ailed the flock.

"Will Brother Tom be here when the leaves begin to drap in the falling
weather?" again he wailed.

"No!"

"Will Brother Tom be up thar? Up thar?"--the swift arm of the preacher
shot upward--"when Gabriel blows his trump?"

"Eh, Lord, Brother Tom will be up thar!" shouted an old woman.

"Amen!" boomed from the throat of everyone.

As it often happened, Tom's widow had long since re-wed, but neither she
nor her second mate were in the least dismayed. They wept and wailed
with fervor, "He'll be thar! He'll be thar!"

"Yes," boomed the preacher once more, "Brother Tom will be thar when
Gabriel blows his trump!"

Then abruptly in a very calm voice, not at all like that in which he had
shouted, the preacher lined the hymn:

Arise, my soul, and spread thy wings,
A better portion trace.

Having intoned the two lines the flock took up the doleful dirge.

So they went on until the hymns were finished.

After a general handshaking and repeated farewells and the avowed hope
of meeting again come the second Sunday in May next year, the
funeralizing ended.

OLD CHRISTMAS

Though in some isolated sections of the Blue Ridge, say in parts of the
Unakas, the Cumberlands, the Dug Down Mountains of Georgia, there are
people who may never have heard of the Gregorian or Julian calendar, yet
in keeping Old Christmas as they do on January 6th, they cling
unwittingly to the Julian calendar of 46 B.C., introduced in this
country in the earliest years. To them December 25th is New Christmas,
according to the Gregorian calendar adopted in 1752.

They celebrate the two occasions in a very different way. The old with
prayer and carol-singing, the new with gaiety and feasting.

To these people there are twelve days of Christmas beginning with
December 25th and ending with January 6th. In some parts of these
southern mountain regions, if their forbears were of Pennsylvania German
stock, they call Old Christmas Little Christmas as the Indians do. But
such instances are rare rather than commonplace.

Throughout the twelve days of Christmas there are frolic and fireside
play-games and feasting, for which every family makes abundant
preparation. There is even an ancient English accumulative song called
Twelve Days of Christmas which is sung during the celebrations, in which
the true love brings a different gift for each day of the twelve. The
young fol