When The Yule Log Burns

When the Yule Log Burns, by Leona Dalrymple, is a Christmas tale—a real one—as Christmas tales should be—full of happy yet poignant sentiment, understanding, glad hospitality. The old Doctor, who dominates the story with his warm understanding, vitalizing personality, lives alone with his wife in a roomy old farmhouse, their children, with the exception of one, all grown and married and living in the city. They have turned down the Doctor's invitation to come home for Christmas, but at the last moment he telegraphs command for them to come to a Christmas Eve masquerade which is going on that night. Of course they come, and on the stroke of twelve when they remove their masks the old mother's heart is made glad by beholding all her children around her again. Then there is the prodigal son, a young surgeon, who had been leading a wild life in the city. He, too, has returned to the roof-tree, only to fall in love with a charming young woman and to realize at last the responsibilities of life.