in the snow and sing, and be brought into the house and given a
warm mug and a bite to eat--going from house to house all through the
early night ...

And then she would close her eyes and begin to sing the dear old carols
... with the tremble in her voice ... and tapping on the table with her
finger-ends in rhythm ... and Memory's tears dropping on the wrinkled
checks ... and the tremulous voice, still soft and sweet, chanting:

"God rest you, merrie gentlemen!
Let nothing you dismay;
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born on Christmas Day!"
.............

Aye and amen, dear soul! God rest you--and He does!

When Day is Done

If the page blurs, as it may do if you were ever a child and if you
have been tempered in the cruel furnace of the years, maybe the mists
that fill the eyes will bathe the soul of you in their hallowed flood
until the world-ache is soothed, and you can start up the big road
again with some of the same wonderful exultation that sped you onward
and forward in the Long Ago ... One touch of that, and the burden of
Today, grown great in the years of struggle, slips from your shoulders
as lightly as the wild-rose petal drops upon the bosom of the stream
and floats away to the music of the riffles.

Only a strong man can go back over the Old Road to the
beginning-point--facing the memories that throng the path--meeting the
surging emotions that sweep away all our carefully-laid
defenses--braving the grim spectre that puts the white seal of age upon
our heads.

Once more, in the cool of the late twilight, we'll sit with chin in
hand on grandfather's front steps and watch the stars come out ... and
hear the loon calling weirdly across the water ... and catch the
perfume of the lilacs and narcissus from the garden ... and gather at
grandmother's knee to feel her soft fingers in our curls and hear her
bedtime story. Half asleep, but ever reluctant, we will trudge
stumblingly to the little room with its deep feather bed, and get into
our red-flannel nightie. Down on our knees, with our face in the soft
edges of the mattress and tiny hands uplifted, we will say our prayers,
and end them in the same old way: "God bless father and mother, and
grandfather and grandmother ... and ev-ery-body ... else in ... the ...
world .. amen ..." and feel those strong mother-arms lifting our sleepy
form into the downy depths!

Never until now have we known the reality of the boy-days, or paused t