No need to be afraid. It is safe. Christmas charity never
corrupts. Love keeps it sweet and good--the love He brought into
the world at Christmas to temper the hard reason of man. Let it
loose for that little spell. January comes soon enough with its
long cold. Always it seems to me the longest month in the year.
It is so far to another Christmas!
[Illustration: Mother.]
To say that Ribe was an old town hardly describes it to readers
at this day. A town might be old and yet have kept step with time.
In my day Ribe had not. It had never changed its step or its ways
since whale-oil lanterns first hung in iron chains across its
cobblestone-paved streets to light them at night. There they hung
yet, every rusty link squeaking dolefully in the wind that never
ceased blowing from the sea. Coal-oil, just come from America, was
regarded as a dangerous innovation. I remember buying a bottle
of "Pennsylvania oil" at the grocer's for eight skilling, as a
doubtful domestic experiment. Steel pens had not crowded out the
old-fashioned goose-quill, and pen-knives meant just what their name
implies.
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