Alas for him who does not believe in Christmas!  May the ghost of Scrooge haunt him into a better mind.

This was what I mentally ejaculated to myself last Saturday afternoon after Mr. Hardcap’s protest against our Christmas celebration.

The Sabbath morning previous, Miss Moore came to me mysteriously after church.  “I want to walk home with you, Mr. Laicus,” said she.  I have a wife and children, and I felt safe.  “I shall be delighted with the honor,” I replied.  But Miss Moore’s honors are never empty ones.  I knew that she wanted something; I wondered what.  I had not long to wonder; for we had not crossed the road before she opened the subject.

“We are going to trim the Church for Christmas,” said she, “and we want you to superintend getting the evergreens.”

“What?” said I, aghast.

Confidentially, please not mention it, I have been in the habit for a good many years of taking my wife and my prayer-book to the Episcopal Church on Christmas-day.  Dickens converted me to its observance ten years or more ago.  But none are so sound as those who are tinged with heresy.  And am I not a “blue Presbyterian?” It would not do to lend my countenance too readily to indecorous invasions of the sanctuary with festivals borrowed from the Roman Catholics.  Besides, what would the elders say?  I asked Miss Moore as much.

“Deacon Goodsole will lend us his pung,” was the reply.

“And the trustees?” said I.

But Miss Moore never leaves a point unguarded.

“Young Wheaton is home from school,” said she, “and he will go with you to the woods.  He will call to-morrow, right after breakfast.”

For a difficult piece of generalship give me a woman.  Not fitted for politics!  Why, they are born to it.  Here was Miss Moore bent on trimming the church.  And lawyer Laicus was to go in Deacon Goodsole’s sleigh with the son of the President of the Board of Trustees to get the “trimmings.”  He who dares to complain after that enlists two dignitaries and one very respectable layman against him at the outset.

“Very well,” said I, “I will go.”

“Go!” said Miss Moore, “of course you’ll go.  Nobody doubted that.  But I want to tell you where to go and what to get.”

The next morning I was just finishing my second cup of coffee when I heard the jingle of bells, and, looking up, saw Jim Wheaton and the Deacon’s sleek horse at my door.  So, bidding Harry, who was to go too, “be quick,” an exhortation that needed no repeating, we were very soon in the pung, armed I with a hatchet, Harry with a pruning knife.