“My Aunt Lucy read the Bible to me all the time when I were knee high to a duck. I never will forget it. So if I wrote a Christmas song, I would write one right out of the Bible. But it would not be so much what words I would put in it as what my music would say—because I would also make up the music myself. Music explains things better than words and everybody in all kind of languages could understand it then. My music would say everything my words couldn’t put over, because there wouldn’t be many words anyhow.

“The words in my song would just say a black man saw a star and followed it till he came to a stable and put his presents down. But the music would say he also laid his heart down, too—which would be my heart. It would be my song I would be making up. But I would make it like as if I was there myself two thousand years ago, and I seen the star, and I followed it till I come to that Child. And when I riz up from bending over that Baby in the Manger I were strong and not afraid. The end of my song would be, Be not afraid. That would be the end of my song.”

“It sounds like a good song,” I said.

“It would be the kind of song everybody could sing, old folks and young folks. And when they sing it, some folks would laugh. It would be a happy song. Other folks would cry because—well, I don’t know,” Simple stopped quite still for a moment in the falling snow. “I don’t know, but something about that black man and that little small Child—something about them two peoples—folks would cry.”

Tied in a Bow

Tied in a Bow

“WHEN she took that present from the Christmas tree and untied it in front of all them other people, Joyce screamed, cried, danced, whirled around, run across the room, hauled off and kissed me, then cried, ‘At last you have crossed the Ohio!’”

“What in God’s name did she mean by that?”

“She were thinking about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Joyce explained to me later. And all she could say was, ‘Free! Free! Free! Jess Semple, you’re free!’”

“Do you mean to say you’ve been granted your divorce?”

“That is what I had hanging on the tree Christmas morning,” said Simple, “my divorce. It were all tied up in a big red ribbon with a sprig of holly on it, also a bow. It were beautiful, rolled like a diploma. Did I ever show you my receipt? Look.”

Baltimore, Maryland, 16th inst.

For legal services rendered Mrs. Jesse B. Semple, received from her late husband, J. B. Semple, the sum of $133.34 re divorce.

(signed) J. Harvey Scraggs

Attorney-at-Law