World . . . and then she’d go down into that little old card-board treasure-box and find some Christmas carols printed in beautiful colors on lace-edged cards folded up just like a fan.  She would look down at you over the top of her specs and tell you how the street minstrels in England used to stand out 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 to receive their hallowed touch.

Grandfather and grandmother, and the garden, and the river, and the song of the robin in the appletree, and all the myriad experiences of the boy-time, are glorified now as never before.  In the halcyon Then they were but incidents of the day; in the mellowed Now we learn the truth of them, and catch their wondrous meaning.