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stiff, smooth, mottled leaves, drooping by 

 twos all along the slender stalk, will hang 

 fresh and unwrinkled upon your wall for 

 weeks. Twine it light about your mirror, 

 so its image shall show in the glass, or 

 wreathe with it the picture of your love, or 

 drop it in long festoons from under knots 

 of gay holly, and light its dark twining with 

 silver-feathering of clematis in seed. 



Here be dead boughs, all forested with 

 gray lichen, dead bark with rich embroidery 

 of gray and green. Choose you good store 

 of both they light up wonderfully. Beside, 

 their soft tones bring harmony out of chro- 

 matic discord. ( Choose, too, thick mats of 

 moss the greenest, the velvetiest of all the 

 wood. Take with it the wild roots it shelters, 

 and set moss and roots, with a fringing of 

 fern, in fair, wide, shallow pots. They ask 

 neither sun nor earth give them but space 

 and water they spread you a feast of green, 

 whereon the eye may rest till its lid drops 

 and in sleep come dreams of the summer 

 world. 



What dinsome clamor swells up from 

 the wood-pile. The axemen are all chop- 

 ping for life, cutting " Christmas wood " 

 enough to feed all the hearths till the New 

 Year shines in room of the old. They sing 



