"not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews."

If we _do_ move into town this winter, it won't be because the boys
wish to go.

[Illustration: The Christmas tree]

XVI

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

We shall not go back to town before Christmas, any way. They have a
big Christmas tree on the Common, but the boys declare they had rather
have their own Christmas tree, no matter how small; rather go into the
woods and mark it weeks ahead, as we always do, and then go bring it
home the day before, than to look at the tallest spruce that the Mayor
could fetch out of the forests of Maine and set up on the Common.
Where do such simple-minded children live, and in such primitive
conditions that they can carry an axe into the woods these days and cut
their own Christmas tree? Here on the Hills of Hingham, almost twenty
miles from Boston.

I hope it snows this Christmas as it did last. How it snowed! All day
we waited a lull in the gale, for our tree was still uncut, still out
in the Shanty-Field Woods. But all day long it blew, and all day long
the dry drifts swirled and eddied into the deep hollows and piled
themselves across the ridge road into bluffs and headlands that had to
be cut and tunneled through. As the afternoon wore on, the storm
steadied. The wind came gloriously through the tall woods, driving the
mingled snow and shadow till the field and the very barn were blotted
out.

"We _must_ go!" was the cry. "We'll have no Christmas tree!"

"But this is impossible. We could never carry it home through all
this, even if we could find it."

"But we 've marked it!"

"You mean you have devoted it, hallowed it, you little Aztecs! Do you
think the tree will mind?"

"Why--yes. Wouldn't you mind, father, if you were a tree and marked
for Christmas and nobody came for you?"

"Perhaps I would--yes, I think you 're right. It is too bad. But we
'll have to wait."

We waited and waited, and for once they went to bed on Christmas Eve
with their tree uncut. They had hardly gone, however, when I took the
axe and the lantern (for safety) and started up the ridge for the
devoted tree. I found it; got it on my shoulder; and long after nine
o'clock--as snowy and as weary an old Chris as ever descended a
chimney--came dragging in the tree.

We got to bed late that night--as all parents ought on the night before
Christmas; but Old Chris himself, soundest of sleepers, never slept
sounder!