Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Part 12

Mary returns, face one broad grin.

"No, ma'am, Mr. Corbet is there."

Heavy steps in the red parlor. Side door-bell--a little gong, begins to ring. Front bell rings ninth time, tenth, and eleventh.

Saint John, as we call him, had seen that something was amiss, and had kindly pitched in with a dissertation on the pa.s.sage of the Red-River Dam, in which the gravy-boats were steams.h.i.+ps, and the cranberry was General Banks, and the aids were spoons. But, when both door-bells rang together, and there were more steps in the hall, Huldah said, "If you will excuse me," and rose from the table.

"No, no, we will not excuse you," cried Clara Hastings. "n.o.body will excuse you. This is the one day of the year when you are not to work.

Let me go." So Clara went out. And after Clara went out, the door-bells rang no more. I think she cut the bell-wires. She soon came back, and said a man was inquiring his way to the "Smells;" and they directed him to "Wait's Mills," which she hoped would do. And so Huldah's and Grace's stupendous housekeeping went on in its solid order, reminding one of those well-proportioned Worcester teas which are, perhaps, the crown and glory of the New England science in this matter. I ventured to ask Sam Root, who sat by me, if the Marlborough were not equal to his mother's.

And we sat long; and we laughed loud. We talked war and poetry and genealogy. We rallied Helen Touro about her housekeeping; and Dr.

Worster pretended to give a list of Surgeons and Majors and Major-Generals who had made love to Huldah. By and by, when the grapes and the bonbons came, the sixteen children were led in by Maria Munro, who had, till now, kept them at games of string and hunt the slipper.

And, at last, Seth Corbet flung open the door into the red parlor to announce "The Tree."

Sure enough, there was the tree, as the five saints had prepared it for the invited children,--glorious in gold, and white with wreaths of snow-flakes, and blazing with candles. Sam Root kissed Grace, and said, "O Grace! do you remember?" But the tree itself did not surprise the children as much as the five tables at the right and the left, behind and before, amazed the Sainted Five, who were indeed the children now. A box of the _vin rouge de Bourgogne_, from Louis, was the first thing my eye lighted on, and above it a little banner read, "Huldah's table." And then I saw that there were these five tables, heaped with the Christmas offerings to the five saints. It proved that everybody, the world over, had heard that they had settled down. Everybody in the four hemispheres,--if there be four,--who had remembered the unselfish service of these five, had thought this a fit time for commemorating such unselfish love, were it only by such a present as a lump of coal.

Almost everybody, I think, had made Seth Corbet a confidant; and so, while the five saints were planning their pretty tree for the sixteen children, the North and the South, and the East and the West, were sending myrrh and frankincense and gold to them. The pictures were hung with Southern moss from Barthow. Boys, who were now men, had sent coral from India, pearl from Ceylon, and would have been glad to send ice from Greenland, had Christmas come in midsummer; there were diamonds from Brazil, and silver from Nevada, from those who lived there; there were books, in the choicest binding, in memory of copies of the same word, worn by travel, or dabbled in blood; there were pictures, either by the hand of near friends.h.i.+p, or by the master hand of genius, which brought back the memories, perhaps, of some old adventure in "The Service,"--perhaps, as the Kaulbach did, of one of those histories which makes all service sacred. In five and twenty years of life, these women had so surrounded themselves, without knowing it or thinking of it, with loyal, yes, adoring friends, that the accident of their finding a fixed home had called in all at once this wealth of acknowledgment from those whom they might have forgotten, but who would never forget them. And, by the accident of our coming together, we saw, in these heaps on heaps of offerings of love, some faint record of the lives they had enlivened, the wounds they had stanched, the tears they had wiped away, and the homes they had cheered. For themselves, the five saints--as I have called them--were laughing and crying together, quite upset in the surprise. For ourselves, there was not one of us who, in this little visible display of the range of years of service, did not take in something more of the meaning of,--

"He who will be chief among you, let him be your servant."

The surprise, the excitement, the laughter, and the tears found vent in the children's eagerness to be led to their tree; and, in three minutes, Ellen was opening boxes, and Huldah pulling fire-crackers, as if they had not been thrown off their balance. But, when each boy and girl had two arms full, and the fir balsam sent down from New Durham was nearly bare, Edgar Bartlett pointed to the top bough, where was a brilliant not noticed before. No one had noticed it,--not Seth himself,--who had most of the other secrets of that house in his possession. I am sure that no man, woman, or child knew how the thing came there: but Seth lifted the little discoverer high in air, and he brought it down triumphant. It was a parcel made up in s.h.i.+ning silvered paper. Seth cut the strings.

It contained twelve Maltese crosses of gold, with as many jewels, one in the heart of each,--I think the blazing twelve of the Revelations. They were displayed on ribbons of blue and white, six of which bore Huldah's, Helen's, Ellen Philbrick's, Hannah's, Miss Peters's, and Seth Corbet's names. The other six had no names; but on the gold of these was marked,--"From Huldah, to ----" "From Helen, to -----" and so on, as if these were decorations which they were to pa.s.s along. The saints themselves were the last to understand the decorations; but the rest of us caught the idea, and pinned them on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. As we did so, the ribbons unfolded, and displayed the motto of the order:--

"Henceforth I call you not servants, I have called you friends."

It was at that Christmas that the "ORDER OF LOVING SERVICE" was born.

THE TWO PRINCES.

A STORY FOR CHILDREN.

I.

There was a King of Hungary whose name was Adelbert.

When he lived at home, which was not often, it was in a castle of many towers and many halls and many stairways, in the city of Buda, by the side of the river Donau.

He had four daughters, and only one son, who was to be the King after him, whose name was Ladislaus. But it was the custom of those times, as boys and girls grew up, to send them for their training to some distance from their home, even for many months at a time, to try a little experiment on them, and see how they fared; and so, at the time I tell you of, there was staying in the castle of Buda the Prince Bela, who was the son of the King of Bohemia; and he and the boy Ladislaus studied their lessons together, and flew their kites, and hunted for otters, and rode with the falconers together.

One day as they were studying with the tutor, who was a priest named Stephen, he gave to them a book of fables, and each read a fable.

Ladislaus read the fable of the

SKY-LARK.

The sky-lark sat on the topmost bough of the savy-tree, and was waked by the first ray of the sun. Then the sky-lark flew and flew up and up to the topmost arch of the sky, and sang the hymn of the morning.

But a frog, who was croaking in the cranberry marsh, said, "Why do you take such pains and fly so high? the sun s.h.i.+nes here, and I can sing here."

And the bird said, "G.o.d has made me to fly. G.o.d has made me to see. I will fly as high as He will lift me, and sing so loud that all shall hear me."

And when the little Prince Ladislaus had read the fable, he cried out, "The sky-lark is the bird for me, and I will paint his picture on my s.h.i.+eld after school this morning."

Then the Prince Bela read the next fable,--the fable of the

WATER-RAT.

A good beaver found one day a little water-rat almost dead. His father and mother had been swept away by a freshet, and the little rat was almost starved. But the kind beaver gave him of her own milk, and brought him up in her own lodge with her children, and he got well, and could eat, and swim, and dive with the best of them.

But one day there was a great alarm, that the beavers' dam was giving way before the water. "Come one, come all," said the grandfather of the beavers, "come to the rescue." So they all started, carrying sticks and bark with them, the water-rat and all. But as they swam under an old oak-tree's root, the water-rat stopped in the darkness, and then he quietly turned round and went back to the hut. "It will be hard work,"

said he "and there are enough of them." There were enough of them. They mended the dam by working all night and by working all day. But, as they came back, a great wave of the freshet came pouring over the dam and, though the dam stood firm, the beavers were swept away,--away and away, down the river into the sea, and they died there.

And the water-rat lived in their grand house by himself, and had all their stores of black-birch bark and willow bark and sweet poplar bark for his own.

"That was a clever rat," said the Prince Bela. "I will paint the rat on my s.h.i.+eld, when school is done." And the priest Stephen was very sad when he said so; and the Prince Ladislaus was surprised.

So they went to the play-room and painted their s.h.i.+elds. The s.h.i.+elds were made of the bark of hemlock-trees. Ladislaus chipped off the rough bark till the s.h.i.+eld was white, and made on the place the best sky-lark he could paint there. And Bela watched him, and chipped off the rough bark from his s.h.i.+eld, and said, "You paint so well, now paint my water-rat for me." "No," said Ladislaus, though he was very good-natured, "I cannot paint it well. You must paint it yourself." And Bela did so.

II.

So the boys both grew up, and one became King of Hungary, and one was the King of the Bohemians. And King Ladislaus carried on his banner the picture of a sky-lark; and the ladies of the land embroidered sky-larks for the scarfs and for the pennons of the soldiers, and for the motto of the banner were the Latin words "Propior Deo," which mean "Nearer to G.o.d." And King Bela carried the water-rat for his cognizance; and the ladies of his land embroidered water-rats for the soldiers; and his motto was "Enough."

And in these times a holy man from Palestine came through all the world; and he told how the pilgrims to the tomb of Christ were beaten and starved by the Saracens, and how many of them were dying in dungeons.

And he begged the princes and the lords and ladies, for the love of G.o.d and the love of Christ, that they would come and rescue these poor people, and secure the pilgrims in all coming time. And King Ladislaus said to his people, "We will do the best we can, and serve G.o.d as He shows us how!" And the people said, "We will do the best we can, and save the people of Christ from the infidel!" And they all came together to the place of arms; and the King chose a hundred of the bravest and healthiest of the young men, all of whom told the truth, and no one of whom was afraid to die, and they marched with him to the land of Christ; and as they marched they sang, "Propior Deo,"--"Nearer to Thee."

And Peter the Hermit went to Bohemia, and told the story of the cruel Saracens and the sufferings of the pilgrims to King Bela and his people.

And the King said, "Is it far away?" And the Hermit said, "Far, far away." And the King said, "Ah, well,--they must get out as they got in.

We will take care of Bohemia." So the Hermit went on to Saxony, to tell his story.

And King Ladislaus and his hundred true young men rode and rode day by day, and came to the Mount of Olives just in time to be at the side of the great King G.o.dfrey, when he broke the Paynim's walls, and dashed into the city of Jerusalem. And King Ladislaus and his men rode together along the Way of Tears, where Christ bore the cross-beam upon his shoulder, and he sat on the stone where the cross had been reared, and he read the gospel through again; and there he prayed his G.o.d that he might always bear his cross bravely, and that, like the Lord Jesus, he might never be afraid to die.

III.

And when they had all come home to Hungary, their time hung very heavy on their hands. And the young men said to the King, "Lead us to war against the Finns, or lead us to war against the Russ."

But the King said, "No! if they spare our people, we spare their people.

Let us have peace." And he called the young men who had fought with him, and he said, "The time hangs heavy with us; let us build a temple here to the living G.o.d, and to the honor of his Son. We will carve on its walls the story we have seen, and while we build we will remember Zion and the Way of Tears."