eliverance by Christ's 'agony and
bloody sweat,' by his 'cross and passion,' his 'precious death and
burial,' his 'glorious resurrection and ascension,' and the 'coming of
the Holy Ghost,' don't?

"This _is_ a charitable frame of mind to precede a Christmas morning.
When did I contract the habit of talking to myself?

"I must be impressed with the two grand reasons of the man we all know
of: first, I like to talk to a sensible man, and second, I like to hear
a sensible man talk.

"I wonder if there is not something under the surface in Sol Smith's
charity sermon? I rather like its pithy style:

"'He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord. Now, brethren, if you
are satisfied with the security, down with the dust.'

"I once repeated it to a gaunt little parson, and his look of
unmitigated horror caused me to hide my diminished head. I knew from his
manner--he did not condescend a reply--what chamber in the Inferno was
being heated up for my especial benefit. Well, well! the sentiment is
doubtless creditable to his head and heart.

"What a pity it is I am not one of the 'good' people! What an
agonizingly cerulean expression I would wear, to be sure!

"I wonder why young mothers don't write for their children's first copy
Dante's inscription, and teach their baby lips to lisp of the world what
he says of hell. It's surprising to me that that parson is not crazed at
his sense of the certain perdition into which everybody except himself
is hurrying. Perhaps, after all, there is something in the question of
La Rochefoucauld, 'Is it not astonishing that we are not altogether
overpowered at the misfortunes of our friends?' Well, man learns
something every day. When I first saw a chicken take a billful of water
and hold up its head, in my childish simplicity I imagined it thanking
God: I afterward discovered it was only letting the water run down its
throat. My mind, like good wine or bad butter, must be strengthening by
age.

"Why can't we take things quietly, as we did when we were boys? I expect
I had a rather comfortable time of it then, though I did get whipped for
tearing my clothes, and killing flies, which I used to do worse than any
bald hornet.

"Now, that youngster walking before me is whistling like a lark, and, by
the Lord Harry, he has scarcely a shoe to his foot!"

He was a poor boy, perhaps seven or eight years old. His face was pale
and careworn, and though he whistled, it was a solemn kind of w