BY LOUISE HERRICK WALL
WITH PICTURES BY W. T. BENDA
EARLY in December the Angel of Peace on earth came to us, saying:
“How would you like a Christmas day deep in the woods, with no tissue-paper parcels or tinsel ribbon, with the people that you know best and like best and their children, with old English carols and games and wassail-songs and morris-dances, and stockings, and a huge bowl of innocent punch, and presents that cost fifteen cents, and no more, on pain of death? Now, how would you?”
Then we cried with one accord:
“Hath eye seen or ear heard? Can the cords of custom be loosened?”
“They can,” said the Angel, snapping her glove-clasp into its socket. She rose.
We turned questioningly to our Valiant One.
“I should like that,” she said. “I remember seventy Christmases, but none like that.”
“If I go,” said the Objector, “my Christmas-tree shall be a living tree. No cut-down, mutilated trees in a forest for me.”