On Christmas Day In The Evening | Page 9

old church
had ever heard before within its walls that had the singers been a
detachment from the choir celestial those who heard them could hardly
have listened with ears more charmed.
As "Holy Night" came down to him, William Sewall bent his head. But
Ebenezer Blake lifted his. His dim blue eyes looked up--up and
up--quite through the old meeting-house roof--to the starry skies where

it seemed to him angels sang again. He forgot the people assembled in
front of him--he forgot the responsibilities upon his shoulders--those
bent shoulders which had long ago laid down such responsibilities. He
saw visions. It is the old men who see visions. The young men dream
dreams.
The young city rector read the Christmas Story--out of the worn copy
of the Scriptures which had served this pulpit almost from the
beginning. He read it in the rich and cultivated voice of his training, but
quite simply. Then Margaret sang, to the slender accompaniment of the
little organ, the same solo which a famous soprano had sung that
morning at the service at St. John's--and her brother William, listening
from the pulpit, thought she sang it better. There was the quality in
Margaret's voice which reaches hearts--a quality which somehow the
famous soprano's notes had lacked. And every word could be heard,
too--the quiet throughout the house was so absolute--except when Asa
Fraser cleared his throat loudly in the midst of one of the singer's most
beautiful notes. At the sound Mrs. George Tomlinson gave him a
glance which ought to have annihilated him--but it did not. She could
not know that the throat-clearing was a high tribute to the
song--coming from Asa Fraser.
"How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given; So God imparts
to human hearts The blessing of His heaven.... O Holy Child of
Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be
born in us to-day."
Then William Sewall made a prayer. Those who had been looking to
see old Elder Blake take this part in the service began to wonder if he
had been asked into the pulpit simply as a courtesy. They supposed he
could pray, at least. They knew he had never ceased doing it--and for
them. Elder Blake had not an enemy in the village. It seemed strange
that he couldn't be given some part, in spite of his extreme age. To be
sure, it was many years since anybody had asked him to take part in
any service whatsoever, even a funeral service--for which, as is well
understood, a man retains efficiency long after he has ceased to be of
use in the pulpit, no matter how devastating may be the weather. But

that fact did not seem to bear upon the present situation.
A number of people, among them Miss Jane Pollock, were beginning to
feel more than a little indignant about it, and so lost the most of
Sewall's prayer, which was a good one, and not out of the prayer-book,
though there were phrases in it which suggested that source, as was
quite natural. The city man meant to do it all, then. Doubtless he
thought nobody from the country knew how to do more than to
pronounce the benediction. Doubtless that was to be Elder Blake's
insignificant part--to pronounce the----
Miss Jane Pollock looked up quickly. She had been staring steadily at
the back of Maria Hill's mink collar, in front of her, through the closing
sentences of the prayer. But what was this? Elder Blake had risen and
was coming forward. Was he going to read a hymn? But he had no
book. And he had taken off his spectacles. He could see better, as was
known, without his spectacles, when looking at a distance.
William Sewall's prayer was not ended. He could no longer be heard by
the people, but in his seat, behind the drooping figure of the old man,
he was asking things of the Lord as it seemed to him he had never
asked anything before. Could His poor, feeble, "superannuated" old
servant ever speak the message that needed to be spoken that night?
William Sewall felt more than ever that he himself could not have done
it. Could Ebenezer Blake?
"Make him strong, O God,--make him strong," requested William
Sewall, fervently. Then, forgetting even a likeness to prayer-book
phrase, he added, with fists unconsciously tight-clenched, in the
language of the athletic field where a few years back he himself had
taken part in many a hard-fought battle-- "Help him to buck up!"

VIII
They talk about it yet, in North Estabrook, though it happened a year
ago. Nobody knew how it was that from a frail old man with a

trembling voice, which, in its first sentences, the people back of