material; and to work with plastic material is always a source of joy, whether it be the mud that the child makes into pies, the clay that the artist moulds into forms of beauty, or the facts of life that the creative imagination of the writer shapes into literature.
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE
A STORY OF THE FOREST
BY
Henry Van Dyke
This story is placed first because it is of the type that first delighted man. It is the story of high adventure, of a struggle with the forces of nature, barbarous men, and heathen gods. The hero is “a hunter of demons, a subduer of the wilderness, a woodman of the faith.” He seeks hardships and conquers them. The setting is the illimitable forest in the remote past. The forest, like the sea, makes an irresistible appeal to the imagination. Either may be the scene of the marvellous and the thrilling. Quite unlike the earliest tales, this story is enriched with description and exposition; nevertheless, it has their simplicity and dignity. It reminds us of certain of the great Biblical narratives, such as the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal and the victory of Daniel over the jealous presidents and princes of Darius. In “The First Christmas Tree,” as in many others of these stories, a third person is the narrator. But the hero may tell his own adventures. “I did this. I did that. Thus I felt at the conclusion.” Instances are Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” and Stevenson’s “Kidnapped.” But whether in the first or third person, the story holds us by the magic of adventure.
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE[3]
I
THE CALL OF THE WOODSMAN
The day before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722.
Broad snow-meadows glistening white along the banks of the river Moselle; pallid hill-sides blooming with mystic roses where the glow of the setting sun still lingered upon them; an arch of clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the centre of the aerial landscape the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel, gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all—a gentle, eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like perfume, as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the voice of the river faintly murmuring down the valley.
In the cloister, too, there was silence at the sunset hour. All day long there had been a strange and joyful stir among the nuns. A breeze of curiosity and excitement had swept along the corridors and through every quiet cell.
The elder sisters—the provost, the deaconess, the stewardess, the portress with her huge bunch of keys jingling at her girdle—had been hurrying to and fro, busied with household cares. In the huge kitchen there was a bustle of hospitable preparation. The little bandy-legged dogs that kept the spits turning before the fires had been trotting steadily for many an hour, until their tongues hung out for want of breath. The big black pots swinging from the cranes had bubbled and gurgled and shaken and sent out puffs of appetizing steam.
St. Martha was in her element. It was a field-day for her virtues.
The younger sisters, the pupils of the convent, had forsaken their Latin books and their embroidery-frames, their manuscripts and their miniatures, and fluttered through the halls in little flocks like merry snow-birds, all in black and white, chattering and whispering together. This was no day for tedious task-work, no day for grammar or arithmetic, no day for picking out illuminated letters in red and gold on stiff parchment, or patiently chasing intricate patterns over thick cloth with the slow needle. It was a holiday. A famous visitor had come to the convent.
It was Winfried of England, whose name in the Roman tongue was Boniface, and whom men called the Apostle of Germany. A great preacher; a wonderful scholar; he had written a Latin grammar himself—think of it—and he could hardly sleep without a book under his pillow; but, more than all, a great and daring traveller, a venturesome pilgrim, a high-priest of romance.
He had left his home and his fair estate in Wessex; he would not stay in the rich monastery of Nutescelle, even though they had chosen him as the abbot; he had refused a bishopric at the court of King Karl. Nothing would content him but to go out into the wild woods and preach to the heathen.
Up and down through the forests of Hesse and Thuringia, and along the borders of Saxony, he had wandered for years, with a handful of companions, sleeping under the trees, crossing mountains and marshes, now here, now there, never satisfied with ease and comfort, always in love with hardship and danger.
What a man he was! Fair and slight, but straight as a spear and strong as an oaken staff. His face was still young; the smooth skin was bronzed by wind and sun. His gray eyes, clear and kind, flashed like fire when he spoke of his adventures, and of the evil deeds of the false priests with whom he contended.
What tales he had told that day! Not of miracles wrought by sacred relics; not of courts and councils and splendid cathedrals; though he knew much of these things, and had been at Rome and received the Pope’s blessing. But to-day he had spoken of long journeyings by sea and land; of perils by fire and flood; of wolves and bears and fierce snowstorms and black nights in the lonely forest; of dark altars of heathen gods, and weird, bloody sacrifices, and narrow escapes from murderous bands of wandering savages.
The little novices had gathered around him, and their faces had grown pale and their eyes bright as they listened with parted lips, entranced in admiration, twining their arms about one another’s shoulders and holding closely together, half in fear, half in delight. The older nuns had turned from their tasks and paused, in passing by, to hear the pilgrim’s story. Too well they knew the truth of what he spoke. Many a one among them had seen the smoke rising from the ruins of her father’s roof. Many a one had a brother far away in the wild country to whom her heart went out night and day, wondering if he were still among the living.
But now the excitements of that wonderful day were over; the hour of the evening meal had come; the inmates of the cloister were assembled in the refectory.
On the daïs sat the stately Abbess Addula, daughter of King Dagobert, looking a princess indeed, in her violet tunic, with the hood and cuffs of her long white robe trimmed with fur, and a snowy veil resting like a crown on her snowy hair. At her right hand was the honored guest, and at her left hand her grandson, the young Prince Gregor, a big, manly boy, just returned from the high school.
The long, shadowy hall, with its dark-brown rafters and beams; the double rows of nuns, with their pure veils and fair faces; the ruddy glow of the slanting sunbeams striking upwards through the tops of the windows and painting a pink glow high up on the walls—it was all as beautiful as a picture, and as silent. For this was the rule of the cloister, that at the table all should sit in stillness for a little while, and then one should read aloud, while the rest listened.
“It is the turn of my grandson to read to-day,” said the abbess to Winfried; “we shall see how much he has learned in the school. Read, Gregor; the place in the book is marked.”
The tall lad rose from his seat and turned the pages of the manuscript. It was a copy of Jerome’s version of the Scriptures in Latin, and the marked place was in the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians—the passage where he describes the preparation of the Christian as the arming of a warrior for glorious battle. The young voice rang out clearly, rolling the sonorous words, without slip or stumbling, to the end of the chapter.
Winfried listened smiling. “My son,” said he, as the reader paused, “that was bravely read. Understandest thou what thou readest?”
“Surely, father,” answered the boy; “it was taught me by the masters at Treves; and we have read