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Aunt Targood's gander had been the terror of many well-meaning people,
and of some evildoers, for many years. I have seen tramps and
pack-peddlers enter the gate, and start on toward the door, when there
would sound that ringing warning like a war-blast. "Honk, honk!" and in
a few minutes these unwelcome people would be gone. Farm-house boarders
from the city would sometimes enter the yard, thinking to draw water by
the old well-sweep: in a few minutes it was customary to hear shrieks,
and to see women and children flying over the walls, followed by
air-rending "honks!" and jubilant cackles from the victorious gander and
his admiring family.

"Aunt, what makes you keep that gander, year after year?" said I, one
evening, as we were sitting on the lawn before the door. "Is it because
he is a kind of a watch-dog, and keeps troublesome people away?"

"No, child, no; I do not wish to keep most people away, not well-behaved
people, nor to distress nor annoy any one. The fact is, there is a
story about that gander that I do not like to speak of to every
one--something that makes me feel tender toward him; so that if he needs
a whipping, I would rather do it. He knows something that no one else
knows. I could not have him killed or sent away. You have heard me speak
of Nathaniel, my oldest boy?"

"Yes."

"That is his picture in my room, you know. He was a good boy to me. He
loved his mother. I loved Nathaniel--you cannot think how much I loved
Nathaniel. It was on my account that he went away.

"The farm did not produce enough for us all: Nathaniel, John, and I. We
worked hard and had a hard time. One year--that was ten years ago--we
were sued for our taxes.

"'Nathaniel,' said I, 'I will go to taking boarders.'

"Then he looked up to me and said (oh, how noble and handsome he
appeared to me!):

"'Mother, I will go to sea.'

"'Where?' asked I, in surprise.

"'In a coaster.'

"I turned white. How I felt!

"'You and John can manage the place,' he continued. 'One of the vessels
sails next week--Uncle Aaron's; he offers to take me.'

"It seemed best, and he made preparations to go.

"The spring before, Skipper Ben--you have met Skipper Ben--had given me
some goose eggs; he had brought them from Canada, and said that they
were wild-goose eggs.

"I set them under hens. In four weeks I had three goslings. I took them
into the house at first, but afterward made a pen for them out in the
yard. I brought them up myself, and one of those goslings is that
gander.

"Skipper Ben came over to see me, the day before Nathaniel was to sail.
Aaron came with him.

"I said to Aaron:

"'What can I give to Nathaniel to carry to sea with him to make him
think of home? Cake, preserves, apples? I haven't got much; I have done
all I can for him, poor boy.'

"Brother looked at me curiously, and said:

"'Give him one of those wild geese, and we will fatten it on shipboard
and will have it for our Thanksgiving dinner.'

"What brother Aaron said pleased me. The young gander was a noble bird,
the handsomest of the lot; and I resolved to keep the geese to kill for
my own use and to give _him_ to Nathaniel.

"The next morning--it was late in September--I took leave of Nathaniel.
I tried to be calm and cheerful and hopeful. I watched him as he went
down the walk with the gander struggling under his arms. A stranger
would have laughed, but I did not feel like laughing; it was true that
the boys who went coasting were usually gone but a few months and came
home hardy and happy. But when poverty compels a mother and son to part,
after they have been true to each other, and shared their feelings in
common, it seems hard, it seems hard--though I do not like to murmur or
complain at anything allotted to me.

"I saw him go over the hill. On the top he stopped and held up the
gander. He disappeared; yes, my own Nathaniel disappeared. I think of
him now as one who disappeared.

"November came--it was a terrible month on the coast that year. Storm
followed storm; the sea-faring people talked constantly of wrecks and
losses. I could not sleep on the nights of those high winds. I used to
lie awake thinking over all the happy hours I had lived with Nathaniel.

"Thanksgiving week came.

"It was full of an Indian-summer brightness after the long storms. The
nights were frosty, bright, and calm.

"I could sleep on those calm nights.

"One morning, I thought I heard a strange sound in the woodland pasture.
It was like a wild goose. I listened; it was repeated. I was lying in
bed. I started up--I thought I had been dreaming.

"On the night before Thanksgiving I went to bed early, being very tired.
The moon was full; the air was calm and still. I was thinking of
Nathaniel, and I wondered if he would indeed have the gander for his
Thanksgiving dinner: if it would be cooked as well as I would have
cooked it, and if he would think of me that day.

"I was just going to sleep, when suddenly I heard a sound that made me
start up and hold my breath.

"'_Honk_!'

"I thought it was a dream followed by a nervous shock.

"'_Honk! honk_!'

"There it was again, in the yard. I was surely awake and in my senses.

"I heard the geese cackle.

"'_Honk! honk! honk_!'

"I got out of bed and lifted the curtain. It was almost as light as day.
Instead of two geese there were three. Had one of the neighbors' geese
stolen away?

"I should have thought so, and should not have felt disturbed, but for
the reason that none of the neighbors' geese had that peculiar
call--that hornlike tone that I had noticed in mine.

"I went out of the door.

"The third goose looked like the very gander I had given Nathaniel.
Could it be?

"I did not sleep. I rose early and went to the crib for some corn.

"It was a gander--a 'wild' gander--that had come in the night. He seemed
to know me.

"I trembled all over as though I had seen a ghost. I was so faint that I
sat down on the meal-chest.

"As I was in that place, a bill pecked against the door. The door
opened. The strange gander came hobbling over the crib-stone and went to
the corn-bin. He stopped there, looked at me, and gave a sort of glad
"honk," as though he knew me and was glad to see me.

"I was certain that he was the gander I had raised, and that Nathaniel
had lifted into the air when he gave me his last recognition from the
top of the hill.

"It overcame me. It was Thanksgiving. The church bell would soon be
ringing as on Sunday. And here was Nathaniel's Thanksgiving dinner; and
brother Aaron's--had it flown away? Where was the vessel?

"Years have passed--ten. You know I waited and waited for my boy to come
back. December grew dark with its rainy seas; the snows fell; May
lighted up the hills, but the vessel never came back. Nathaniel--my
Nathaniel--never returned.

"That gander knows something he could tell me if he could talk. Birds
have memories. He remembered the corn-crib--he remembered something
else. I wish he _could_ talk, poor bird! I wish he could talk. I will
never sell him, nor kill him, nor have him abused. _He knows!_"

=Whittier's Birthday=

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Born December 17, 1807 Died September 7, 1892

Whittier is known not only as a poet, but as a reformer and author. He
was a member of the Society of Friends. He attended a New England
academy; worked on a farm; taught school in order to afford further
education, and at the age of twenty-two edited a paper at Boston. He was
a leading opponent of slavery and was several times attacked by mobs on
account of his opinions.

=THE BOYHOOD OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER=

BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING

The life of Whittier may be read in his poems, and, by putting a note
here and a date there, a full autobiography might be compiled from them.
His boyhood and youth are depicted in them with such detail that little
need be added to make the story complete, and that little, reverently
done as it may be, must seem poor in comparison with the poetic beauty
of his own revelations.

What more can we do to show his early home than to quote from his own
beautiful poem, "Snow-bound"? There the house is pictured for us, inside
and out, with all its furnishings; and those who gather around its
hearth, inmates and visitors, are set before us so clearly that long
after the book has been put away they remain as distinct in the memory
as portraits that are visible day after day on the walls of our own
homes. He reproduces in his verse the landscapes he saw, the legends of
witches and Indians he listened to, the schoolfellows he played with,
the voices of the woods and fields, and the round of toil and pleasure
in a country boy's life; and in other poems his later life, with its
impassioned devotion to freedom and lofty faith, is reflected as lucidly
as his youth is in "Snow-bound" and "The Barefoot Boy."

He himself was "The Barefoot Boy," and what Robert Burns said of himself
Whittier might repeat: "The poetic genius of my country found me, as the
prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha, at the plow, and threw her inspiring
mantle over me." He was a farmer's son, born at a time when farm-life in
New England was more frugal than it is now, and with no other heritage
than the good name and example of parents and kinsmen, in whom simple
virtues--thrift, industry, and piety--abounded.

His birthplace still stands near Haverhill, Mass.,--a house in one of
the hollows of the surrounding hills, little altered from what it was in
1807, the year he was born, when it was already at least a century and a
half old.

[Illustration: WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE, NEAR HAVERHILL, MASS.]

He had no such opportunities for culture as Holmes and Lowell had in
their youth. His parents were intelligent and upright people of
limited means, who lived in all the simplicity of the Quaker faith, and
there was nothing in his early surroundings to encourage and develop a
literary taste. Books were scarce, and the twenty volumes on his
father's shelves were, with one exception, about Quaker doctrines and
Quaker heroes. The exception was a novel, and that was hidden away from
the children, for fiction was forbidden fruit. No library or scholarly
companionship was within reach; and if his gift had been less than
genius, it could never have triumphed over the many disadvantages with
which it had to contend. Instead of a poet he would have been a farmer
like his forefathers. But literature was a spontaneous impulse with him,
as natural as the song of a bird; and he was not wholly dependent on
training and opportunity, as he would have been had he possessed mere
talent.

Frugal from necessity, the life of the Whittiers was not sordid nor
cheerless to him, moreover; and he looks back to it as tenderly as if it
had been full of luxuries. It was sweetened by strong affections, simple
tastes, and an unflinching sense of duty; and in all the members of the
household the love of nature was so genuine that meadow, wood, and
river yielded them all the pleasure they needed, and they scarcely
missed the refinements of art.

Surely there could not be a pleasanter or more homelike picture than
that which the poet has given us of the family on the night of the great
storm when the old house was snowbound:

"Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat.
And ever when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.
The house-dog on his paws outspread,
Laid to the fire his drowsy head;
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall,
And for the winter fireside meet
Between the andiron's straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And close at hand the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood."

For a picture of the poet himself we must turn to the verses in "The
Barefoot Boy," in which he says:

"O for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden-wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches, too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!"[1]

[Illustration: THE OLD SCHOOL-HOUSE, HAVERHILL, MASS.]

I doubt if any boy ever rose to intellectual eminence who had fewer
opportunities for education than Whittier. He had no such pasturage to
browse on as is open to every reader who, by simply reaching them out,
can lay his hands on the treasures of English literature. He had to
borrow books wherever they could be found among the neighbors who were
willing to lend, and he thought nothing of walking several miles for one
volume. The only instruction he received was at the district school,
which was open a few weeks in midwinter, and at the Haverhill Academy,
which he attended two terms of six months each, paying tuition by work
in spare hours, and by keeping a small school himself. A feeble spirit
would have languished under such disadvantages. But Whittier scarcely
refers to them, and instead of begging for pity, he takes them as part
of the common lot, and seems to remember only what was beautiful and
good in his early life.

Occasionally a stranger knocked at the door of the old homestead in the
valley; sometimes it was a distinguished Quaker from abroad, but oftener
it was a peddler or some vagabond begging for food, which was seldom
refused. Once a foreigner came and asked for lodgings for the night--a
dark, repulsive man, whose appearance was so much against him that Mrs.
Whittier was afraid to admit him. No sooner had she sent him away,
however, than she repented. "What if a son of mine was in a strange
land?" she thought. The young poet (who was not yet recognized as such)
offered to go out in search of him, and presently returned with him,
having found him standing in the roadway just as he had been turned away
from another house.

[Illustration: JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER]

"He took his seat with us at the supper-table," says Whittier in one of
his prose sketches, "and when we were all gathered around the hearth
that cold autumnal evening, he told us, partly by words and partly by
gestures, the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with
descriptions of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny
clime, edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of chestnuts,
and in the morning, when, after breakfast, his dark sallow face lighted
up, and his fierce eyes moistened with grateful emotion as in his own
silvery Tuscan accent he poured out his thanks, we marveled at the fears
which had so nearly closed our doors against him, and as he departed we
all felt that he had left with us the blessing of the poor."

Another guest came to the house one day. It was a vagrant old Scotchman,
who, when he had been treated to bread and cheese and cider, sang some
of the songs of Robert Burns, which Whittier then heard for the first
time, and which he never forgot. Coming to him thus as songs reached the
people before printing was invented, through gleemen and minstrels,
their sweetness lingered in his ears, and he soon found himself singing
in the same strain. Some of his earliest inspirations were drawn from
Burns, and he tells us of his joy when one day, after the visit of the
old Scotchman, his schoolmaster loaned him a copy of that poet's works.
"I began to make rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adventures,"
he says in his simple way.

Indeed, he began to rhyme very early and kept his gift a secret from
all, except his oldest sister, fearing that his father, who was a
prosaic man, would think that he was wasting time. He wrote under the
fence, in the attic, in the barn--wherever he could escape observation;
and as pen and ink were not always available, he sometimes used chalk,
and even charcoal. Great was the surprise of the family when some of his
verses were unearthed, literally unearthed, from under a heap of rubbish
in a garret; but his father frowned upon these evidences of the bent of
his mind, not out of unkindness, but because he doubted the sufficiency
of the boy's education for a literary life, and did not wish to inspire
him with hopes which might never be fulfilled.

His sister had faith in him, nevertheless, and, without his knowledge,
she sent one of his poems to the editor of _The Free Press_, a newspaper
published in Newburyport. Whittier was helping his father to repair a
stone wall by the roadside when the carrier flung a copy of the paper to
him, and, unconscious that anything of his was in it, he opened it and
glanced up and down the columns. His eyes fell on some verses called
"The Exile's Departure."

"Fond scenes, which delighted my youthful existence,
With feelings of sorrow I bid ye adieu--
A lasting adieu; for now, dim in the distance,
The shores of Hibernia recede from my view.
Farewell to the cliffs, tempest-beaten and gray,
Which guard the loved shores of my own native land;
Farewell to the village and sail-shadowed bay,
The forest-crowned hill and the water-washed strand."

His eyes swam; it was his own poem, the first he ever had in print.

[Illustration: WHITTIER'S STUDY AT AMESBURY, MASS.]

"What is the matter with thee?" his father demanded, seeing how dazed he
was; but, though he resumed his work on the wall, he could not speak,
and he had to steal a glance at the paper again and again, before he
could convince himself that he was not dreaming. Sure enough, the poem
was there with his initial at the foot of it,--"W., Haverhill, June 1st,
1826,"--and, better still, this editorial notice: "If 'W.,' at
Haverhill, will continue to favor us with pieces beautiful as the one
inserted in our poetical department of to-day, we shall esteem it a
favor."

Fame never passes true genius by, and when it came it brought with it
the love and reverence of thousands, who recognize in Whittier a nature
abounding in patience, unselfishness, and all the sweetness of Christian
charity.

[Footnote 1: The selections from Mr. Whittier's poems contained in this
article are included by kind permission of Messrs. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.]

=Christmas=

_December 25_

A festival held every year in memory of the birth of Christ. Christmas
is essentially a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving and of good will
toward others. Many customs older than Christianity mark the
festivities. In our country the observance of the day was discouraged in
colonial times, and in England in 1643 Parliament abolished the day. Now
its celebration is world-wide and by all classes and creeds.

=HOW UNCLE SAM OBSERVES CHRISTMAS=

BY CLIFFORD HOWARD

Of course Uncle Sam is best acquainted with the good old-fashioned
Christmas--the kind we have known all about since we were little bits of
children. There are the Christmas trees with their pretty decorations
and candles, and the mistletoe and holly and all sorts of evergreens to
make the house look bright, while outside the trees are bare, the ground
is white with snow, and Jack Frost is prowling around, freezing up the
ponds and pinching people's noses. And then there is dear old Santa
Claus with his reindeer, galloping about on the night before Christmas,
and scrambling down chimneys to fill the stockings that hang in a row by
the fireplace.

It is the time of good cheer and happiness and presents for everybody;
the time of chiming bells and joyful carols; of turkey and candy and
plum-pudding and all the other good things that go to make up a truly
merry Christmas. And here and there throughout the country, some of the
quaint old customs of our forefathers are still observed at this time,
as, for instance, the pretty custom of "Christmas waits"--boys and girls
who go about from house to house on Christmas eve, or early Christmas
morning, singing carols.

But, aside from the Christmas customs we all know so well, Uncle Sam has
many strange and special ways of observing Christmas; for in this big
country of his there are many different kinds of people, and they all do
not celebrate Christmas in the same way, as you shall see.

=IN THE SOUTH=

Siss! Bang! Boom! Sky-rockets hissing, crackers snapping, cannons
roaring, horns tooting, bells ringing, and youngsters shouting with wild
delight. That is the way Christmas begins down South.

[Illustration: CHRISTMAS IN THE SOUTH]

It starts at midnight, or even before; and all day long fire-crackers
are going off in the streets of every city, town, and village of the
South, from Virginia to Louisiana. A Northern boy, waking up suddenly in
New Orleans or Mobile or Atlanta, would think he was in the midst of
a rousing Fourth-of-July celebration. In some of the towns the brass
bands come out and add to the jollity of the day by marching around and
playing "My Maryland" and "Dixie"; while the soldier companies parade up
and down the streets to the strains of joyous music and fire salutes
with cannons and rifles.

To the girls and boys of the South, Christmas is the noisiest and
jolliest day of the year. The Fourth of July doesn't compare with it.
And as for the darkies, they look upon Christmas as a holiday that was
invented for their especial happiness. They take it for granted that all
the "white folks" they know will give them presents; and with grinning
faces they are up bright and early, asking for "Christmus gif', mistah;
Christmus gif, missus." No one thinks of refusing them, and at the end
of the day they are richer and happier than at any other time during the
whole year.

Except for the jingle of sleigh-bells and the presence of Jack Frost, a
Christmas in the South is in other ways very much like that in the
North. The houses are decorated with greens, mistletoe hangs above the
doorways, Santa Claus comes down the chimneys and fills the waiting
stockings, while Christmas dinner is not complete without the familiar
turkey and cranberry sauce, plum puddings and pies.

=IN NEW ENGLAND=

For a great many years there was no Christmas in New England. The
Pilgrims and the Puritans did not believe in such celebrations. In fact,
they often made it a special point to do their hardest work on Christmas
day, just to show their contempt for what they considered a pagan
festival.

During colonial times there was a law in Massachusetts forbidding any
one to celebrate Christmas; and if anybody was so rash in those days as
to go about tooting a horn and shouting a "Merry Christmas!" he was
promptly brought to his senses by being arrested and punished.

[Illustration: CHRISTMAS SPORTS IN NEW ENGLAND]

Of course things are very different in New England now, but in many
country towns the people still make more of Thanksgiving than they do of
Christmas; and there are hundreds of New England men and women still
living who knew nothing of Christmas as children--who never hung up
their stockings; who never waited for Santa Claus; who never had a
tree; who never even had a Christmas present!

Nowadays, however, Christmas in New England is like Christmas anywhere
else; but here and there, even now, the effects of the early Puritan
ideas may still be seen. In some of the smaller and out-of-the-way towns
and villages you will find Christmas trees and evergreens in only a very
few of the houses, and in some places--particularly in New
Hampshire--one big Christmas tree does for the whole town. This tree is
set up in the town hall, and there the children go to get their gifts,
which have been hung on the branches by the parents. Sometimes the tree
has no decorations--no candles, no popcorn strings, no shiny balls.
After the presents are taken off and given to the children, the tree
remains perfectly bare. There is usually a short entertainment of
recitations and songs, and a speech or two perhaps, and then the little
folks, carrying their presents with them, go back to their homes.

=IN NEW MEXICO=

In certain parts of New Mexico, among the old Spanish settlements, the
celebration of Christmas begins more than a week before the day. In the
evenings, a party of men and women go together to the house of some
friend--a different house being visited each evening. When they arrive,
they knock on the door and begin to sing, and when those in the house
ask, "Who is there?" they reply, "The Virgin Mary and St. Joseph seek
lodgings in your house." At first the inmates of the house refuse to let
them in. This is done to carry out the Bible story of Joseph and Mary
being unable to find lodgings in Bethlehem. But in a little while the
door is opened and the visitors are heartily welcomed. As soon as they
enter, they kneel and repeat a short prayer; and when the devotional
exercises are concluded, the rest of the evening is spent in
merrymaking.

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