Christmas Peace
That sweetly prophetic evening silence, before the great feast of Good-Will, does not come over everything each year, even in a lonely cottage on an abandoned farm in Connecticut, than which you cannot possibly imagine anything more silent or more remote from the noise of the world. Sometimes it rains in torrents just on that night, sometimes it blows a raging gale that twists the leafless birches and elms and hickory trees like dry grass and bends the dark firs and spruces as if they were feathers, and you can hardly be heard unless you shout, for the howling and screaming and whistling of the blast.
But now and then, once in four or five years perhaps, the feathery snow lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still country side and in the woods; and the waxing moon sheds her large light on all, and Nature holds her breath to wait for the happy day and tries to sleep, but cannot from sheer happiness and peace. Indoors, the fire is glowing on the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night and be enough, because it is not bitter weather, but only cold and clear and still, as it should be; or if there is only a poor stove, the iron door is open and a comfortable, cheery red light shines out from within upon the battered iron plate and the wooden floor beyond; and the older people sit around it, not saying much, and thinking with their hearts rather than with their heads; but small boys and girls know that interesting things have been happening in the kitchen all the afternoon, and are rather glad that the supperwas not very good, because there will be more room for good things to-morrow; and the grown-ups and the children have made up any little differences of opinion they may have had before supper time, because Good-Will must reign, and reign alone, like Alexander; so that there is nothing at all to regret, and nothing hurts anybody any more, and they are all happy in just waiting for King Christmas to open the door softly and make them all great people in his kingdom. But if it is the right sort of house, he is already looking in through the window, to be sure that every one is all ready for him, and that nothing has been forgotten.