through the alders like a tongue of fire, as a cardinal grosbeak shot
down to the tangle of greenbrier and magnolia under the slope. It was a
fleck of flaming summer. As warm as summer, too, the staghorn sumac
burned on the crest of the ridge against the group of holly
trees,--trees as fresh as April, and all aglow with berries. The woods
were decorated for the holy day. The gentleness of the soft new snow
touched everything; cheer and good-will lighted the unclouded sky and
warmed the thick depths of the evergreens, and blazed in the
crimson-berried bushes of the ilex and alder. The Christmas woods were
glad.

Nor was the gladness all show, mere decoration. There was real cheer in
abundance; for I was back in the old home woods, back along the
Cohansey, back where you can pick persimmons off the trees at Christmas.
There are persons who say the Lord might have made a better berry than
the strawberry, but He didn't. Perhaps He didn't make the strawberry at
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 perfection, never quite lose their pucker, until
midwinter,--as if 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 persimmon 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,