I do not recover my strength as I should and will be here for some time--if you care to write.
Lieutenant John M. Allen, ------ Hospital, Ward 11, Verona, Italy.
For several years I have been waiting, not daring to hope, but longing for a letter--and it came on Christmas Eve. I am answering the afternoon of Christmas Day.
The earth is mantled in white, and crystals of crisp snow give back myriad rays of dazzling light stolen from the sun. The cedar trees bend low with their fluffy white burdens; and the creek is frozen, except the riffle just above Big Rock. I was just going to say that all life had taken to itself the silence of the mountain----which is a speaking silence to its own people--when I saw a hungry little nut-hatch bobbing up and down the elm; and my red birds, thinking it time I served their dinner, flew from the cedar trees and are now whistling for me from the lilac bush.
Granny is quite feeble; so she takes a nap each afternoon in the great rocking chair, with its padded sheepskin back and bottom; and from the noise she is making seems to be enjoying it. I also hear an intimate voice, though I rarely see my friend. He is the cricket of our hearth; and now since the days are short, begins his chirping when it is time for me to feed the chickens, milk the cow and look after Silas, the old mule. We have no earthly use for that mule, but I cannot let him go. He was in the prime of his days of usefulness when I first saw the light; and now when I go out to feed him, there is a look in his old gray-lashed eyes that speaks to my heart with the voice of an old and trusting friend.
When people live as we do, the fowls of the barnyard and the creatures of the manger become their friends. They speak with a look; they come towards you with a caress; they bind themselves to your heart with an untimid trust. That old mule's look approaches worship; and his trust shall not be vain.
Grandad is not here. I stand at the door and see his grave on a knoll a little way up the mountain side. It is hedged about by a white picket fence, which I repaint each spring.
Last evening as I was wreathing it with holly and mistletoe I thought how, when I was a little girl, he carried me over the rough places and when he went to the store on Red Bird or to town, brought back something he knew would delight a little girl. Then, how the last year or two before he died, I partly paid the debt by ministering unto him. As I stood beside his grave it seemed his spirit spoke to me of unutterable things. *
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