of the divine law which renders all things sensible by their opposites,
he thought of the other kinds of Christmas which can never weary or
disgust: the Christmas of the little children and the simple-hearted and
the poor; and suddenly he addressed himself to the Easy Chair with
unexpected and surprising courage.

"Why should that be so very difficult?" he demanded. "If you look at it
rightly, Christmas is always full of inspiration; and songs as well as
sermons will flow from it till time shall be no more. The trouble with
us is that we think it is for the pleasure of opulent and elderly
people, for whom there can be no pleasures, but only habits. They are
used to having everything, and as joy dwells in novelty it has ceased to
be for them in Christmas gifts and giving and all manner of Christmas
conventions. But for the young to whom these things are new, and for the
poor to whom they are rare, Christmas and Christmasing are sources of
perennial happiness. All that you have to do is to guard yourself from
growing rich and from growing old, and then the delight of Christmas is
yours forever. It is not difficult; it is very simple; for even if years
and riches come upon you in a literal way, you can by a little trying
keep yourself young and poor in spirit. Then you can always rejoice with
the innocent and riot with the destitute.

"I once knew a father," the unreal editor continued, "a most doting and
devoted father, who, when he bent over the beds of his children to bid
them good-night, and found them 'high sorrowful and cloyed,' as the
little ones are apt to be after a hard day's pleasure, used to bid them
'Think about Christmas.' If he offered this counsel on the night, say,
of the 26th of December, and they had to look forward to a whole year
before their hopes of consolation could possibly find fruition, they had
(as they afterward confessed to him) a sense of fatuity if not of
mocking in it. Even on the Fourth of July, after the last cracker had
been fired and the last roman candle spent, they owned that they had
never been able to think about Christmas to an extent that greatly
assuaged their vague regrets. It was not till the following Thanksgiving
that they succeeded in thinking about Christmas with anything like the
entire cheerfulness expected of them."

"I don't see any application in this homily," said the Easy Chair, "or
only an application disastrous to your imaginable postulate that
Christmas is a ben