ning barrel at
once! Not a man nor boy in this Company's service shall go home to-night
without his Christmas dinner in his hand! Lively, now, Mr. JONES! and
just oblige me by picking out one of the birds for yourself, if you can
find one at all less blue than the rest. It's Christmas Eve, sir; and
upon my word I'm really sorry our boys have to work to-morrow as usual.
Ah! it's hard to be poor, JONES! A merry Christmas to us all. Here's my
carriage come for me." And even in returning to their homes from their
daily avocations, on Christmas Eve, how the most grasping, penurious
souls of men will soften to the world's unfortunate! Who is this poor
old lady, looking as though she might be somebody's grandmother, sitting
here by the wayside, shivering, on such an Eve as this? No home to
go?--Relations all dead?--Eaten nothing in two days?--Walked all the way
from the Woman's Rights Bureau in Boston?--Dear me! _can_ there be so
much suffering on Christmas Eve? I must do something for her, or my own
good dinner to-morrow will be a reproach to me. "Here! Policeman! just
take this poor old lady to the Station-House, and give her a good warm
home there until morning. There! cheer-up, Aunty; you're all right
_now._ This gentleman in the uniform has promised to take care of you.
Merry Christmas!"--Or, when at home, and that extremely bony lad, in the
thin summer coat, chatters to you, from the snow on the front-stoop,
about the courage he has taken from Christmas Eve to ask you for enough
to get a meal and a night's-lodging--how differently from your ordinary
style does a something soft in your breast impel you to treat him. "No
work to be obtained?" you say, in a light tone, to cheer him up. "Of
course there's none _here,_ my young friend. All the work here at the
East is for foreigners, in order that they may be used at election-time.
As for you, an American boy, why don't you go to h-- I mean to the West.
_Go West_, young man! Buy a good, stout farming outfit, two or three
serviceable horses, or mules, a portable house made in sections, a few
cattle, a case of fever medicine--and then go out to the far West upon
Government-land. You'd better go to one of the hotels for to-night, and
then purchase Mr. GREELEY'S 'What I Know About Farming,' and start as
soon as the snow permits in the morning. Here are ten cents for you.
Merry Christmas!"--Thus to honor the natal Festival of Him--the
Unselfish incarnate, the Divinely insighted--Who