iful glass beads always, and put the cross up over my
dressing-table. I thank you _ever_ so much!"

"Are those John's children?" asked Mr. De Witt, winking a tear out of his
eye--he was at bottom a soft-hearted old gentleman.

"Yes, papa," said Florence, caressing Elsie's curly hair,--"see how sweet
they are!"

"Well--you may tell John I'll try him again." And so passed Florence's
Christmas, with a new, warm sense of joy in her heart, a feeling of
something in the world to be done, worth doing.

"How much joy one can give with a little money!" she said to herself as
she counted over what she had spent on her Christmas. Ah yes! and how
true that "It _is_ more blessed to give than to receive." A shining,
invisible hand was laid on her head in blessing as she lay down that
night, and a sweet sense of a loving presence stole like music into her
soul. Unknown to herself, she had that day taken the first step out of
self-life into that life of love and care for others which brought the
King of Glory down to share earth's toils and sorrows. And that precious
experience was Christ's Christmas gift to her.

[Decoration]

DEACON PITKIN'S FARM.

[Illustration: The Pitkin Homestead. ]

CHAPTER I.

MISS DIANA.

Thanksgiving was impending in the village of Mapleton on the 20th of
November, 1825.

The Governor's proclamation had been duly and truly read from the pulpit
the Sunday before, to the great consternation of Miss Briskett, the
ambulatory dressmaker, who declared confidentially to Deacon Pitkin's
wife that "she didn't see nothin' how she was goin' to get through
things--and there was Saphiry's gown, and Miss Deacon Trowbridge's cloak,
and Lizy Jane's new merino, not a stroke done on't. The Governor ought to
be ashamed of himself for hurrying matters so."

It was a very rash step for Miss Briskett to go to the length of such a
remark about the Governor, but the deacon's wife was one of the few women
who are nonconductors of indiscretion, and so the Governor never heard of
it.

This particular Thanksgiving tide was marked in Mapleton by exceptionally
charming weather. Once in a great while the inclement New England skies
are taken with a remorseful twinge and forget to give their usual snap of
September frost which generally bites off all the pretty flowers in so
heart-breaking a way, and then you can have lovely times quite down
through November.

It was so this year at Mapleton. Though the