f savages and of the great men who have honored it with their
presence. The town, moreover, is set off by a framework of the most
enchanting and varied scenery--river, streamlet, ocean, lighthouse,
hills with flower-and-grass-tufted crags, and forests, while on any
summer's day one may see, far away and "sown in a wrinkle of the
monstrous hill," some neighboring village with its graceful spire of
purest white gleaming and flaming in the hot sunshine, like marble set
in a foil of malachite.

A window of my room looked out upon a crystal stream that wound down
through the salt-meadows to the sea, and twice a day, under the
influence of the seemingly-mysterious systole and diastole of the
tides, spread out into a wide-glittering lake and anon crept back again
into its sinuous bed. This water was as fickle and wanton and
many-mooded as a coquettish girl. Now its translucent glassy surface is
unruffled by a single wrinkle, and in its brilliant depths every
minutest feature of yonder drifting hay-barge is weirdly mirrored. I
look out again, and the face of the water is working with rage under
the lashing of the wind: at the same time its face seems white with
fear, and its ghostly arms are tossing, now in defiance and now in
piteous appeal. But now, as I gaze, the winds in their uncouth gambols
tear a huge rent in the cloud-tent they had raised over the earth, and
in the sweet blue beyond appears the calm and smiling face of the sun.
Before its glance the wind-phantoms slink away in fear and the now
quiet streamlet smiles through its tears.

The stiff formality and the ridiculous solemnity of the old Puritan
times still linger about these secluded New England hamlets. But each
winter a huge Christmas tree is set up in the church of the village I
have mentioned, and loaded with presents. The winter I was there I went
to see the distribution. Recollecting the delightful Christmas days of
my own childhood, I was anticipating great pleasure. Of course I was
going to look in on a scene of childish joy, of shouting and laughing,
and eating of candy and pop-corn in unlimited quantities. Memories of
the stories of Hans Andersen and the Grimm brothers were floating
through my mind as I crunched the crisp snow under my feet on my way to
the church. I remembered the rapture of those Christmas mornings at
home, when we children stole down stairs by candlelight to the warm
room filled with the aromatic perfume of the Christmas tree, that