[Gutenberg 64117] • The Christmas Holly

Excerpt from The Christmas Holly

Into the midst of this sunless mood came a surprise Right before me, in my steady but aimless track across the waste, was a clump of dwarf trees, poor, puny things that must have had a hard coming-up. I marvelled, in surveying them, that the germs from which they had struggled had had the courage to sprout in such a bar ren spot. In the centre of the coppice, head and shoul ders above his fellows, arose a holly sapling, brave with leaves of glossy green and scarlet berries. The only smile in the drear expanse, it was in itself a whole foun tain of cheer. The soil about the trunk might be frozen to stone-like hardness, but below, the great heart of Mother Earth pulsed warmly still; throwing up, at each beat, sap into the hardy frame of her winter-child strength to the lusty limbs verdure to the spiky leaves blushes to the coral beads. And while I looked, a bevy of brown-coated plump - breasted snow-birds whirled noisily across the plain, and alighted, with much twit tering and a deal of happy, useless fluttering, among the inviting branches.

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