The voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer were gone. The very face
of things had changed; all had been reduced, made plain, simple, single,
pure! There was less for the senses, but how much keener now their joy!
The wide landscape, the frosty air, the tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out
of the quiet of the falling twilight, the voice of the quail!

There is no day but is beautiful in the woods; and none more beautiful
than one like this Christmas Day,--warm and still and wrapped, to the
round red berries of the holly, in the magic of the snow.


NOTES

=cripple=:--A dense thicket in swampy land.

=good-will=:--See the Bible, Luke 2:13, 14.

=Cohansey=:--A creek in southern New Jersey.


QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

Read the selection through once without stopping. Afterward, go through
it with these questions:--

Why might the snow mean a "hungry Christmas"? Note the color words in
paragraph three: Of what value are they? Why does the pond seem small to
the visitor? Does the author mean anything more than persimmons in the
last part of the paragraph beginning "I filled both pockets"? What sort
of man do you think he is? What is the meaning of "broken bread"? What