By this time the mourners were greatly stirred up, whereupon the preacher in a trembling, tearful voice averred, "When I hear this promising hymn it moves deep the spirit in me, it makes my heart glad. Why, my good friends, I could shout! I just nearly see Brother Tom over yonder a-beckoning to me and to you. He ain't on this here old troubled world no more and he won't be. Will Brother Tom be here when the peach tree is in full blowth in the spring?" "No!" wailed the flock. "Will Brother Tom be here when the leaves begin to drap in the falling weather?" again he wailed. "No!" "Will Brother Tom be up thar? Up thar?"--the swift arm of the preacher shot upward--"when Gabriel blows his trump?" "Eh, Lord, Brother Tom will be up thar!" shouted an old woman. "Amen!" boomed from the throat of everyone. As it often happened, Tom's widow had long since re-wed, but neither she nor her second mate were in the least dismayed. They wept and wailed with fervor, "He'll be thar! He'll be thar!" "Yes," boomed the preacher once more, "Brother Tom will be thar when Gabriel blows his trump!" Then abruptly in a very calm voice, not at all like that in which he had shouted, the preacher lined the hymn: Arise, my soul, and spread thy wings, A better portion trace. Having intoned the two lines the flock took up the doleful dirge. So they went on until the hymns were finished. After a general handshaking and repeated farewells and the avowed hope of meeting again come the second Sunday in May next year, the funeralizing ended. OLD CHRISTMAS Though in some isolated sections of the Blue Ridge, say in parts of the Unakas, the Cumberlands, the Dug Down Mountains of Georgia, there are people who may never have heard of the Gregorian or Julian calendar, yet in keeping Old Christmas as they do on January 6th, they cling unwittingly to the Julian calendar of 46 B.C., introduced in this country in the earliest years. To them December 25th is New Christmas, according to the Gregorian calendar adopted in 1752. They celebrate the two occasions in a very different way. The old with prayer and carol-singing, the new with gaiety and feasting. To these people there are twelve days of Christmas beginning with December 25th and ending with January 6th. In some parts of these southern mountain regions, if their forbears were of Pennsylvania German stock, they call Old Christmas Little Christmas as the Indians do. But such instances are rare rather than commonplace.