umbs, and some of
the boys had their faces blackened with powder. Now and then a fellow
who was nearly grown up would set off a whole pack of crackers in a
barrel; it seemed almost incredible to the little boys.

It was glorious, and I do not think any of the boys felt that there was
anything out of keeping in their way of celebrating the day, for I do
not think they knew why they were celebrating it, or, if they knew, they
never thought. It was simply a holiday, and was to be treated like a
holiday. After all, perhaps there are just as strange things done by
grown people in honor of the loving and lowly Saviour of Men; but we
will not enter upon that question. When they had burst their pistols or
fired off their crackers, the boys sometimes huddled into the back part
of the Catholic church and watched the service, awed by the dim altar
lights, the rising smoke of incense, and the grimness of the sacristan,
an old German, who stood near to keep order among them. They knew the
fellows who were helping the priest; one of them was the boy who stood
on his head till he had to have it shaved; they would have liked to mock
him then and there for wearing a petticoat, and most of them had the
bitterest scorn and hate for Catholics in their hearts; but they were
afraid of the sacristan, and they behaved very well as long as they were
in the church; but as soon as they got out they whooped and yelled, and
stoned the sacristan when he ran after them.

My boy would have liked to do all that too, just to be with the crowd,
but at home he had been taught to believe that Catholics were as good as
anybody, and that you must respect everybody's religion. His father and
the priest were friendly acquaintances, and in a dim way he knew that
his father had sometimes taken the Catholics' part in his paper when the
prejudice against foreigners ran high. He liked to go to the Catholic
church, though he was afraid of the painted figure that hung full length
on the wooden crucifix, with the blood-drops under the thorns on its
forehead, and the red wound in its side. He was afraid of it as
something both dead and alive; he could not keep his eyes away from the
awful, beautiful, suffering face, and the body that seemed to twist in
agony, and the hands and feet so cruelly nailed to the cross.

But he never connected the thought of that anguish with Christmas. His
head was too full of St. Nicholas, who came down the chimney, and filled
your stocki