The winters seemed colder, whether they were or not, when I was a boy; and some thirty years ago there was one Christmas week when it seemed as if the glacial period had suddenly returned. There was snow on the ground, and thick blue-black ice on the creeks and flooded meadows. One had not to take a circuitous route to reach whatever point he wished, and this to the boys of the neighborhood made the outdoor world more attractive. Not an old hollow tree, even, in the treacherous swamps, but could now be reached, and so the home of every owl, coon, or opossum, was at every boy’s mercy. What, then, if it were cold! Boots and overcoat were equal to every need, and the wide and wild world was before us. There was a skeleton in my closet, nevertheless. Christmas was approaching, but never a sign of it within the walls of the old farm-house. For years it had come and gone with scarcely a mention made of the fact; and now, having heard something of holiday festivities from city cousins, I vowed I would revolutionize the family custom in one respect. But how? A hundred plans came as if by magic, but each was handicapped by impracticability—a condition of affairs that is very common to most men’s maturer years. It must be a secret, of course. The opposition would prove formidable indeed if the matter were openly discussed. Never a Christmas had been celebrated for a full century in the old house, and why now? But I was determined, and so it came about that I had a merry Christmas. It was a simple matter, after all; and how often it happens that, after days of puzzling over the impossible, an easy solution of a difficulty comes at the proper moment! When it was time to act, all was plain enough. On one plea or another, I went from house to house, as if the call was by mere accident, and made known my wishes to a judicious member of each family visited. All agreed to broach the subject, and so it resulted that two or more members of five families, each group in blissful ignorance of his neighbor’s movements, determined to spend the day with my grandfather. It was the first surprise party in that staid Quaker neighborhood, and never before so merry a Christmas. Of course the originator was all innocence; but the puzzled expression on his grandfather’s face and the perplexity of the women-folk were fun indeed to him. “There’s company coming,” I remarked, as a carriage turned in the lane. “Sure enough!” remarked my aunt, who, turning to her sister, added, “And there is almost nothing for dinner.” I grinned. Before the first carriage drove up to the house, a second was in sight, and the third was not far behind. “Truly,” remarked neighbor A to neighbor B, “we did not expect to meet thee here. We’ve been intending to drive over for some time, but the work at home prevented.” “And that is what I was about to remark; the same impulse has moved us both.” A certain small boy smiled.