The Doctor's Christmas Eve

<p>The morning of the twenty-fourth of December a quarter of a century ago opened upon the vast plateau of central Kentucky as a brilliant but bitter day-with a wind like the gales of March.</p><p>Out in a neighborhood of one of the wealthiest and most thickly settled counties toward the middle of the forenoon two stumpy figures with movements full of health and glee appeared on a hilltop of the treeless . . .</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>A middle aged country doctor takes a memory trip down the lane where his personal and professional lives were forever intertwined with each other.</p><p> </p><p>James Lane Allen (1849-1925) was an American novelist and short story writer whose work including the novel A Kentucky Cardinal often depicted the culture and dialects of his native Kentucky.</p><p> </p><p>His work is characteristic of the late-19th century local color era when writers sought to capture the vernacular in their fiction.</p><p> </p><p>Allen has been described as Kentucky's first important novelist.</p><p> </p>