E-text prepared by Michael Gray (Lost_Gamer@comcast.net)
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE
A STORY OF THE FOREST
So they took the little fir from its place
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE
BY
HENRY VAN DYKE
ILLUSTRATED BY HOWARD PYLE
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
MDCCCXCVII
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
| I | |
|---|---|
| The Call of the Woodsman | …3 |
| II | |
| The Trail Through the Forest | …27 |
| III | |
| The Shadow of the Thunder-Oak | …43 |
| IV | |
| The Felling of the Tree | …63 |
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Photogravures from Original Drawings by Howard Pyle.
| So they took the little fir from its place | …Frontispiece |
|---|---|
| The fields around lay bare to the moon | …page 24 |
| The sacred hammer of the God Thor | …40 |
| Then Winfried told the story of Bethlehem | …60 |
I
THE CALL OF THE WOODSMAN
I
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 center of the aerial landscape of 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