me to
the inn stable with their gifts, the first with "a bob of cherries"
for the new-born baby, the second with a bird, and the third with a
tennis-ball. "Hail," cries the third shepherd--

Hail, darling dear, full of godheed!
I pray Thee be near, when that I have need.
Hail! sweet Thy cheer! My heart would bleed
To see Thee sit here in so poor weed,
With no pennies.
Hail! put forth Thy dall!
I bring Thee but a ball,
Have and play Thee withal.
And go to the tennis.

These songs, it may be, are more popular to-day than they were fifty
years ago--partly owing to the decline of the old-fashioned suspicious
sort of Protestantism, which saw the Pope behind every bush--including
the holly-bush. One remembers how Protestants of the old school used
to denounce even Raphael's grave Madonnas as trash of Popery. "I'll
have no Popish pictures in my house," declared a man I know to his
son, who had brought home the Sistine Madonna to hang on his walls;
and the picture had to be given away to a friend. Similarly, the
observance of Christmas Day was regarded in some places as a Popish
superstition. One old Protestant clergyman many years ago used to make
the rounds of his friends and parishioners on Christmas morning to
wish them the compliments of the day. It was his custom, however, to
pray with each of them, and in the course of his prayers to explain
that he must not be regarded as taking Christmas Day seriously.
"Lord," he would pray, "we are not gathered here in any superstitious
spirit, as the Roman Catholics are, under the delusion that Thy Son
was born in Bethlehem on the twenty-fifth of December. Hast not Thou
told us in Thy Holy Book that on the night on which Thy Son was born
the shepherds watched their flocks by night in the open air? And Thou
knowest, O Lord, that in the fierce and inclement weather of
December, with its biting frosts and its whirling snows, this would
not have been possible, and can be but a Popish invention." But,
having set himself right with God, he was human enough to proceed on
his journey of good wishes. Noble intolerance like his is now, I
believe, dead. To-day even a Plymouth Brother may wreathe his brow
with mistletoe, and a Presbyterian may wish you a merry Christmas
without the sky or the Shorter Catechism falling.

XII

ON DEMAGOGUES

It is still the custom in civilised countries for the politicians to
call each other names. The word "serpent" ha