the door before we went to bed, all ready to light when the clock
struck twelve. Mother said to him as he put the lantern there, 'Ring
the bell good and strong, dear father, for who knows but this year may
bring the great blessing which the Christ-child promised!' We must
watch for it, little Carl."
And the old bell seemed to speak louder and clearer to the little
ones, as they eagerly listened for what it was telling.
"Father says the bell will never ring from the old tower again, for
the new one is being built," said Hans. "And what do you think,
brother Carl, our dear mother wept because the old steeple must be
broken down, and the dear bell, that is even now a-ringing, must be
put into another great tower to ring."
"Does the great bell know it, brother?"
"No, dear little Carl; but no matter where it is put it will always
ring, and be glad to wake the village for the New Year."
"Will we go and say good-bye to the dear old bell, brother Hans?"
whispered little Carl.
"Yes, brother mine; when it is day we will go, for it has rung so many
times for us."
They crept out of the cold into their snug bed again, and the great
strokes poured from the tower window long after the little curly
heads were full of dreams.
"Wake up, brother Hans! there is the sun."
This time little Carl was the first to arise. Quickly they were both
dressed, and, opening their door noiselessly, they went down the
narrow stairs on tiptoe, and then out into the open air.
A swift wind was blowing. It swept over the bare bushes and whirled
the snow into the children's faces, and filled their curly hair with
flakes. But the sun was smiling down on them and said: "See what a
beautiful day I brought for a New Year's gift to you!"
And the little ones passed through the church door, that was always
open, and into the belfry tower. They knew the way, for father had so
often taken them with him.
They came to the long, dark ladder-way; but they did not mind the
dark--for they knew the bell was at the top, and they bravely began to
climb.
Hans had wooden shoes, so he left them at the foot of the ladder. It
is so much easier to climb a ladder with bare feet. Besides, he
hardly felt the cold he was such a quick and lively little boy.
Carl went ahead that brother Hans might the more easily help him. They
climbed, up and up, and the brave big brother talked merrily all the
time, to keep little Carl from thinking of the long, long way. Up and
up they went. It became darker and darker. Little Carl led on and on,
and he was glad that Hans was behind him.
All at once a bright gleam of light greeted them from above, and they
knew that soon they would be with the dear old bell.
Through the opening they crept, and there the great bell hung and they
stood beneath it. Hans could just touch it, and he felt its long
tongue and saw the shining marks on its sides where it had struck in
clanging for many, many years.
It was very cold in the belfry. Little Carl tucked his hands under his
blouse and gazed at the bell, while Hans explained to him what made
the music and the great tolling tones that came from it.
"The whole world loves the great bell, brother Carl," said Hans.
"Mother thinks that last night it rang in the great blessing which the
Christ-child had promised."
"What did the little Christ-child promise, brother?"
"Don't you remember, little Carl? Mother told us that the Christ-child
would send little children a beautiful gift; I think it must be the
New Year that he has sent, for that is what the old bell brought to us
last night."
And Hans lifted little Carl, and he kissed the beautiful bell on its
great round lip, and the bell was still warm from its long ringing.
And they stood and looked at the bell quietly for a long time. And
then they said, "Good-bye, dear great bell," and they went down the
dark ladder again.
Hans put on his wooden shoes at the foot of the ladder, and with
flying feet they crossed the church garden, and there stood the dear
mother in the door looking for them. She had found their little bed
empty, and was just starting out to find them.
"Dear Mother, we have been in the tower to thank the great bell for
bringing the New Year," cried Hans.
"Did the Christ-child send it, Mother?" asked little Carl.
The mother stooped and put her arms about them and kissed them both.
As she led them into the room she said, "Yes, my little ones, the
Christ-child sends the New Year."
THE NEW YEAR
Snow-wrapped and holly-decked it comes,
To richest and to poorest homes.
Twelve jeweled months all set with days
Of priceless opportunities.
A silver moon, a golden sun,
With diamond stars when day is done;
Over all a sapphire sky
Where pearly clouds go floating by.
(_Selected._)
THE CHILD AND THE YEAR
Said the child to the youthful year:
"What hast thou in store for me,
O giver of beautiful gifts! what cheer,
What joy dost thou bring with thee?"
"My seasons four shall bring
Their treasures: the winter's snows,
The autumn's store, and the flowers of spring,
And the summer's perfect rose.
"All these and more shall be thine,
Dear child--but the last and best
Thyself must earn by a strife divine,
If thou wouldst be truly blest."
Celia Thaxter.
A MASQUE OF THE DAYS
Charles Lamb
The Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming of age, which he
does, by calendar law as soon as the breath is out of the old
gentleman's body, nothing would serve the young spark, but he must
give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days in the year
were invited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, were
mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged time out of
mind, they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for mortals below,
and it was time they should have a taste of their own bounty.
It was stiffly debated among them whether the Fasts should be
admitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, with
their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the
objection was overruled by Christmas Day, who had a design upon Ash
Wednesday (as you shall hear), and a mighty desire to see how the old
Domine would behave himself in his cups. Only the Vigils were
requested to come with their lanterns to light the gentlefolk home at
night.
All the Days came. Covers were provided for three hundred and
sixty-five guests at the principal table; with an occasional knife and
fork at the sideboard for the Twenty-ninth of February.
Cards of invitation had been issued. The carriers were the Hours;
twelve little, merry, whirligig foot-pages that went all round and
found out the person invited, with the exception of Easter Day, Shrove
Tuesday, and a few such movables, who had lately shifted their
quarters.
Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine Days, all sorts of Days,
and a rare din they made of it. There was nothing but "Hail, fellow
Day! well met!" only Lady Day seemed a little scornful. Yet some said
Twelfth Day cut her out, for she came all royal and glittering and
Epiphanous. The rest came in green, some in white, but old Lent and
his family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days came in dripping,
and Sunshiny Days laughing. Wedding Day was there in marriage finery.
Pay Day came late, and Doomsday sent word he might be expected.
April Fool took upon himself to marshal the guests, and May Day, with
that sweetness peculiar to her, proposed the health of the host. This
being done, the lordly New Year, from the upper end of the table,
returned thanks. Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song,
struck up a carol, which Christmas Day had taught him. Shrovetide,
Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fool next joined in a glee, in which all
the Days, chiming in, made a merry burden.
All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty May, who sat next
him, slipping amorous billet-doux under the table till the Dog Days
began to be jealous and to bark and rage exceedingly.
At last the Days called for their cloaks and great-coats, and took
their leave. Shortest Day went off in a deep black fog that wrapped
the little gentleman all round. Two Vigils--so watchmen are called in
Heaven--saw Christmas Day safe home; they had been used to the
business before. Another Vigil--a stout, sturdy patrol, called the Eve
of St. Christopher--seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition little better
than he should be, e'en whipt him over his shoulders, pick-a-pack
fashion, and he went floating home, singing:
"On the bat's back do I fly,"
and a number of old snatches besides. Longest Day set off westward in
beautiful crimson and gold; the rest, some in one fashion, some in
another; but Valentine and pretty May took their departure together in
one of the prettiest silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish to set
in.
RING OUT, WILD BELLS
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Alfred Tennyson.
MIDWINTER
THE BELLS
Hear the sledges with the bells--
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells--
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Edgar Allen Poe.
A JANUARY THAW
Dallas Lore Sharp
It was the twenty-first of January--the dead of winter! The stubborn
cold had had the out of doors under lock and key since Thanksgiving
Day. We were having a hard winter, and the novelty of the thing was
beginning to wear off--to us grown-ups anyhow, and to the birds and
wild things which for weeks had found scant picking over the ice and
snow. But I was snug enough in my upstairs study, when suddenly the
door opened and four bebundled boys stood before me, with an axe, a
long-handled shovel, a basket, and, evidently, a big secret.
"Come on, father," they whispered (as if she hadn't heard them
clomping with their kit through the house!), "it's mother's birthday
to-morrow, and we're going after the flowers."
"Going to chop them down with the axe or dig them up with the
shovel?" I asked. "Going to give her a nice bunch of frost-flowers?
Better get the ice-saw then, for we'll need a big block of ice to
stick their stems in."
"Hurry," they answered, dropping my hip-boots on the floor. "Here are
your scuffs."
I hurried, and soon the five of us, in single file were out on the
meadow, the dry snow squeaking under our feet, while the little winds,
capering spitefully about us, blew the snow-dust into our faces or
catching up the thin drifts sent them whirling like waltzing wraiths
of dancers over the meadow's glittering floor.
I was beginning to warm up a little, but it was a numb, stiff world
about us, and bleak and stark, a world all black and white, for there
was not even blue overhead. The white underfoot ran off to meet the
black of the woods, and the woods in turn stood dark against a sky so
heavy with snow that it seemed to shut us into some vast snow cave. A
crow flapping over drew a black pencil line across the picture--the
one sign of life besides ourselves that we could see. Only small boys
are likely to leave their firesides on such a day--only small boys,
and those men who can't grow up. Yet never before, perhaps, had even
they gone out on such a tramp with an axe, a shovel, and a basket, to
pick flowers!
Suddenly one of the boys dashed off, crying: "Let's go see if the
muskrats have gone to bed yet!" and, trailing after him, we made for a
little mound that stood about three feet high out in the meadow, more
like a big ant hill or a small, snow-piled haycock, than a lodge of
any sort. Only a practiced eye could have seen it, and only a lover of
bleak days would have known what might be alive in there.
We crept up softly and surrounded the lodge; then with the axe we
struck the frozen, flinty roof several ringing blows. Instantly
one-two-three muffled, splashy "plunks" were heard as three little
muskrats, frightened out of their naps and half out of their wits,
plunged into the open water of their doorways from off their damp, but
cosy couch.
It was a mean thing to do--but not very mean as wild animal life goes.
And it did warm me up so, in spite of the chilly plunge the little
sleepers took! Chilly to them? Not at all and that is why it warmed
me. To hear the splash of water down under the two feet of ice and
snow that sealed the meadow like a sheet of steel! To hear the sounds
of stirring life, and to picture that snug, steaming bed on the top of
a tough old tussock, with its open water-doors leading into freedom
and plenty below! "Why, it won't be long before the arbutus is in
bloom," I began to think. I looked at the axe and the shovel and said
to myself, "Well, the boys may know what they are doing after all,
though three muskrats do not make a spring."
We had cut back to our path, but had not gone ten paces along it
before another boy was off to the left in the direction of a piece of
maple swamp.
"He's going to see if 'Hairy' is in his hole," they informed me, and
we all took after him. The "hole" was almost twenty-five feet up in a
dead oak stub that had blown off and lodged against a live tree. The
meadow had been bleak and wind-swept, but the swamp was naked and
dead, filled with ice and touched with a most forbidding emptiness
and stillness. I was getting cold again, when the boy ahead tapped
lightly on the old stub, and at the empty hole appeared a head--a
fierce black and white head, a sharp, long beak, a flashing eye--as
"Hairy" came forth to fight for his castle. He was too wise a fighter
to tackle all of us, however, so, slipping out, he spread his wings
and galloped off with a loud, wild call that set all the swamp to
ringing.
It was a thrilling, defiant challenge that set my blood to leaping
again. Black and white, he was a part of the picture, but there was a
scarlet band at the nape of his neck that, like his call, had fire in
it and the warmth of life.
As his woodpecker shout went booming through the hollow halls of the
swamp, it woke a blue jay who squalled back from a clump of pines,
then wavering out into the open on curious wings--flashing ice-blue
and snow-white wings--he dived into the covert of pines again; and
faint, as if from beyond the swamp, the cheep of chickadees! Here a
little troop of them came to peep into the racket, curious but not
excited, discussing the disturbance of the solemn swamp in that
desultory, sewing-bee fashion of theirs, as if nipping off threads and
squinting through needle-eyes between their running comment.
They, too, were grey and black, grey as the swamp beeches, black as
the spotted bark of the birches. And how tiny! But----
"Here was this atom in full breath
Hurling defiance at vast death--
This scrap of valour just for play
Fronts the north wind in waistcoat grey."
And this, also, is what Emerson says he sings,
"Good day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places
Where January brings few faces."
And as I brought to mind the poet's lines, I forgot to shiver, and
quite warmed up again to the idea of flowers, especially as one of the
boys just then brought up a spray of green holly with a burning red
berry on it!
We were tacking again to get back on our course, and had got into the
edge of the swamp among the pines when the boy with the shovel began
to study the ground and the trees with a searching eye, moving forward
and back as if trying to find the location of something.
"Here it is," he said, and set in digging through the snow at the foot
of a big pine. I knew what he was after. It was gold thread, and here
was the only spot, in all the woods about, where we had ever found
it--a spot not larger than the top of a dining-room table.
Soon we had a fistful of the delicate plants with their evergreen
leaflets and long, golden thread-like roots, that mixed with the red
and green of the partridge berry in a finger-bowl makes a cheerful
little winter bouquet. And here with the gold thread, about the butt
of the pine, was the partridge berry, too, the dainty vines strung
with the beads which seemed to burn holes in the snow that had covered
and banked the tiny fires.
For this is all that the ice and snow had done. The winter had come
with wind enough to blow out every flame in the maple tops, and with
snow enough to smother every little fire in the peat bogs of the
swamp; but peat fires are hard to put out, and here and everywhere the
winter had only banked the fires of summer. Dig down through the snow
ashes anywhere and the smouldering fires of life burst into blaze.
But the boy with the axe had gone on ahead. And we were off again
after him, stopping to get a great armful of black alder branches that
were literally aflame with red berries.
We were climbing a piny knoll when almost at our feet, jumping us
nearly out of our skins, and warming the very roots of our hair, was a
burrrr--burrrr--burrrr--burrrr--four big partridges--as if four big
snow mines had exploded under us, hurling bunches of brown on graceful
scaling wings over the dip of the hills!
On we went up over the knoll and down into a low bog where, in the
summer, we gather high-bush blueberries, the boy with the axe leading
the way and going straight across the ice toward the middle of the
bog.
My eye was keen for signs, and soon I saw he was heading for a
sweet-pepper bush with a broken branch. My eye took in another bush
off a little to the right with a broken branch. The boy with the axe
walked up to the broken sweet-pepper bush and drew a line on the ice
between it and the bush off on the right, pacing along this line till
he got the middle; then he started at right angles from it and paced
off a line to a clump of cat-tails sticking up through the ice of the
flooded bog. Halfway back on this line he stopped, threw off his coat
and began to chop a hole about two feet square in the ice. Removing
the block while I looked on, he rolled up his sleeve and reached down
the length of his arm through the icy water.
"Give me the shovel," he said, "it's down here," and with a few deep,
dexterous cuts soon brought to the surface a beautiful cluster of
pitcher plants, the strange, almost uncanny leaves filled with muddy
water, but every pitcher of them intact, shaped and veined and tinted
by a master potter's hand.
We wrapped it all carefully in newspapers, and put it in the basket,
starting back with our bouquet as cheerful and as full of joy in the
season as we could possibly have been in June.
No, I did not say that we love January as much as we love June.
January here in New England is a mixture of rheumatism, chillblains,
frozen water pipes, mittens, overshoes, blocked trains, and automobile
troubles by the hoodsful, whereas any automobile will run in June. I
have not room in this essay to tell all that June is; besides, this is
a story of January.
What I was saying is that we started home all abloom with our pitcher
plants, and gold thread, and partridge berry, and holly, and black
alder, all aglow inside with our vigorous tramp, with the grey, grave
beauty of the landscape, with the stern joy of meeting and beating the
cold, and with the signs of life--of the cosy muskrats in their lodge
beneath the ice cap on the meadow; with the hairy woodpecker in his
deep, warm hole in the heart of the tree; with the red-warm berries in
our basket; with the chirping, the conquering chickadee accompanying
us and singing--
"For well the soul, if stout within,
Can arm impregnably the skin;
And polar frost my form defied
Made of the air that blows outside."
And actually as we came over the bleak meadow one of the boys said he
thought he heard a song sparrow singing; and I thought the
pussywillows by the brook had opened a little since we passed them
coming out; and we all declared the weather had changed, and that
there were signs of a break-up. But the thermometer stood at fifteen
above zero when we got home--one degree colder than when we started!
So we concluded that the January thaw must have come off inside of us;
and if the colour of the four glowing faces is any sign, that was the
correct reading of the weather.
THE SNOW MAN
Hans Christian Andersen
"It is so wonderfully cold that my whole body crackles!" said the Snow
Man. "This is a kind of wind that can blow life into one; and how the
gleaming one up yonder is staring at me." That was the sun he meant,
which was just about to set. "It shall not make me wink--I shall
manage to keep the pieces."
He had two triangular pieces of tile in his head instead of eyes. His
mouth was made of an old rake, and consequently was furnished with
teeth.
He had been born amid the joyous shouts of the boys, and welcomed by
the sound of sledge bells and the slashing of whips.
The sun went down, and the full moon rose, round, large, clear, and
beautiful in the blue air.
"There it comes again from the other side," said the Snow Man. He
intended to say the sun is showing himself again.
"Ah! I have cured him of staring. Now let him hang up there and shine,
that I may see myself. If I only knew how I could manage to move from
this place, I should like so much to move. If I could, I would slide
along yonder on the ice, just as I see the boys slide; but I don't
understand it; I don't know how to run."
"Away! away!" barked the old Yard Dog. He was quite hoarse, and could
not pronounce the genuine "Bow, wow." He had got the hoarseness from
the time when he was an indoor dog, and lay by the fire. "The sun will
teach you to run! I saw that last winter in your predecessor, and
before that in his predecessor. Away! away! and away they all go."
"I don't understand you, comrade," said the Snow Man.
"That thing up yonder is to teach me to run?" He meant the moon. "Yes,
it comes creeping from the other side."
"You know nothing at all," retorted the Yard Dog. "But then you've
only just been patched up. What you see yonder is the moon, and the
one that went before the sun. It will come again to-morrow, and will
teach you to run down into the ditch by the wall. We shall soon have a
change of weather; I can feel that in my left hind leg, for it pricks
and pains me; the weather is going to change."
"I don't understand him," said the Snow Man; "but I have a feeling
that he's talking about something disagreeable. The one who stared so
just now, and whom he called the sun, is not my friend. I can feel
that."
"Away! Away!" barked the Yard Dog. "They told me I was a pretty little
fellow: then I used to lie in a chair covered with velvet, up in
master's house, and sit in the lap of the mistress of all. They used
to kiss my nose, and wipe my paws with an embroidered handkerchief. I
was called 'Ami--dear Ami--sweet Ami----.' But afterward I grew too
big for them, and they gave me away to the housekeeper. So I came to
live in the basement story. You can look into that from where you are
standing, and you can see into the room where I was master; for I was
master at the housekeeper's. It was certainly a smaller place than
upstairs, but I was more comfortable and was not continually taken
hold of and pulled about by children as I had been. I received just as
much good food as ever, and even better. I had my own cushion, and
there was a stove, the finest thing in the world at this season. I
went under the stove, and could lie down quite beneath it. Ah! I will
sometimes dream of that stove. Away! Away!"
"Does a stove look so beautiful?" asked the Snow Man. "Is it at all
like me?"
"It's just the reverse of you. It's as black as a crow, and has a long
neck and a brazen drum. It eats firewood, so that the fire spurts out
of its mouth. One must keep at its side or under it, and there one is
very comfortable. You can see it through the window from where you
stand."
And the Snow Man looked and saw a bright, polished thing, with a
brazen drum, and the fire gleamed from the lower part of it. The Snow
Man felt quite strangely; an odd emotion came over him; he knew not
what it meant, and could not account for it, but all people who are
not men know the feeling.
"And why did you leave her?" asked the Snow Man, for it seemed to him
that the stove must be of the female sex.
"How could you quit such a comfortable place?"