The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1914-12-09
CHRISTMAS CAROLS


In that mellow tone that only the
Dean of American Letters can COM
mand, the editor of the December
Harper's Easy Chair recalls in the
tranquil ands all-sensing fashion that
through the years has won him so de-
voted company of readers all the ex-
!quisite effects upon him a season age
of the singing of Christmas carols
in the streets of Boston. After an
absence of many years, Mr.. Howells
again a temporary resident of the
learned city, found himself on Christ
mas eve listening to carols sung
where their sweet sound had not been
heard since the colony days if, indeed
they had ever there been heard.
In the particular neighborhood of
which he writes it has been the i'm
memorial habit to light candles in the
windows on the Christmas eve, and
their effect together with that of the
thrilling strains of the glad Noel he
his which seems alike to illuminate his
own experience and to make vivid
ones own past and ones own desires
for the future. Somehow it Is not easy
to quote Mr.. Howells, for the picture
is complete only with all the strokes
of his great art but at least it is not
entirely spoiled by the separation of
some parts from their context
For we were all to take part
in the pleasure, the better than
pleasure, of hearing the Christmas
Carols hidden back from the Old Eng
Iish times to echo in that New England
air as il they had down through the
Puritan centuries, never let Christ
mas Eve pass without their singing.
From time to time the Waits,
as one may fondly but ineXactly
call them paused in the middle of the
street and sang their carols Always
they were the heart-swelling utter
ance of the religious emotion which
may be the best if not the most OF
religion: they uttered love, worship,
pity, hope; something wild mystical,
past imagining. The dim air lent it
self to the effect, and the moving and
pausing crowd, black under the vague
trees, was our modernity remanded to
the conditions of the races younger
life. Friends recognized friends and
spoke gladly to one another as if they
had not met for long time; in the
pauses of the singing we laughed for
joy as we followed the Waits, and stop
ped when they stopped and listened
again till they came again to their
sweet cry of Noel, Noel!'
Christmas in the grosser form OF
holiday we have had increasingly these
many years, since Dickens established
the cult of it and repaganized the
world-old festival in a saturnalia of
overeating and drinking; and we all
know what a WEAKNESS to the soul
and body it has become in the shop
ping and the giving and taking of
gifts. There is no lack either of eccles-
iastical observance; the churches keep
that going indoors, but the religion
does not come outdoors to the people
in the street elsewhere as it came last
Christmas Eve on The Hill.
Christmas comes but once year,
md one cannot have the carols too Of
en- with that space of time between.
We who grow tired from waking old
n the morning must remember the
children who wake young, who cannot
AVE a thing too often, who rejoice in
nv repetition as if it were a primal
aspiration. What we are to do now
aore than ever is to hold fast to every
lie that binds us to the promise OF
eace on earth, good will to men. Who
nows but that before the Christmas
ay so near shall dawn time of last
NJ peace may not have come to the,