CHRISTMAS.
Uncle Boardman was destined to have a Christmas present. At least,
he began to think it looked like it, for there behind the kitchen
stove, swinging from the wooden shelf over the fire–place, was Uncle
Boardman’s stocking on Christmas morning. If it were a joke, too bad to
send a man barefoot over the cold floors hunting up his property. It
was an enormous stocking. No mean, puny leg did Uncle Boardman carry
about, and the stocking corresponded. It was a blue stocking, and it
was thick and warm. What was a stocking for Uncle Boardman by day,
would have made a good blanket for any baby by night. Uncle Boardman
looked at the stocking and grinned. “Can’t be anything in it,” he said.
“I thought Lydia and I gave up such things long ago.”
But the stocking seemed to say, “Try me and see what I can do for you.”
“I will,” thought Uncle Boardman. Down into the stocking he ran a good
sized fist, and fished out a piece of paper neatly folded up.
“One of Lydia’s jokes,” he said. The paper though was directed to
“Boardman Blake.” He took it to the eastern window, at which the
Christmas sun was hanging an outside curtain of crimson. He opened the
missive and read:
“_Dear Boardman:_—I have been thinking about your mortgage, and I have
concluded to extend it as you wished, and I know you have had a hard
time, and you may have it extended for one or two years, as you like,
and not pay any interest. With a wish for a Merry Christmas,
“Your old friend,
John Elliott.”
Uncle Boardman felt enough like a happy boy to shout “Hurrah!” and then
he skipped upstairs to execute a dance in his wife’s chamber.
“I thought it would make you happy,” said Aunt Lydia. “Miss Green was
in here last evenin’ and brought it from the office, and so I tucked it
into your stockin’.”
“Well, Lydia, you shall have a new gown from this, for your present.”
And what was it that moved Capt. Elliott to make that Christmas
present? Could he say his prayers with comfort nowadays, and had he
found such peace that he wished to take peace to another heart?
His grandchild, Amy, was with him one day, while he was examining the
Blake mortgage and other papers. Looking up, he thought, “That child
is like the Atlantic Ocean.” Like the Atlantic Ocean! She so little,
and that so vast! It was an absurdity. And yet when one looked into
her eyes, of such deep azure, when one witnessed the vivacity of
her nature, the play of whose emotions was so varied, restless, and
oftentimes intense, saw too the sparkles that kept coming and going in
the depths of her eyes, one could but think of that Atlantic whose blue
waves kept coming and going, each wave a crystal flashing in the sun.
Amy Elliott with a child’s keenness of observation was watching her
grandfather as he handled a certain document that had been lying beside
his Bible. It was prayer time with him, one of those seasons when he
would try to climb the stairway of a new and holy life, and somehow
would be baffled and turn back. While reading his Bible, he chanced
to notice a sheet of paper near it, and his thoughts wandering off to
it, he interrupted his Bible reading long enough to find out what it
was that called off his attention. It was Boardman Blake’s note about
the mortgage on his house, asking that a little indulgence be granted
him. The sight of this irritated the old man, and he gave vent to his
irritation in a sharp remark to Amy. “There, there, Amy, you interrupt
me! You go and play somewhere.”
The child had not interrupted him, but that letter disturbed him, and
it was convenient to blame Amy.
“Grandpa reading and praying?” inquired Amy. “That Grandpa’s prayer to
God? Did God hear?” As she spoke, she laid her tapering little finger
on Boardman’s letter. If she had struck him a cruel blow, she could not
have wounded him more deeply. He clutched in his hand the letter, and
muttering to himself, rose and went upstairs to a dark little closet
where he would sometimes shut himself in and pray. Down he dropped upon
his knees. “Grandpa’s prayer to God!” Supposing it had been his prayer
to God, what would God have done with it? If it had been John Elliott
crying to God for favor, what would God have done?
“He hasn’t answered me,” murmured the old man. And then the inquiry
arose in his heart, why God had not answered him?
Somehow there came into his mind with strange swiftness those old
words: “With what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again.”
Was not that letter the obstacle on the stairs of the better life
he was trying to climb? Did he not stumble over it again and again?
Would God extend mercy to him until he had had compassion on a fellow
creature?
“I will!” he sobbed. “I will be merciful. I will extend the time for
the payment of that note.”
And down into his soul as through some window opened just above him,
streamed the light of the forgiving presence of God. No obstacle now on
the stairway that John Elliott was trying to climb!
The first thing he did when he left that place of prayer, was to take
pen and paper. At first he thought he would simply extend the time for
the payment of that note.
“I can do better than that,” he said, and wrote the note already given.
To Aunt Lydia, he sent a request that the note might be handed to her
husband, Christmas day. Aunt Lydia dropped it into that capacious
stocking. There was a happy Christmas gathering at Boardman Blake’s.
Walter’s father and mother were there, and some of the neighbors were
invited to “drop in.”
“We must ask the Elliotts,” said Aunt Lydia, and May, Amy, and Capt.
Elliott came to represent them.
Miss P. Green too had been invited, and with her appeared her boarder,
Chauncy Aldrich. Walter had faithfully kept his word to Chauncy, and
careful nursing met with its reward. Back from the gates of death, was
Chauncy brought, and he also came into a new life, spiritually. He
walked after Christ in love and obedience. He returned after Christmas
to the home of his parents, and he took his Christian principles with
him and steadfastly adhered to them.
When the lights at the Christmas gathering had all been extinguished,
and Walter was in his room upstairs, before retiring he looked out of
the window toward the sea. He detected a bright little light crawling
along through the darkness in the direction of the beach opposite the
Crescent, “That is Tom Walker’s lantern,” thought Walter. “It is his
watch, and he is out upon his beat.”
The light disappeared behind a projection of the shore ledges, and then
Walter bowed in prayer and asked God to care for his brave old comrades
who were caring for others and “_Fighting the Sea_.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.