It was the World's Child, and the
position emphasised it. Two or three hard-featured peasants knelt
telling their beads; and a group of children with round, blue eyes
and stiff, flaxen pigtails, had gathered in front, and were
pointing and softly whispering. My little friends trotted up,
crossed themselves; it was evidently the little one's first visit.
"Guck! guck mal an," she cried, clapping her fat gloved hands,
"sieh mal an das Wickelkind!"
"Dass ist unser Jesu," said the elder, and the little one echoed
"Unser Jesu, unser Jesu!"
Then the vest was brought out and shown--why not, it was the
Christchild's own?--and the pair trotted away again followed by the
bright, patient Sister. Presently everyone clattered out, and I
was left alone at the crib of Bethlehem, the gate of the Kingdom of
Heaven.
It was my family, my only family; but like the ever-widening circle
on the surface of a lake into which a stone has been flung, here,
from this great centre, spread the wonderful ever-widening
relationship--the real brotherhood of the world. It is at the Crib
that everything has its beginning, not at the Cross; and it is only
as little children that we can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
When I went out again into the streets it was nearly dark. Anxious
mothers hurried past on late, mysterious errands; papas who were
not wanted until the last moment chatted gaily to each other at
street corners, and exchanged recollections; maidservants hastened
from shop to shop with large baskets already heavily laden; and the
children were everywhere, important with secrets, comfortably
secure in the knowledge of a tree behind the parlour doors, and a
kindly, generous Saint who knew all their wants, and needed no rod
THIS year.
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