Christmas in the Woods 
the persimmons and climbed straight down, not 
stopped to gaze out upon the pond, and away over 
the dark ditches to the creek. But reaching out 
quickly I gathered another handful, —and all was 
yesterday again. 
I filled both pockets of my coat and climbed down. 
I kept those persimmons and am tasting them to- 
night. Lupton’s Pond may fill to a puddle, the mead- 
ows may shrivel, the creek dry up and disappear, and 
old Time may even try his wiles on me. But I shall 
foil him to the end; for I am carrying still in my 
pocket some of yesterday’s persimmons, — persim- 
mons that ripened in the rime of a winter when I was 
a boy. 
High and alone in a bare persimmon tree for one’s 
dinner hardly sounds like a merry Christmas. But I 
was not alone. I had noted the fresh tracks beneath 
the tree before I climbed up, and now I saw that the 
snow had been partly brushed from several of the 
large limbs as the ’possum had moved about in 
the tree for his Christmas dinner. We were guests 
at the same festive board, and both of us at Nature’s 
invitation. It mattered not that the ’possum had 
eaten and gone this hour or more. Such is good form 
23 
