A German Christmas Eve



It was intensely cold; Father Rhine was frozen over, so he may
speak for it; and for days we had lived to the merry jangle and
clang of innumerable sleigh bells, in a white and frost-bound
world. As I passed through the streets, crowded with stolidly
admiring peasants from the villages round, I caught the dear
remembered 'Gruss Gott!' and 'All' Heil!' of the countryside, which
town life quickly stamps out along with many other gentle
observances.

"Gelobt sei Jesu Christ!" cried little Sister Hilarius, coming on
me suddenly at a corner, her round face aglow with the sharp air,
her arms filled with queer-shaped bundles. She begs for her sick
poor as she goes along--meat here, some bread there, a bottle of
good red wine: I fancy few refuse her. She nursed me once, the
good little sister, with unceasing care and devotion, and all the
dignity of a scant five feet. "Ach, Du lieber Gott, such gifts!"
she added, with a radiant smile, and vanished up a dirty stairway.

In the Quergasse a jay fell dead at my feet--one of the many birds
which perished thus--he had flown townwards too late. Up at the
Jagdschloss the wild creatures, crying a common truce of hunger,
trooped each day to the clearing by the Jager's cottage for the
food spread for them. The great tusked boar of the Taunus with his
brother of Westphalia, the timid roe deer with her scarcely braver
mate, foxes, hares, rabbits, feathered game, and tiny songbirds of