What an appetite the little folks had for the good things!  How the old ones helped them dispose of these creature comforts! while such as were half way between, were too busy with other matters to think much of the eatables.  Solomon Jenkins and Katie Edmunds had had a falling out.  He was the miller at Stony Brook; but the “course of true love never did run smooth” with him; he could not coax Katie’s to brook into his stream; it would turn off some other way.  But that night Katie herself broke down the hindrance, and the two little brooks became one great stream of love, and flowed on together, inseparable; now dimpling, deepening, and whirling away full of beauty towards the great ocean of eternity.

Uncle Nathan and Aunt Kindly, how happy they were, seeing the joy of all the company! they looked like two new Redeemers,—­which indeed they were.  The minister said,—­“Well, I have been preaching charity and forgiveness and a cheerful happiness all my life, now I see signs of the ‘good time coming.’  There’s forgiveness of injuries,” pointing to Colonel Stearns and Mr. Wilkinson; “old enemies reconciled.  All my sermons don’t seem to accomplish so much as your Christmas Festival, Mr. Robinson,” said he, addressing Uncle Nathan.  “We only watered the ground,” said Aunt Kindly, “where the seed was long since sown by other hands; only it does seem to come up abundantly, and all at once.”  Then the minister told the people a new Christmas story; and before they went home they all joined together and sung this hymn to the good tune of Old Hundred: 

     “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
     Does his successive journeys run;
     His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
     Till moons shall wax and wane no more.

     Blessings abound where’er he reigns;
     The prisoner leaps to loose his chains;
     The weary find eternal rest,
     And all the sons of want are bless’d.”