Songs devout and sweet;
While the rafters rang,
There they stood with freezing feet.
Let us, etc.
“Who by the fireside stands
Stamps his feet and sings;
But he who blows his hands
Not so gay a carol brings.
Let us, etc.”
In some parts of rural England, too, the custom is still to some extent kept up, and the reader may find a pleasant, and we dare say faithful, description of it in a charming English story called Under the Greenwood Tree, by Mr. Thomas Hardy, a writer whose closeness of observation and precision and delicacy of touch give him a leading place among the younger writers of fiction.