A Napa Christchild; and Benicias Letters

A Napa Christchild; and
Benicia's Letters, by

Charles A. Gunnison This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
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Title: A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters
Author: Charles A. Gunnison
Release Date: July 1, 2006 [EBook #18725]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NAPA
CHRISTCHILD; AND ***

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A NAPA CHRISTCHILD.
--AND--
BENICIA'S LETTERS.

BY
CHARLES A. GUNNISON
PRESS OF COMMERCIAL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
TO
THE MOTHER AND SISTERS
OF
EDOUARD STOLTERFOHT,
This Christmas book is offered, to keep in memory sunny winter days,
spent in Rostock, Hohen Niendorf bei Kroepelin, and Gross Kussewitz,
and with the added hope that Poppendorf bei Bentwish will not forget
that I wrote in the house-book--
You have a gentle cure for parting's pain; It is your German word
Aufwiederseh'n.
These are just old-fashioned Christmas tales, to be read before an open
fire, with a heart full of charity for me. There is no modern realism in
them, for every word is a lie, the telling of which has given me the
greatest pleasure. I have also stolen a quotation from Hawthorne, which
is the best thing in the book, and last I have had the exquisite joy of
bloodless murder in killing one of my people. Thus, you see, I need
your charity truly, for I have broken deliberately, for your
entertainment, Three out of a possible Ten.
CHARLES A. GUNNISON, In the Embarcadero Rd. Palo Alto, Santa
Clara. Christmas, 1896.
[Illustration: Scroll]

A Napa Christchild.

I.
An evening sky, broken by wandering clouds, which hastening onward
toward the north, bear their rich gifts of longed-for rain to the brown
meadows, filling the heavens from east to west with graceful lines and
swelling bosoms, save, just at the horizon where the sun descended
paints a broad, lurid streak of crimson, glowing amid the deepening
shadows, a coal in dead, gray ashes.
Darker grows the streak, as a stain of blood, while the clouds about it
now assume a purple tinge with gloomier shadings; suddenly in the
centre of the lurid field starts out as if that moment born to Earth, with
clear, silver light, the Evening Star. The colour slowly fades till all is
dead and ashy, and the silver star drops down below the purpled hills,
leaving for a moment a soft, trembling twilight; the dense clouds then
rolling in between, blot out the last sign of departed day and night is
come.
It was Christmas Eve. The winter was late, and rain had fallen during
the last few weeks only, so that the fields were just assuming the fresh
pea-green colour of their new life, and the long, dead grass still
standing above the recent growth gave that odd smokey appearance to
the hills and mesas, so familiar to all us Californians also in our olive
groves. The night, however, was dark and nothing of hills, or mesas, or
gray fields, could be seen as the hurrying bands of clouds joined
together in one great company, overspreading the whole sky and
clothing all in a dreary shroud of blackness.
The little arroyo, which was dry in the summertime, had now risen,
increased by last week's tribute to be quite a large stream, tearing
noisely among the rocks and over its old courses, giving friendly
greetings of recognition to the old water-marks and dashing a playful
wave now and then about the worn roots of the enormous laurel tree
whose branches reached high above and far around.
Beneath the tree's protecting limbs, a little cabin, of roughest

workmanship, found shelter from the wind, or shade from the intense
heat of summer; the house was built almost entirely of logs, excepting
the upper part where boards had been used and through which were cut
the three windows which served to light the single room it contained.
This Christmas Eve, only the dark form of the cabin was to be seen
with the tall adobe chimney built up the outside; the smoke blew,
beaten here and there, about the roof till it finally disappeared, a cloud
of ghosts, among the swaying branches of the laurel tree.
By day in the sunshine, no pleasanter spot could be found than the little
cabin and broad fields of Crescimir the Illyrian, no lovelier view of the
rich Napa Valley could be had than from the hill where Crescimir's
cattle grazed and no happier home could have been found in all the
Californias than his, had he not been so alone, without a friend