A CHRISTMAS IN WAR TIME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 32, 17 December 1897, Page 33 (Supplement)

A CHRISTMAS IN WAR TIME.

A TRUE STORY.

(By Charlotte Curtis Smith, in Arc Maria.') Ix the year 18fi2 Dennis O'Hare enlisted in the th regiment of Wisconsin, and marched southward to join the army. All his friends marvelled at his going to war. for he left six children at home for his wife to support. ■'Don't mind me and the little ones. With the help of God we'll weather it through." said his brav^-hearted wife. '•Hip, hip, hooray!" gaily shouted his four boys, as they stood on the top rail or the garden-tence to watch their father march away. But the two girls clung to their mother's skirts and cried when they heard the music of the drums and fifes and the measured tread of the soldiers. For two years the mother and the six children got on very comfortably. Mrs. O'Hare did plain bewing and washing and cleaning for the village people ; so she paid her rent and provided for her six children. But in the autumn of ISI>4 the timts were hard. The Wiir made money scarce and priors high. Everyone suffered. The village people could not afford to hire good Mrs. O'Hare to sew or « ;is)i or clean, and consequently slm could not; pay her rent. To bo sure she, heard now anil then irom her husband, and there was always money in his letters.. But with the small sum she received she could not pay her rent and buy lood tor the children too ; so ohe fed her little one-; and let the rent go unpaid. But the landlord cud not agree with Mrs. O'ilare's plan. He demanded his money ; and one week he told her that she must pay the rent the following Saturday or leave the house. Saturday came and she could not meet the debt, so the cruel landlord moved her furniture out of the house into the street. The poor mother with her little brood fluttcreil wildly about. Where could she go .' Where could she find shelter / '• I know a good place to <;o,'' declared Dennie, her oldest boy. ■' There's an old freight-car beside the railroad track, about half a mile from the village. Let's move in there. Sure no one'll charge us rent for it." " Anywhere — anywhere for a roof over our heads," his mother answered. Immediately the children got a wheelbarrow and began moving the stove, tables, chairs, dihhes, beds and bedding down to the old abandoned freight-car ; and before sunset the O'Haie family and all their furniture were inside the car. Then the boys set up the cook-ing-stove, and the mother cooked a warm supper ; and by nine o'clock the beds were set up. And that night the soldier's family slept soundly — except when a train went thundering by, jarring the little beds, and making the children imagine that someone was after the rent. Life in a freight-car Avas great sport for the O'Hare children. Now all their work seemed like play. They were very busy until snow fell, banking the outside of the car with leaves and sand, and carrying sticks and dead branches for the winter firewood. There were windows in one end of the car, and the wintry sunshine shone inside, making the place warm and cheerful. And at night, when the wolves were howling in the distance, the children were not at all frightened ; they felt that the passing trains protected them. But there was one thing that worried the mother ; how was she going to make a merry Christmas for her children? Every year until the father went to the war the children had received gifts and eaten a turkey dinner. Since the father left they had given up the gifts, but they had had the dinner. Tins year Mrs. O'Hare did not see how she could afTord to buy even a chicken for Christmas Day. At night, after the children were in bed, she darned stockings and patched trousers and gowns, and at the same time puzzled and worried about Christmas. At last one day she told the children that she could not afford to have anything extra for the Christmas dinner.

Dennie and Maggie — the two eldest — took the denial quite heroically, but the younger children were sadly disappointed. The morning before Christinas the little ones went to the woods and gathered evergreens to decorate the inside of the car ; for they Baid that they w.inted their home to look like Christmas even if they did not have a holiday dinner. That afternoon Dennie went to the village and brought home a letter from his father. In it was a email sum of money and a " Merry Christmas" for the wife and six children. " But we'd better not spend anything extra for to-morrow, for fear we might be in want before spring," their mother told them. "To hear that father is alive anel well is all the Christmas / want," Maggie declared ; and Dennie and the younger children agreed with her. So they went to bod happy and contented. When they were asleep their mother stole softly out of the car and walked up toward the village, to buy &ix sticks of candy ; for she thought that she could spare the six cents, and the candy would be a great surprise to her little ones. The night was extremely cold, and the snow on both sides of the track was as high as the i mother's head. But she did not mind the cold nor the snow ; she trudged steadily along to the village store, bought her candy, then turned homeward. When she slid the door and went on tiptoe into the car, she heard the heavy breathing of the children, so she knew that they were sound asleep. Then she lighted a candle which Btood on the table. A slip of paper under the candlestick attracted her attention. She picked it up and unfolded it. In it was a five dollar bill, and on the paper was written : " i kam fur to rob yous but whan i see ycr neat little home and the greens i hud no hart fur to elo it so here is 5 dolars fur yer krismas. " a friend." The mother trembled when she thought of the peril that had threatened the children while bko was away. She snatched the candle and hurried to the beds and counted her little ones : '• Maggie, Mollie, Dennie, Barnie, Jamesie. Johnnie." Yes, they were all there. But who was the stranger who had come into tho car a robber and had gone out a friend ? This was a great mystery to the mother, and she worried all night about it. The next morning the children were awake before sunrise, shouting " Merry Christmas !" to one another. They were wild with joy over the six sticks of candy. And when their mother showed them the five dollar bill, and told them about the stranger who bad left it, they were not at all frightened of the robber ; they immediately regarded him as their friend, and made the old freightcar ring with their shouts for the Christmas dinner. After attending church in the village, Dennie went ahead to one of the farmers to buy a turkey, and Maggie went to the store for rice and raisins for a pudding. At two o'clock the mother and children sat down to their dinner ; they thought of the father so far away, and it made the family a little sad ; but eating Christmas dinner in a freight-car was so much fun that the children could not help being meriy. So they laughed and talked, and clamoured for the " drumsticks " and the wish-bone of the turkey ; and they all wished that their strange visitor could have helped them to cat the Christmas dinner. But who was the friendly robber .' To this day the O'llare family do not know. Some ot the village people thought that he was a deserter from the army and others thought that he was an escaped convict. But \shoe\er he was or whatever he had done, he surely had a spark of goodness left in his heai i, which kindled at the the sleeping angels in the abandoned freightcar. The O'llare children thought th.it the crucifix, the old picture of our Lady, and the Christmas greens reminded the man of the merry Christmases of his boyhood and turned him irom his evil ways, and perhaps he resolved henceforth to lead a better life. In the spring Dennis O'llare returned from the war, and the family moved back to the villaare. But the children could never forget the winter they lived in the abandoned freight-car, nor the friend ly robbcL- who gave them their Christmas dinner.