Atlantic Monthly | Page 9

of the mountains that fence in the great Mississippi valley? The
sea-breath in the New-England States thins the air and bleaches the sky,
sucks the vitality out of Nature, I fancy, to put it into the brains of the
people: but here, the earth every day in the year pulses out through hill
or prairie or creek a full, untamed animal life,--shakes off the snow too
early in spring, in order to put forth untimed and useless blossoms,
wasteful of her infinite strength. So when this winter's evening came to
a lazy town bedded in the hills that skirt Western Virginia close by the
Ohio, it found that the December air, fiercely as it blew the
snow-clouds about the hill-tops, was instinct with a vigorous, frosty life,
and that the sky above the clouds was not wan and washed-out, as
farther North, but massive, holding yet a sensuous yellow languor, the
glow of unforgotten autumn days.
The very sun, quite certain of where he would soonest meet with
gratitude, gave his kindliest good-night smile to the great valley of the
West, asleep under the snow: very kind to-night, just as calm and
loving, though he knew the most plentiful harvest which the States had
yielded that year was one of murdered dead, as he gave to the young,
untainted world, that morning, long ago, when God blessed it, and saw
that it was good. Because, you see, this was the eve of a more helpful,
God-sent day than that, in spite of all the dead: Christmas eve.
To-morrow Christ was coming,--whatever he may be to you,--Christ.
The sun knew that, and glowed as cheerily, steadily, on blood as water.
Why, God had the world! Let them fret, and cut each other's throats, if
they would. God had them: and Christ was coming. But one fancied
that the earth, not quite so secure in the infinite Love that held her, had
learned to doubt, in her six thousand years of hunger, and heard the
tidings with a thrill of relief. Was the Helper coming? Was it the true
Helper? The very hope, even, gave meaning to the tender rose-blush on
the peaks of snow, to the childish sparkle on the grim rivers. They
heard and understood. The whole world answered.
One man, at least, fancied so: Adam Craig, hobbling down the frozen
streets of this old-fashioned town. He thought, rubbing his bony hands
together, that even the wind knew that Christmas was coming, the day

that Christ was born: it went shouting boisterously through the great
mountain-gorges, its very uncouth soul shaken with gladness. The city
itself, he fancied, had caught a new and curious beauty: this winter its
mills were stopped, and it had time to clothe the steep streets in spotless
snow and icicles; its windows glittered red and cheery out into the early
night: it looked just as if the old burgh had done its work, and sat down,
like one of its own mill-men, to enjoy the evening, with not the cleanest
face in the world, to be sure, but with an honest, jolly old heart under
all, beating rough and glad and full. That was Adam Craig's fancy: but
his head was full of queer fancies under the rusty old brown wig: queer,
maybe, yet as pure and childlike as the prophet John's: coming, you
know, from the same kinship. Adam had kept his fancies to himself
these forty years. A lame old chap, cobbling shoes day by day, fighting
the wolf desperately from the door for the sake of orphan brothers and
sisters, has not much time to put the meanings God and Nature have for
his ignorant soul into words, has he? But the fancies had found
utterance for themselves, somehow: in his hatchet-shaped face, even,
with its scraggy gray whiskers; in the quick, shrewd smile; in the eyes,
keen eyes, but childlike, too. In the very shop out there on the
creek-bank you could trace them. Adam had cobbled there these twenty
years, chewing tobacco and taking snuff, (his mother's habit, that,) but
the little shop was pure: people with brains behind their eyes would
know that a clean and delicate soul lived there; they might have known
it in other ways too, if they chose: in his gruff, sharp talk, even, full of
slang and oaths; for Adam, invoke the Devil often as he might, never
took the name of Christ or a woman in vain. So his foolish fancies, as
he called them, cropped out. It must be so, you know: put on what
creed you may, call yourself chevalier or Sambo, the speech your soul
has held with God and the Devil will tell itself in every turn of your
head, and jangle of your laugh: you cannot help that.
But