d whether any day can be better for
such a purpose, than that which has been for centuries associated with
it wherever the Angel's song of "Peace on earth and good will to man"
has been heard? Another class of objectors there are who complain that a
day so sacred should be desecrated, as they express it, by revelry and
mirth. To their objection I should not have a word of reply, if it were
limited to a condemnation of that wild uproar and senseless jollity by
which men sometimes make fools or brutes of themselves; but when they
condemn the cheerfulness that has its home and its birthplace in a
grateful heart, when they frown upon the happy family gathering once
more within the old walls that had echoed to their childish gambols,
calling up by the spells of association, from the dim recesses of the
past, the very tones and looks of the mother that watched their cradled
sleep, and the father that guided their first tottering steps in the
pursuit of truth; tones and looks by which, if by any thing, the cold,
selfish spirit of the world to whose dominion they have yielded, may be
exorcised, and the loving and generous spirit of their earlier life may
again enter within them; when they declare these things inconsistent
with the Christian's joyful commemoration of that event to which he owes
his earthly blessings as well as his heavenly hopes. I can only pity
them for their want of harmony with the Great Spirit of the Universe,
the spirit of Love and Joy.

Our Christmas was continued and concluded in the same spirit in which it
was commenced--the spirit of kindly affection to Man and devout
gratitude to Heaven. Those guests whose homes were distant remained for
the night, and in the evening, before any of our party had left us,
Col. Donaldson called on Robert Dudley to repeat a poem winch he had
learned at his request for the occasion. Robert was a little abashed at
first at being brought forward so conspicuously; but he is a manly,
intelligent boy, and his voice soon gathered strength and firmness, and
his eyes lost their downward tendency, and kindled with earnest feeling,
as he recited those beautiful lines of Charles Sprague, entitled--

THE FAMILY MEETING.

We are all here!
Father, mother,
Sister, brother,
All who hold each other dear.
Each chair is fill'd, we're all at home,
To-night let no cold stranger come;
It is not often thus around
Our own familiar hearth w