d separate houses, but they had spent the money in
them for each other. No one of them had said that anything he had was
his own. They had confided wholly each in each. They had passed through
much sorrow, and in that sorrow had strengthened each other. They had
passed through much joy, and the joy had been multiplied tenfold because
it was joy that was shared. At the Thanksgiving they acted the ballad of
Lochinvar again, or rather some of the children did. And that set Fanny
the oldest and Sarah the youngest to telling to the oldest nephews and
nieces some of the stories of the cabin days. But Fanny said, when the
children asked for more, "There is no need of any more,--'Love is the
whole.'"

CHRISTMAS AND ROME.

The first Christmas this in which a Roman Senate has sat in Rome since
the old-fashioned Roman Senates went under,--or since they "went up," if
we take the expressive language of our Chicago friends.

And Pius IX. is celebrating Christmas with an uncomfortable look
backward, and an uncomfortable look forward, and an uncomfortable look
all around. It is a suggestive matter, this Italian Parliament sitting
in Rome. It suggests a good deal of history and a good deal of prophecy.

"They say" (whoever they may be) that somewhere in Rome there is a range
of portraits of popes, running down from never so far back; that only
one niche was left in the architecture, which received the portrait of
Pius IX., and that then that place was full. Maybe it is so. I did not
see the row. But I have heard the story a thousand times. Be it true, be
it false, there are, doubtless, many other places where portraits of
coming popes could be hung. There is a little wall-room left in the City
Hall of New York. There are, also, other palaces in which popes could
live. Palaces are as plenty in America as are Pullman cars. But it is
possible that there are no such palaces in Rome.

So this particular Christmas sets one careering back a little, to look
at that mysterious connection of Rome with Christianity, which has held
on so steadily since the first Christmas got itself put on historical
record by a Roman census-maker. Humanly speaking, it was nothing more
nor less than a Roman census which makes the word Bethlehem to be a
sacred word over all the world to-day. To any person who sees the
humorous contrasts of history there is reason for a bit of a smile when
he thinks of the way this census came into being, and then remembe