ale figures lying there in
their eternal repose, fill the soul with a sense of the great majesty
of death.

When we got back to the hotel we found that the same good fortune
which had attended us so far had ordained that the American mail
should arrive that day, and behold! there were all our Christmas
letters timed as accurately as if they had only gone from Chicago to
New York.

Christmas letters! How they go to the heart when one is five thousand
miles away! How we tore up to our rooms, and oh! how long it seemed to
get the doors unlocked and the electric light turned up, and to plant
ourselves in the middle of the bed to read and laugh and cry and
interrupt each other, and to read out paragraphs of Billy's funny
baby-talk!

While we were still discussing them, the proprietor came up to
announce to us that there was to be a Christmas Eve entertainment in
the main dining-room that evening, and would the American ladies do
him the honor to come down? The American ladies would.

When we went down we found that the enormous dining-room was packed
with people, all standing around a table which ran around two sides of
the room. A row of Christmas trees, covered with cotton to represent
snow, occupied the middle of the room, and at one end was a space
reserved for the lady guests, and in each chair was a handsome bouquet
of violets and lilies-of-the-valley.

This entertainment was for the servants of the hotel, of whom there
were three hundred and fifty.

First they sang a Lutheran hymn, very slowly, as if it were a dirge.
Then there was a short sermon. Then another hymn. Then the manager
made a little speech and called, for three cheers for the proprietor,
and they gave them with a fervor that nearly split the ears of the
groundlings.

Then a signal was given, and in less than one minute three hundred and
fifty paper bags were produced, and three hundred and fifty plates
full of oranges, apples, buns, and sweetened breads were emptied into
them. The table looked as if a plague of grasshoppers had swept over
it.

Then each servant presented a number and received a present from the
tree, and that ended the festivity. But so typical of the fatherland,
so paternal, so like one great family!

Participating in this simple festival brought a little of the
Christmas feeling home to us and made us almost happy. We knew that
our American parcels would not be delivered until the next day, so we
had but just time to rere