CHRISTMAS MISTLETOE 173 
“eat” hectored me with their affront to hungry, 
or the strident cry of the aproned waiter, “Ham 
and straight up,” should slap me in the face 
when I should become an hungered. I could 
eat to the music of wind voices in the trees and 
the spacious sky for a dining room and no haste 
nor breaking of dishes to garnish the meal. So 
no famine confronting me, nor schedule to be 
met calling my name stentoriously I left the 
railway station nothing loath and footing it 
blithely but not hurriedly I came on the way 
of my adventure. 
Speaking openly, I had come to hunt mistletoe. 
The trees were leafless and so thrust into prom- 
inence the clusters of mistletoe hanging far aloft 
which in green June had been hidden in June 
greenery, but now in winter leaflessness when 
June blossoms were all spent and June leaves all 
dropped from its dead hands, among the petals 
of its innumerable roses, nothing green blazed 
out in the sky but the mistletoe. In summer 
the greens are so preeminent and luxuriant that 
green subtracts from green and one tint of green 
subtracts from another tint of green till by the 
compulsion of multi-greenery the wonder of it 
all becomes less heavenly. Now, in December 
the day before Christmas, no green was any- 
where visible save that of the classic mistletoe, 
swinging high on beckoning branches of leafless 
trees. It was a thing to invite the soul to walk 
leisurely and languidly or lie on the ground 
