d the needy,
reserving only the privilege of, once in a while,
giving to a dear friend a gift which then will have
the old charm of being a genuine surprise.

I will, if you will,
keep the spirit of Christmas in my heart, and,
barring out hurry, worry, and competition,
will consecrate the blessed season, in joy and love,
to the One whose birth we celebrate.

--_Jane Porter Williams_.

CHRONOLOGY

TOURIST--"They have just dug up the corner-stone of an ancient library
in Greece, on which is inscribed '4000 B.C.'"

ENGLISHMAN--"Before Carnegie, I presume."

CHURCH ATTENDANCE

"Tremendous crowd up at our church last night."

"New minister?"

"No it was burned down."

"I understand," said a young woman to another, "that at your church you
are having such small congregations. Is that so?"

"Yes," answered the other girl, "so small that every time our rector
says 'Dearly Beloved' you feel as if you had received a proposal!"

"Are you a pillar of the church?"

"No, I'm a flying buttress--I support it from the outside."

CHURCH DISCIPLINE

Pius the Ninth was not without a certain sense of humor. One day, while
sitting for his portrait to Healy, the painter, speaking of a monk who
had left the church and married, he observed, not without malice: "He
has taken his punishment into his own hands."

CIRCUS

A well-known theatrical manager repeats an instance of what the late W.
C. Coup, of circus fame, once told him was one of the most amusing
features of the show-business; the faking in the "side-show."

Coup was the owner of a small circus that boasted among its principal
attractions a man-eating ape, alleged to be the largest in captivity.
This ferocious beast was exhibited chained to the dead trunk of a tree
in the side-show. Early in the day of the first performance of Coup's
enterprise at a certain Ohio town, a countryman handed the man-eating
ape a piece of tobacco, in the chewing of which the beast evinced the
greatest satisfaction.

The word was soon passed around that the ape would chew tobacco; and the
result was that several plugs were thrown at him. Unhappily, however,
one of these had been filled with cayenne pepper. The man-eating ape bit
it; then, howling with indignation, snapped the chain that bound him to
the tree, and made straight for the practical joker who had so cruelly
deceived him.

"Lave