302 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



and other lovely, plaintive old carols of the season, 

 coming uncorrupted from Shakespeare's England. 



Yet it isn't in any of these things that the deepest 

 suggestion of Christmas lies. It is rather when I 

 come from the woods on Christmas afternoon, across 

 the snowy fields that are already stiffening up as the 

 low sun sets till they creak under my snow-shoes, and 

 draw near my own home when twilight is stealing down 

 the eastern hills and hanging like a veil in my evergreens. 

 Then I see, in the dark block of the house, two reddish 

 gold squares of light, light that dances on the panes be- 

 cause the logs are snapping, the flames are wallowing 

 up the chimney. I smell the smoke of them, a delicate 

 fragrance on the cold winter air. Those golden win- 

 dow squares mean home, they mean not affluence, I 

 am sure, nor yet poverty, but they are the result of 

 wholesome struggle, which, I pray God, has harmed no 

 other man. I should be less than human if I were 

 not proud of them, if they did not make me warm with 

 happiness, more tender toward the dear ones behind 

 their shelter. But should I not be less than human, 

 too, certainly less than Christian, if I did not confess 

 that the true spirit of Christmas is the spirit which 

 admits that some such a home is the right of every 

 man who is born of woman, and which ardently de- 

 sires each man to come into his birthright? I cannot 

 see Christmas in any other way. I cannot approach 

 my house behind its evergreens, coming out of the 



