till we couldn't, or said we couldn't, stand it any
longer. So, along about the middle of March somewhere, we picked up the
children and started south. In those days New York seemed pretty far
south to us; and when we got here we found everything on wheels that we
had left on runners in Boston. But the next day it began to snow, and we
said we must go a little farther to meet the spring. I don't know
exactly what it was made us pitch on Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; but we had
a notion we should find it interesting, and, at any rate, a total change
from our old environment. We had been reading something about the
Moravians, and we knew that it was the capital of Moravianism, with the
largest Moravian congregation in the world; I think it was Longfellow's
'Hymn of the Moravian Nuns' that set us to reading about the sect; and
we had somehow heard that the Sun Inn, at Bethlehem, was the finest
old-fashioned public house anywhere. At any rate, we had the faith of
our youthful years, and we put out for Bethlehem.

"We arrived just at dusk, but not so late that we couldn't see the
hospitable figure of a man coming out of the Sun to meet us at the
omnibus door and to shake hands with each of us. It was the very
pleasantest and sweetest welcome we ever had at a public house; and
though we found the Sun a large, modern hotel, we easily accepted the
landlord's assurance that the old Inn was built up inside of the hotel,
just as it was when Washington stayed in it; and after a mighty good
supper we went to our rooms, which were piping warm from two good
base-burner stoves. It was not exactly the vernal air we had expected of
Bethlehem when we left New York; but you can't have everything in this
world, and, with the snowbanks along the streets outside, we were very
glad to have the base-burners.

"We went to bed pretty early, and I fell into one of those exemplary
sleeps that begin with no margin of waking after your head touches the
pillow, or before that, even, and I woke from a dream of heavenly music
that translated itself into the earthly notes of bugles. It made me sit
up with the instant realization that we had arrived in Bethlehem on
Easter Eve, and that this was Easter Morning. We had read of the
beautiful observance of the feast by the Moravians, and, while I was
hurrying on my clothes beside my faithful base-burner, I kept quite
superfluously wondering at myself for not having thought of it, and so
made sure of being called.