Excerpt from Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration
The twilight of a Christmas Eve, gray with OI y the portent of coming snow, crept slowly over the old plantation of Brierwood, softening the outlines of a decrepit house still rearing its roof in massive dignity and a tumble-down barn flanked by barren fields. A quiet melancholy hovered about the place as if it brooded over a host of bygone Yuletides alive with the shouts of merry negroes and the jingle of visiting sleighs - Yuletides when the snowy dusk had been ushered in to the lowing of cattle and the neighing of horses safely housed in the old bam. There were no negroes now, no blooded stock - no fluttering fowls save one belligerent old turkey gobbler fleeing from a white-haired darky who tried in vain to drive him to his roost in the barn.
In the library of the old house a man, tall and eagle-eyed, peered out beneath bushy white eyebrows at the fading landscape blurred by the dancing forms of the negro and the recalcitrant turkey. He watched the chase end with an impertinent gobble from the turkey, and, at the sound of a closing door in the rear of the house, tapped a bell at his side. Footsteps shuffled along the hallway, and the old negro, breathless from his chase, entered the room.
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