Rag Hall came to fill a large place in Jacob’s thoughts. It was the grim shadow of his bright young world. Surely the world as God had made it was a place of open sky, fresh life-giving breezes, and rolling meadows of dewy, fragrant greenness. How did it happen that people could get so far away from all that made life sweet and wholesome? How had they lost their birthright?
As Jacob looked at the gray, dirty children of Rag Hall it seemed to him that they had never had a chance to be anything better. “What should I have been if I had always lived in such a place?” he said to himself.
One Christmas, Jacob’s father gave him a mark,--a silver coin like our quarter,--which was more money than the boy had ever had
before. Now it seemed to him that he might be able to do something to help make things better in Rag Hall. He ran to the tenement--to the room of the most miserable family who lived there.
“Here,” he said to a man who took the money as if he were stunned, “I’ll divide my Christmas mark with you, if you’ll just try to clean things up a bit, especially the children, and give them a chance to live like folks.”
The twelve-year-old boy little thought that the great adventure of his life really began that day at Rag Hall. But years after when he went about among the tenements of New York, trying to make things better for the children of Mulberry Bend and Cherry Street, he remembered where the long journey had begun.
It was no wonder that Christmas stirred the heart of this young viking, and made him long for real deeds. Christmas in Ribe was a time of joy and good-will to all. A lighted candle was put in the window of every farm-house to cheer the wayfarer with the message that nobody is a stranger at Christmas. Even the troublesome sparrows were not forgotten. A sheaf of rye was set up in the snow to make them the Christmas-tree they would like best. The merry Christmas elf, the “Jule-nissen,” who lived in the attic, had a special bowl of rice and milk put out for him. Years afterward, when this Danish lad was talking to a crowd of New York boys and girls, he said, with a twinkle in his eyes:
“I know if no one else ever really saw the Nissen that our black cat had made his acquaintance. She looked very wise and purred most knowingly next morning.”