e body of a youth, clutching yet
in his hand a torn, blood-stained paper, tied about with a purple
ribbon. It was Paolo. The awakening had come. Brighter skies than
those of sunny Italy had dawned upon him in the gloom and terror of
the great crash. Paolo was at home, waiting for his mother.

THE LITTLE DOLLAR'S CHRISTMAS JOURNEY

"It is too bad," said Mrs. Lee, and she put down the magazine in which
she had been reading of the poor children in the tenements of the
great city that know little of Christmas joys; "no Christmas tree! One
of them shall have one, at any rate. I think this will buy it, and it
is so handy to send. Nobody would know that there was money in the
letter." And she enclosed a coupon in a letter to a professor, a
friend in the city, who, she knew, would have no trouble in finding
the child, and had it mailed at once. Mrs. Lee was a widow whose not
too great income was derived from the interest on some four per cent
government bonds which represented the savings of her husband's life
of toil, that was none the less hard because it was spent in a
counting-room and not with shovel and spade. The coupon looked for all
the world like a dollar bill, except that it was so small that a
baby's hand could easily cover it. The United States, the printing on
it said, would pay on demand to the bearer one dollar; and there was
a number on it, just as on a full-grown dollar, that was the number of
the bond from which it had been cut.

The letter travelled all night, and was tossed and sorted and bunched
at the end of its journey in the great gray beehive that never sleeps,
day or night, and where half the tears and joys of the land, including
this account of the little dollar, are checked off unceasingly as
first-class matter or second or third, as the case may be. In the
morning it was laid, none the worse for its journey, at the
professor's breakfast plate. The professor was a kindly man, and he
smiled as he read it. "To procure one small Christmas tree for a poor
tenement," was its errand.

"Little dollar," he said, "I think I know where you are needed." And
he made a note in his book. There were other notes there that made him
smile again as he saw them. They had names set opposite them. One
about a Noah's ark was marked "Vivi." That was the baby; and there was
one about a doll's carriage that had the words "Katie, sure," set over
against it. The professor eyed the list in mock dismay.

"How ever