The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Peace, by Thomas Nelson Page

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Title: The Christmas Peace
1908

Author: Thomas Nelson Page

Release Date: November 16, 2007 [EBook #23511]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTMAS PEACE ***

Produced by David Widger

THE CHRISTMAS PEACE

By Thomas Nelson Page

Charles Scribner's Sons New York, 1908

Copyright, 1891, 1904, 1906

I

They had lived within a mile of each other for fifty-odd years, old
Judge Hampden and old Colonel Drayton; that is, all their lives, for
they had been born on adjoining plantations within a month of each
other. But though they had thus lived and were accounted generally good
men and good neighbors, to each other they had never been neighbors any
more than the Levite was neighbor to him who went down to Jericho.

Kindly to everyone else and ready to do their part by all other men, the
Draytons and the Hampdens, whenever they met each other, always passed
by on the other side.

It was an old story--the feud between the families--and, perhaps, no
one now knew just how the trouble started. They had certainly been on
opposite sides ever since they established themselves in early Colonial
days on opposite hills in the old county from which the two mansions
looked at each other across the stream like hostile forts. The earliest
records of the county were those of a dispute between one Colonel
Drayton and one Captain Hampden, growing out of some claim to land; but
in which the chief bitterness appeared to have been injected by Captain
Hampden's having claimed precedence over Colonel Drayton on the ground
that his title of "Captain" was superior to Colonel Drayton's title,
because he had held a real commission and had fought for it, whereas
the Colonel's title was simply honorary and "Ye sayd Collonel had never
smelled enough powder to kill a tom-cat."

However this might be and there was nothing in the records to show how
this contention was adjudicated--in the time of Major Wil-mer Drayton
and Judge Oliver Hampden, the breach between the two families had been
transmitted from father to son for