Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration

The twilight of a Christmas Eve, gray with the portent of coming snow, crept slowly over the old plantation of Brierwood, softening the outlines of a decrepit house still rearing its roof in massive dignity and a tumbledown barn flanked by barren fields. A quiet melancholy hovered about the old house as if it brooded over a host of bygone Yuletides alive with the shouts of merry negroes and the jingle of visiting sleighs--Yuletides when the snowy dusk had been ushered in to the lowing of cattle and the neighing of horses safely housed in the old barn. There were no negroes now, no blooded stock--no fluttering fowls save one belligerent old turkey gobbler fleeing from a white-haired darky who tried in vain to drive him to his roost in the barn.