun and cries of warning at the corners of the streets?

I reached Rome on Christmas-eve in time to hear midnight services in the Sistine Chapel and St. John Lateran, to breathe the dust of decayed shrines, to wonder at doting cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to resent the open-mouthed bad taste of my countrymen, who made a mockery of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep, nine train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in the dress devised by Michael Angelo, some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at intervals these words, and these only--"Sæcula Sæculorum, amen." Such was the celebrated Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and very strange did Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his Prophets appear upon the roof and wall above this motley and unmeaning crowd.

Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie and repaired, with groups of Englishmen similarly attired, and of Englishwomen in black crape (the regulation costume), to St. Peter's. It was a glorious and cloudless morning; sunbeams streamed in columns from the southern windows, falling on the vast space full of soldiers and a mingled mass of every kind of people. Up the nave stood double files of the pontifical guard. Monks and nuns mixed with the Swiss cuirassiers and halberds. _Contadini_ crowded round the sacred images, and especially round the toe of St. Peter. I saw many mothers lift their swaddled babies up to kiss it. Valets of cardinals, with the invariable red umbrellas, hung about side chapels and sacristies. Purple-mantled _monsignori_, like emperor butterflies, floated down the aisles from sunlight into shadow. Movement, color, and the stir of expectation made the church alive. We showed our dress-clothes to the guard, were admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked up towards the dome. There, under its broad canopy, stood the altar, glittering with gold and candles. The choir was carpeted and hung with scarlet. Two magnificent thrones rose ready for the Pope. Guards of honor, soldiers, attachés, and the élite of the residents and visitors in Rome were scattered in groups, picturesquely varied by ecclesiastics of all orders and degrees. At ten a stirring took place near the great west door. It opened, and we saw a procession of the Pope and his cardinals. Before him marched the singers and the blowers of the silver trumpets, making the most liquid melody. Then came his Cap of Maintenance and three tiaras; then a company of mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet; and last, aloft beneath a canopy upon the shoulders of men, and flanked by the mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to and fro like a Lama or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew most silverly, and still the people knelt; and as he came, we knelt and had his blessing. Then he took his state and received homage. After this the choir began to sing a mass of Palestrina's, and the deacons robed the Pope. Marvellous putting on and taking off of robes and tiaras and mitres ensued, during which there was much bowing and praying and burning of incense. At last, when he had reached the highest stage of sacrificial sanctity, he proceeded to the altar, waited on by cardinals and bishops. Having censed it carefully, he took a higher throne and divested himself of part of his robes. Then the mass went on in earnest till the moment of consecration, when it paused, the Pope descended from his throne, passed down the choir, and reached the altar. Every one knelt; the shrill bell tinkled; the silver trumpets blew; the air became sick and heavy with incense, so that sun and candle-light swooned in an atmosphere of odorous cloud-wreaths. The whole church trembled, hearing the strange subtle music vibrate in the dome, and seeing the Pope with his own hands lift Christ's body from the altar and present it to the people. An old parish priest, pilgrim from some valley of the Apennines, who knelt beside me, cried and quivered with excess of adoration. The great tombs around, the sculptured saints and angels, the dome, the volumes of light and incense and unfamiliar melody, the hierarchy ministrant, the white and central figure of the Pope, the multitude, made up an overpowering scene.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

Christmas in Burgundy

Every year at the approach of Advent, people refresh their memories, clear their throats, and begin preluding, in the long evenings by the fireside, those carols whose invariable and eternal theme is the coming of the Messiah. They take from old closets pamphlets, little collections begrimed with dust and smoke, to which the press, and sometimes the pen, has consigned these songs; and as soon as the first Sunday of Advent sounds, they gossip, they gad about, they sit together by the fireside, sometimes at one house, sometimes at another, taking turns in paying for the chestnuts and white wine, but singing with one common voice the grotesque praises of the _Little Jesus_. There are very few villages even, which, during all the evenings of Advent, do not hear some of these curious canticles shouted in their streets, to the nasal drone of bagpipes. In this case the minstrel comes as a reinforcement to the singers at the fireside; he brings and adds his dose of joy (spontaneous or mercenary, it matters little which) to the joy which breathes around the hearth-stone; and when the voices vibrate and resound, one voice more is always welcome. There, it is not the purity of the notes which makes the concert, but the quantity,--_non qualitas, sed quantitas_; then (to finish at once with the minstrel) when the Saviour has at length been born in the manger, and the beautiful Christmas Eve is passed, the rustic piper makes his round among the houses, where every one compliments and thanks him, and, moreover, gives him in small coin the price of the shrill notes with which he has enlivened the evening entertainments.

More or less until Christmas Eve, all goes on in this way among our devout singers, with the difference of some gallons of wine or some hundreds of chestnuts. But this famous eve once come, the scale is pitched upon a higher key; the closing evening must be a memorable one. The toilet is begun at nightfall; then comes the hour of supper, admonishing divers appetites; and groups, as numerous as possible, are formed to take together this comfortable evening repast. The supper finished, a circle gathers around the hearth, which is arranged and set in order this evening after a particular fashion, and which at a later hour of the night is to become the object of special interest to the children. On the burning brands an enormous log has been placed. This log assuredly does not change its nature, but it changes its name during this evening: it is called the _Suche_ (the Yule-log). "Look you," say they to the children, "if you are good this evening, Noël" (for with children one must always personify) "will rain down sugar-plums in the night." And the children sit demurely, keeping as quiet as their turbulent little natures will permit. The groups of older persons, not always as orderly as the children, seize this good opportunity to surrender themselves with merry hearts and boisterous voices to the chanted worship of the miraculous Noël. For this final solemnity, they have kept the most powerful, the most enthusiastic, the most electrifying carols. Noël! Noël! Noël! this magic word resounds on all sides; it seasons every sauce, it is served up with every course. Of the thousands of canticles which are heard on this famous eve, ninety-nine in a hundred begin and end with this word; which is, one may say, their Alpha and Omega, their crown and footstool. This last evening, the merry-making is prolonged. Instead of retiring at ten or eleven o'clock, as is generally done on all the preceding evenings, they wait for the stroke of midnight: this word sufficiently proclaims to what ceremony they are going to repair. For ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, the bells have been calling the faithful with a triple-bobmajor; and each one, furnished with a little taper streaked with various colors (the Christmas Candle) goes through the crowded streets, where the lanterns are dancing like Will-o'-the-Wisps, at the impatient summons of the multitudinous chimes. It is the Midnight Mass. Once inside the church, they hear with more or less piety the Mass, emblematic of the coming of the Messiah. Then in tumult and great haste they return homeward, always in numerous groups; they salute the Yule-log; they pay homage to the hearth; they sit down at table; and, amid songs which reverberate louder than ever, make this meal of after-Christmas, so long looked for, so cherished, so joyous, so noisy, and which it has been thought fit to call, we hardly know why, _Rossignon_. The supper eaten at nightfall is no impediment, as you may imagine, to the appetite's returning; above all, if the going to and from church has made the devout eaters feel some little shafts of the sharp and biting north-wind. _Rossignon_ then goes on merrily,--sometimes far into the morning hours; but, nevertheless, gradually throats grow hoarse, stomachs are filled, the Yule-log burns out, and at last the hour arrives when each one, as best he may, regains his domicile and his bed, and puts with himself between the sheets the material for a good sore-throat, or a good indigestion, for the morrow. Previous to this, care has been taken to place in the slippers, or wooden shoes of the children, the sugar-plums, which shall be for them, on their waking, the welcome fruits of the Christmas log.

In the Glossary, the _Suche_, or Yule-log, is thus defined:--

"This is a huge log, which is placed on the fire on Christmas Eve, and which in Burgundy is called, on this account, _lai Suche de Noël_. Then the father of the family, particularly among the middle classes, sings solemnly Christmas carols with his wife and children, the smallest of whom he sends into the corner to pray that the Yule-log may bear him some sugar-plums. Meanwhile, little parcels of them are placed under each end of the log, and the children come and pick them up, believing, in good faith, that the great log has borne them."