e seven figures again!--And he had
given up his friendships. He was now almost aged.

He walked into his drawing-room and turned up the light--all the lights
to look at himself in a big mirror. He did look at himself and he was
confounded. He was not only no longer young--he was prepared for
this--but he was old. He would not have dreamed he could be so old. He
was gray and wrinkled.

As he faced himself his blood seemed suddenly to chill. He was conscious
of a sensible ebb as if the tide about his heart had suddenly sunk
lower. Perhaps, it was the cooling of the atmosphere as the fire in his
library died out,--or was it his blood?

He went back into his library not ten minutes, but ten years older than
when he left it.

He sank into his chair and insensibly began to scan his life. He had
just seen himself as he was; he now saw himself as he had been long ago,
and saw how he had become what he was. The whole past lay before him
like a slanting pathway.

He followed it back to where it began--in an old home far off in the
country.

He was a very little boy. All about was the bustle and stir of
preparation for Christmas. Cheer was in every face, for it was in every
heart. Boxes were coming from the city by every conveyance. The
store-room and closets were centres of unspeakable interest, shrouded in
delightful mystery. The kitchen was lighted by the roaring fire and
steaming from the numberless good things preparing for the next day's
feast. Friends were arriving from the distant railway and were greeted
with universal delight. The very rigor of the weather was deemed a part
of the Christmas joy, for it was known that Santa Claus with his
jingling sleigh came the better through the deeper snow. Everything gave
the little boy joy, particularly going with his father and mother to
bear good things to poor people who lived in smaller houses. They were
always giving; but Christmas was the season for a more general and
generous distribution. He recalled across forty years his father and
mother putting the presents into his hands to bestow, and his father's
words, "My boy, learn the pleasure of giving."

The rest was all blaze and light and glow, and his father and mother
moving about like shining spirits amid it all.

Then he was a schoolboy, measuring the lagging time by the coming
Christmas; counting the weeks, the days, the hours in an ecstasy of
impatience until he should be free from the drudgery of books and the