The First Christmas Tree

The First Christmas Tree, by
Henry Van Dyke,

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Title: The First Christmas Tree A Story of the Forest
Author: Henry Van Dyke

Release Date: June 25, 2005 [eBook #16134]
Language: English
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THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE
A Story of the Forest
by
HENRY VAN DYKE
Illustrated by Howard Pyle
Charles Scribner's Sons New York University Press: John Wilson and
Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
MDCCCXCVII

[Illustration--So they took the little fir from its place]

CONTENTS
I The Call of the Woodsman
II The Trail Through the Forest
III The Shadow of the Thunder-Oak
IV The Felling of the Tree

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 . . . The sacred hammer of the God
Thor . . . Then Winfried told the story of Bethlehem . . .

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 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;