Do you remember how Christmas came last year? how there was a waiting
pause, when the great States stood still, and from the peoples came the
first awful murmurs of the storm that was to shake the earth? how men's
hearts failed them for fear, how women turned pale and held their
children closer to their breasts, while they heard a far cry of
lamentation for their country that had fallen? Do you remember how,
through the fury of men's anger, the storehouses of God were opened for
that land? how the very sunshine gathered new splendors, the rains more
fruitful moisture, until the earth poured forth an unknown fulness
of life and beauty? Was there no promise there, no prophecy? Do you
remember, while the very life of the people hung in doubt before them,
while the angel of death came again to pass over the land, and there was
no blood on any door-post to keep him from that house, how slowly
the old earth folded in her harvest, dead, till it should waken to a
stronger life? how quietly, as the time came near for the birth of
Christ, this old earth made ready for his coming, heedless of the clamor
of men? how the air grew fresher, day by day, and the gray deep silently
opened for the snow to go down and screen and whiten and make holy that
fouled earth? I think the slow-falling snow did not fail in its quiet
warning; for I remember that men, too, in a feeble way tried to make
ready for the birth of Christ.
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