The Project Gutenberg eBook, The First Christmas Tree, by Henry Van Dyke,
Illustrated by Howard Pyle

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The First Christmas Tree
A Story of the Forest

Author: Henry Van Dyke

Release Date: June 25, 2005 [eBook #16134]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE***

E-text prepared by Michael Gray (Lost_Gamer@comcast.net)

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 16134-h.htm or 16134-h.zip:
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/1/3/16134/16134-h/16134-h.htm)
or
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/1/3/16134/16134-h.zip)

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREE

A Story of the Forest

by

HENRY VAN DYKE

Illustrated by Howard Pyle

Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

MDCCCXCVII

[Illustration--So they took the little fir from its place]

CONTENTS

I The Call of the Woodsman

II The Trail Through the Forest

III The Shadow of the Thunder-Oak

IV The Felling of the Tree

ILLUSTRATIONS

Photogravures from Original Drawings by Howard Pyle.

So they took the little fir from its place . . . (Frontispiece)
The fields around lay bare to the moon . . .
The sacred hammer of the God Thor . . .
Then Winfried told the story of Bethlehem . . .

I
THE CALL OF THE WOODSMAN

I

The day before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722.

Broad snow-meadows glistening white along the banks of the river
Moselle; pallid hill-sides blooming with mystic roses where the
glow of the setting sun still lingered upon them; an arch of
clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the center of the
aerial landscape of the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel,
gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all,--a
gentle, eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like
perfume, as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the
voice of the river faintly murmuring down the valley.

In the cloister, too, there was sile