Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1890-12-26
no W TITE CYRLST CIfILD CAME
TO FRIDA.

Eugene Fieid.
|
no W TIfE CfRIST CHILD CAMI
TO FRIDA.
Leipsic is not fine modern city hk,
Berlin, neither is it a treasure house of an
tiquity like romantic old Nuremberg. Il
has always been, as it is today, a business
city, with its shrewd burghers living anC
working-and dying, perhaps-with an ey,
mainly 10 profit
Yet there is this mystery about it, that
though one begin by calling it uninterest
ing, one will end, if one stay long enough
by loving it.
Frida loved it, One year ago she had
come down from the Erzgebirge, wher,
there are cavernous forests, and flower.
embroidered, rivuet-streaked valleys, and
where she had lived her few years so gee
fully that her grandfather had been troubled
at the thought of bringing his little country
lass TO the city
But Frida, as we said, loved Leipsic. She
loved the wide promenades which now sur
round the old city in place Of its walls and
the homely ancient churches, with their
music on Sundays and church festivals
and the market place, where peasant women
sit haggling under immense yellow um-
brelas and the fairs at Easter aud Mich
aelmas, when in a single night all the prom
enades blossom with enchanted booths
| The teeming city life-Of soldier and stu
dent, burgher aud peasant-was as welcome
to her sympathetic mind as had been the
| country spaces TO her healthy little body.
Waking at night to the roll Of wagon wheels
and the ring Of passing feet, she smiled
contentedy, and was lulled back to sleep
| by them, as once she had been bv the voices
of the wind in the tir-trees
She knew hut few people. Yet she was
never lonely In her idle moments she
would look from the windows of their fourth
Hat over the queer, irregular city roofs
and far down into the street, and away in
the bustling square beyond The pigeons
that pompously promenaded the house
lodges were her friends SO were the peo-
pie in the flats across the street, particular
ly the family in the third fiat exactly oppo-
site, where we're girls aud boys and a grand
mother, and a dear baby in Bettchen, who
sometimes stretched out his arms to her
through the open window.
One evening in November Frida was pre-
pairing her grandtather's supper lie had
never been so late, she thought, as she went
out on the landing place, and peered down
into the well of darkness there Then the
coffee boiled over with such a sputter that
she did not hear his key at the door. nor his
heavy step in the hall, and started to find
him standing behind her
"Oh, grandfather, where have you been Z"
she cried
why, child where should be but where
| always am p he responded
He was very little man, with face so
crossed and recrossed with wrinkles that
any one not familiar with German peasant
faces would have thought him at least a
century old. Yet he had strong pair of
shoulders, and those were pleasant lines
about his faded blue eyes and pursed up
mouth. When he had given Frida her kiss
he proceeded to make himself ready for
supper and finally sat down to the table
with his sandy locks very sleek indeed
"Where should | be but where always
am, lass y he repeated then, as though he
had been turning the thought over in his
mind
"Oh, don't know But you did seem so
late There's something I've been waiting
ever since morning to tell you. Grandfather,
/ er, you remember the new gentleman that's
come with a beautiful lady, down on the
| first iiat-the great, great man''-Frida
extended both arms and looked up-"with
ever so much hair, and a deep voice, and
cane =
II couldn't speak myself as to the voice.
| But do know the gentleman you mean
the last-comer -
"Yes. Well, as | stood at the door this
morning he went out, and Frau Kromeyer
was Just coming in, and she said, There
| goes the American gentleman.
TO be sure-to be sure :" exclaimed the
/ old man. Then smile broke slowly over
his face, and he rubbed his hands ruthless
ly through his hair.
| Frida slipped from her seat, and went
around and stood at his knee "Grandfa-
ther, do you think he could have known
father =
He looked at her a full minute Then he
gently pushed her away There, there,
Frida, how fast you are Do ! suppose he
has known the father No, can't say do
America is big place-bigger, I've heard
say, than Germany. How is it likely -
Nevertheless the grandfather ate little
supper; and afterward he did not take up
the Leipzger Iagesblatt, as was his Gus
tom, spreading it out on the table, and
bending over it, with knobby forefnger
| travelling along the lines for his eyes to
follow but he wheeled about and sat study
ing the porcelain tiled stove. And when
Frida's work was done, he took her upon
his knee and talked of their home in Err
gebirge how strong a man he was when
he took his young wife to the cottage at
the cross roads the bright days when work
was plenty and the cupboards full and the
dark years when the mother died, and the
children until only Hans was left how
bravely Hans worked and brought home his
own bride, and how the little baby follow
81 . h.,
again But one day he said Father
give me your blessing For the wifes and
the child's sake, | cannot stay here TO lead
the life you have lived I'm off to Amer
ica."
Here the grandfather talk stopped He
never spoke of the young mothers death,
nor of that sorrow of hope deferred in which
he still lived. For if no word had yet come
from America, it still might come any day.
He was always waiting.
They kissed each other and went to bed.
Frida fell quickly asleep. But suddenly she
was sitting up, startled in the darkness.
Was it a cry she had heard 1t came again
from her grandfather's room.
Hans ~ he cried, sharp and loud
She sprang out, and stole across the cold
floor, and stood shivering at his sill. But
now his breathing was heavy and even, and
she fled back to bed
Not to sleep. Too many thoughts came.
Grandfather was so poor, so old, and work
ed so hard. She had never thought about
it until one day when Frau Kromeyar was
there, the char woman who lived in a part
of their flat and sometimes worked for
them The grandfather grows feeble"
said the Frau And then she muttered
dreadful thing under her cap ruifes "When
ba ha will no igEl lr haf
it mean What should she do Oh, that
the father would come and take care of
them-the father whom she had never
known
Could he be still living Then where was
he Z One there was who knew. If He would
but tell them He used TO send angels
Could He not send them now
Then she almost laughed aloud Why,
there was one who came
On Christmas eve, when all the world was
waiting, the blessed Christ Child came into
mems houses right before children's ewes
There were six weeks before Christmas
She could pray much in six weeks. And
thus it was that she fell asleep at last, pray
ing softly, over and over, Dear God, on
Christmas eve please send the Christ Child
to little Frida Schaefer."
The next morning Herr Schaefer would
not let his granddaughter go down with him
to the street door as usual
mo, no, It's bitter cold you're best off
by the fire, ~ he said, aud hurried downthe
four flights of stairs into the court
But here he paced back and forth and
across, and in fact fingered so long that
when DR.. Farland, the American gentle
man, came down halfhour later, he found
an odd little old man smiling and bowing TO
him in the doorway
Good morning, said the doctor
Good morning sir, said the little old