ve returned like the others, and it is my purpose to hold
Christmas alone. I have no one with me at table, and my own thoughts
must be my Christmas guests. Sitting here, it is pleasant to think how
much kindly feeling exists this present night in England. By imagination
I can taste of every table, pledge every toast, silently join in every
roar of merriment. I become a sort of universal guest. With what
propriety is this jovial season, placed amid dismal December rains and
snows! How one pities the unhappy Australians, with whom everything is
turned topsy-turvy, and who hold Christmas at midsummer! The face of
Christmas glows all the brighter for the cold. The heart warms as the
frost increases. Estrangements which have embittered the whole year,
melt in to-night's hospitable smile. There are warmer hand-shakings on
this night than during the by-past twelve months. Friend lives in the
mind of friend. There is more charity at this time than at any other.
You get up at midnight and toss your spare coppers to the half-benumbed
musicians whiffling beneath your windows, although at any other time you
would consider their performance a nuisance, and call angrily for the
police. Poverty, and scanty clothing, and fireless grates, come home at
this season to the bosoms of the rich, and they give of their abundance.
The very red-breast of the woods enjoys his Christmas feast. Good
feeling incarnates itself in plum-pudding. The Master's words, "The poor
ye have always with you," wear at this time a deep significance. For at
least one night on each year over all Christendom there is brotherhood.
And good men, sitting amongst their families, or by a solitary fire like
me, when they remember the light that shone over the poor clowns huddling
on the Bethlehem plains eighteen hundred years ago, the apparition of
shining angels overhead, the song "Peace on earth and good-will toward
men," which for the first time hallowed the midnight air,--pray for that
strain's fulfilment, that battle and strife may vex the nations no more,
that not only on Christmas-eve, but the whole year round, men shall be
brethren owning one Father in heaven.

Although suggested by the season, and by a solitary dinner, it is not my
purpose to indulge in personal reminiscence and talk. Let all that pass.
This is Christmas-day, the anniversary of the world's greatest event. To
one day all the early world looked forward; to the same day the later
wo