Through his entire life, in whatever part of the world he might be, and however important was the work in which he might be engaged, Page never failed to write her a long and affectionate letter at Christmas.
"Well, I've gossiped a night or two"-- such is the conclusion of his Christmas letter of 1893, when Page was thirty-eight, with a growing family of his own--"till I've filled the paper--all such little news and less nonsense as most gossip and most letters are made of.

But it is for you to read between the lines.

That's where the love lies, dear mother.
I wish you were here Christmas; we should welcome you as nobody else in the world can be welcomed.

But wherever you are and though all the rest have the joy of seeing you, which is denied to me, never a Christmas comes but I feel as near you as I did years and years ago when we were young.

(In those years _big_ fish bit in old Wiley Bancom's pond by the railroad: they must have been two inches long!)--I would give a year's growth to have the pleasure of having you here.