Christmas in the Woods 
all. But He did make the Cohansey Creek persimmon, 
and He made it as good as He could. Nowhere else 
under the sun can you find such persimmons as these 
along the creek, such richness of flavor, such gummy, 
candied quality, woodsy, wild, crude, — especially the 
fruit of two particular trees on the west bank, near 
Lupton’s Pond. But they never come to this perfec- 
tion, never quite lose their pucker, until midwinter, 
—asif they had been intended for the Christmas 
table of the woods. 
It had been nearly twenty years since I crossed 
this pasture of the cedars on my way to the per- 
simmon trees. The cows had been crossing every 
year, yet not a single new crook had they worn in 
the old paths. But I was half afraid as I came to 
the fence where I could look down upon the pond 
and over to the persimmon trees. Not one of the 
Luptons, who owned pasture and pond and trees, 
had ever been a boy, so far as I could remember, or 
had ever eaten of those persimmons. Would they 
have left the trees through all these years ? 
I pushed through the hedge of cedars and stopped 
for an instant, confused. The very pond was gone! 
and the trees! No, there was the pond, — but how 
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