And what a Christmas Day we had. What a tree it was! Who
got it? How? No, old Chris did n't bring it--not when two of the boys
came floundering in from a walk that afternoon saying they had tracked
me from the cellar door clear out to the tree-stump--where they found
my axe!

I hope it snows. Christmas ought to have snow; as it ought to have
holly and candles and stockings and mistletoe and a tree. I wonder if
England will send us mistletoe this year? Perhaps we shall have to use
our home-grown; but then, mistletoe is mistletoe, and one is n't asking
one's self what kind of mistletoe hangs overhead when one chances to
get under the chandelier. They tell me there are going to be no toys
this year, none of old Chris's kind but only weird, fierce,
Fourth-of-July things from Japan. "Christmas comes but once a year,"
my elders used to say to me--a strange, hard saying; yet not so strange
and hard as the feeling that somehow, this year, Christmas may not come
at all. I never felt that way before. It will never do; and I shall
hang up my stocking. Of course they will have a tree at church for the
children, as they did last year, but will the choir sing this year,
"While shepherds watched their flock by night" and "Hark! the herald
angels sing"?

I have grown suddenly old. The child that used to be in me is with the
ghost of Christmas Past, and I am partner now with Scrooge, taking old
Marley's place. The choir may sing; but--

"The lonely mountains o'er
And the resounding shore
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament!"

I cannot hear the angels, nor see, for the flames of burning cities,
their shining ranks descend the sky.

"No war, or battle's sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung"

on that first Christmas Eve. What has happened since then--since I was
a child?--since last Christmas, when I still believed in Christmas, and
sang with the choir, "Noel! Noel!"?

But I am confusing sentiment and faith. If I cannot sing peace on
earth, I still believe in it; if I cannot hear the angels, I know that
the Christ was born, and that Christmas is coming. It will not be a
very merry Christmas; but it shall be a most significant, most solemn,
most holy Christmas.

The Yule logs, as the Yule-tide songs, will be fewer this year. Many a
window, bright with candles a year ago, will be darkened. There will
be no goose at the Cratchits', for both Bob and Mas