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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Huron Expositor, 1892-12-23, Page 11CHERRITENS CHICK. 4.48,4444ai41444 A CHRISTMAS STORY. • Cherriten and I were boys together in a big establishment where the wages were quite as large as our services de- served. On this subject Cherriten dis- agreed with me, and he made up Ms deficiencies by borrowing to suchan extent that he found it necessary to -disappear just after he received his pay one Saturday afternoon. As WAS his creditor to the extent of eight cents, which was a large sum of money in those days, I declined to recognize him next we met, and our relations remained strained for two or three years afterwards, he having made sev- eral involuntary visits to the jail for reasons which police justices thought sufficient. Both of us enlisted when the civil war broke out, and although I escaped being in the same regiments with him. I chanced to hear from time to time that he was bravely living upi to his old reputation and making oc- casional business for courts martial. Our ways diverged after this, and for year I had forgotten Cherriten's ex- istence, but -one day when I chanced to give my seat in a street car to a lady, I was thanked in a voice which I rec- ognized as that of Cherriten. , "You needn't be afraid to speak to own dinner time I assented and with- in ten mihutes was seated in as cosey a room as I luta ever seen anywhere, and Cherriten and 1 were beginning to burn some very good cigars. "Well," said my host, proceeding at once to business, "I needn't go over old times very much. I was a pretty tough lot when you knew me, and I got about ten times worse each year for five or six years. I got taken in by the polite three or four tittles, and three inouthfuls and left Me to finish and cake shop told me where I could by rights ought to have spent most of my time in jail. Father and mother may thejob. was pretty awkward, as you get decent lodgings for Chick and me both hadn'tany rien 8, which I imagine, but Chick got there for twenty-five cents a night,and where every time I gave her a fair Show with I could have Chick taken care of for was good for the friends. I was loafer, at the spoon. ten cents a day whilI was o thief, wharf rat, fighter and everything e off else that was had; I was so tough that the P migrants explained to a kind " Work ! 1 wanted to laugh at her other fellows of my own kind wouldn't stand me; so at last I had to flock by myself. My boarding house was a lumber heap, and sometimes 1 was hounded out of even that by gangs of boys—a dozen against one. "At last I went on the tramp— thought I'd get to some place where I wasn't known so well. A good deal of the time I followed the railroad tracks, as most tramps do, and one day I reach- ed a place where an emigrant train had been wrecked half an hour before • z cry in my time—rd teasc1 dozens of them just to, make them cir—yet this one's voice tore my 4art a 1 to pieces, and just as I was liieginning to find out that I had such a thing as a heart inme. "At last i stood up in the car, feel- ing real desperate, atigl 1 shouted out: "'Say! Ain't there a mother to lend ,here somewhere—one of the kind that can give ai baby something to eat 7" "Nobody answered; there weren't many awake, but at last an emigrant woman came over ahd looked at the child, and hen brought a little cup of milk itlid a spoon and fed it two or sate et • 111111.11111111 little thing like that, and I told the wOman just how I felt. "'.Good,' she said, you'll be a man yet, if you stick to that.' Then she asked me how much money I had and toIld me where I could buy a -clean cot- toln jumper for a few dimes thatwould make me look a good deal decenter, and then she hinted that if I'd lea' the child with her a while. and take a swim on the sly:off the docks some- where I might be allowed in the free baths afterward and take a genuine wash. took her adviCe, but every- thing seemed like a dream. I'd.never had baths .or &leap clothes in my life except the few times I'd been sent to the island. The woman at the coffee " DOND' YOU GOT SENSE TO me, Mr. Bloggs, said. he, as our recog- nition became mutual. " I'm not the sort of a fellow I used to be." Then he whispered, That's my chick—she that you gave your seat to." I was not sure what "chick " might mean in the,vocabulary of the class to • which Cherriten had belonged when I knew hiny but 1 'Venturaci to.hv way of corigintulation, that rifliy mat with so pretty.a wife ought to think himself remarkably lucky. "Wife ? No more my wife thaa sae is yours. •She's my chick—my child. I'm her dad—the only one she ever knew, though there's n e o relation be- tween us. Let mintroduce you." Then, befora I could • suggest that a crowded horse car was scarcely the place to introduce any one to a young wolnata he leaned forward and said:— "Chick, this is Mr. Bloggs, that used to work in the same place with me when I was a boy, and beginning to be a reguler tough, like I've told 'you so often." A face that was really charming turned toward me as I raised my hat, and a well modulated voice said :— "Papa never loses an opportunity to tell me that he used to be dreadfully bad when he was young. It really seems to give him pleasure to give him- self a bad character." I do it so as to Leep her in mind of the great lot of good she has done me," Cherriten explained, as both of us resumed, erect positions. " She's been the making of me. She puts it the other way --she hasn't cost me any- thing but money, and goodness knows that's easy enough to get if a man is willing to work, but she has had to spend enough patience on me to set old Jab up in business. Honest, now, Mr. Bloggs--Im not fishing for com- pliments, but from what you can see offhand don't I seem something of an improvement on what I used to be as you remember me ?" I was glad to answer, in the affirm- ative. Cherriten never cbuld have been a beauty; he was born of very bad stock, according to his early accounts of himself, and he had farge features under a "small brow, but the old dom- inant expression of lawlessness had en- tirely departed and there was a'health- fal glow in his eyes and cheeks which told of good physical habits. He was as well dressed as any man in the car, and he wore good clothing with the air of a man accustomed to that sort of thing; he was neatly gloved even, and carried a stick without seeming embar- rassed by it. "She did it all," he said. He could see that.I was looking. him over. " I • wish you'd let me come to see you, wherever your place of business is, and tell you the whole story. I'm sure you'd enjoy hearing it. Besides, it's a story you'd like to tell your wife, if I'm not g! eatly mistaken. "Tisn't every day that you meet men that's gone through what I have—and got as much good 0 t of it. pant you come • along with IN and see ricw I live —how she lives, toe ? Mayl,e you may run against bone! of tile other boys that we used to Work with— never know who you'll meet et in a big city like this and I'd like you to pass the word along that Merril en isn't what he used to be and thathe eouldn't go back if he tried. We get out the next street but one." Then he bee t over the girl and said, "Chick, I'm rying to Coax Ar. Bloggs caw tIrt ; Oa 011 TV) I- Vrtil lit' `i' 11 Is t„ _I KNOW DOT RAi3YIS HONGRY ? " and a lot of iseople killed. Maybe you' won't believe it, but I was so low down that I went Prowling about the rocks, on the lower side of the road, to see if anything had been lost from the wreck that I could steal. Well, some- thing had rolled down there and been overlooked by the people that were searching. 'Well, I found something —it was Chick. She was only about a year old then, judging by the usual signs, and she was about as dirty and shabby as the man that found her, and she didn't look any better for a cut or two on her head and face. But she was somebody's young one, I said to myself, and her folks would be glad to get her back, They couldn't he worth much money, judging by the ceild's clothes,but they might stand the price of 8 drink out of gratitude. "Well, I couldn't find the owners. s near as anybody could tell,the man and woman that she'd been with were amona the killed. You know hOw ra things are at such times every -body's rattled. Some folks told me to do one thing with her and some another. ' I tried to ;ive her away, but nobody'd take a her. -.".;.re was another reason why I 3011.MY 't get rid of her—she had both of he little arms around my neck and I souldn't get them off. One of the women that had been in the accident sahl. it was because the little thing was so -scared; said she looked as if she was too frightened to breathe straight, which is likely enough, beeing where lt and how I'd found her. The railroad folks couldn't do anythi g about the young one, except to say hat if I'd go back to the city with ottier emigrants --they thought I was one of the crowd —that they guessed they'd find some way of disposing of it there. "All the way down to Toronto that young one kept throttling the. She'd drop asleep once in a while and I'd try to lay her down; seemed to be so infer- nal foolish for a fellow like me to have a young one in his arms. But whenever I tried to,drop her she woke up and hung tighter.. What do you suppose happened at last? Why, she got so tired that she slept soundly, and her arms unloosed and I put her down on a seat, making a sort of pillow with the ragged coat I had, and then "'---I felt lonesome! Yes, sir! I'd got so used to the feeling of that child's arms around my neck that I couldn't wait for hr th wake up again. I couldn't understand it, so I swore about it, and whett that didn't do any good I went to thinking about it. I never had any brothers or sisters, and as to my fatherand mother—well, I sup- pose they didn't find me very interest- ing when I was a young one. Any- how I sat ,there awake in the car all , night long 3 waiting for the child to waken, and every once in a while I'd feel of its arms to see what there was about thelit that—oh, I was puzzled enough to be clean daft. "When it did awake, though, I was worse off. , Flow it did hoWl ! It hug- ged me jtist the same as before, but once in awhile it would stop long enough to look up at me as if I'd been real unkind to it. At last a man whose wife put him up to it,came over to me and said :— " ' Don't you got sense to know dat shild hungry 7' . "No, T hadn't, and when it came to me I wasn't much better off, for 1 hadn't anything to feed it with, and I ;1;.-1-4.'i- ltrinur Virhpflietr it P VP r 110 CI 11PATI looking old man---acity missionary I When she said that, for I hadn't done any work in years except loafing, though that's the very hardest kind. I thought about the luck I'd had in begging at the ferry house, but I couldn't work that racket again unless I put both of us backinto our dirty rags again, and I'd rather have killed niyself than done that. Strange,what sudden changes come over a man some - she held me. She seemed to know, Ornes, isn't it? I told the woman I somehow, when I was belt* made to hadn't any regular job, and she said T feel bad, bless hei !—she's been that . could get plenty of odd jobs right near way ever since. At last I got to the ler place by banging around for them asylum and rang the bell, and then 1 end keeping honest and sober. Work thought to myself that in a minute or -7—honest—sober—why, it sounded a two I'd have seen the last of her. Well, hundred times worse than 'Ten dollars sir, what did f do but take tosuly heels and run as if the police were after me. • I suppose you don't know, how that feels'? No? Well, it pits wings on the feet of the le zieet tramp in the city. it. of sight I walked strong my - 1, self, not having had anytIiing to eat for aboui) twenty-four hors, besides 11 1 having been awake all night. "Without intending to I went down to the river, and oh the shady side of the lumber heap where I used to sleep nights. It .was. warm weather, and the air from the water freOienech me. I tried to think, but I tumbled asleep, and when I woke up it Was because Chick was patting my face—the cun- believe—about chick and me, and he told me of a place where they'd take it in, and I walked there, for I hadn't the price of a car fere. Lots of folks that we passed looked at us funnily, and a good many of them looked dis- gusted. I suppose we weren't a pretty pair ; but the meaner anybody looked the tighter t held Chick and the tighter Away I went till I got o of that building; then slowly,for I wasn't any too or tendaysd "1 did, though. 'TwaS hard and be pay was small, but I had Chick to o back to every night, and she paid e until I felt richer than any man in all street She was always good hawed as a kitten and a puppy rolled into one,and when she fell asleep 'twas islways with her arm around my neck. In the course of time I found out that the only Ugly facessheever made was ecause she didn' t like the smell of bacco, so I stopped chewing. Did ou ever try.to stop chewing? - No? Well it's harder than starving. 4 Ought Ito knew, for I've tried both. I 1 "Well, everything went better and 'better, until one Christmas Eve I took a drink and then another, and some 1morening young one! I don't ee how she after that, ,and when I went for brought herself tbdo it. , My face Chick and, she saw me she wouldn't isn't rnuch to speak of now, but then 'come to me, and the woman Who took —Well, never mil I sbit up and be- care, of her by daylight called me a th brute. I started for e river to drown myself, but that -wouldn't do, for who would take etre of Chick .when I was gone? I Walked the streets till I was sober, and I was praying and Swearing all tbe time; I didn't exactly know where the praying left off 'and the swearing began, but to this day I think they were part and parcel of the same thing, whichever it was. Christmas morning I went for Chick and she took to me again, and she and I went house hunting, for by that Wile I had saved up a few dollars. We got _beard with a decent family that had no children of their own, and where the woman was very motherly to Chick, but the little thing never took any of her heart away .from tile, bless her! ," Things went on well with us for ir. two o' thnree years after that. I kept so Stsraight and worked so had that I got a steady job and putall My savings in the bank. Other men that knew me and Chick would say I ought to marry again—they didn't know I was a bachelor—so as to have a mother for the child. 1 rather thought myself that the little thing Ought to have a better chance and I talked , with her about it, for she was about four years old, and seemed about four hundred whenever we talked _seriously about gan thinking; Chic sat in my lap and looked at 'peas hard as if she was won- dering what was on my m nd. At last I said to myself, 'Oki man, sometimes you've tried to keep a do,- bu t some- body. always stole it—somebody that could steal more grub forlit than you could. Suppose you keep this thing? 'Tain't as good looking e,s a dog—I was talking of how she looked then— and it'll make more trouble,sonobody'll think of hooking it /Then I said, .What do you think of the notion, Chick?' and she put upi both arms to me. Great Lord! Wild horses couldn't have dragged her from me after that. But what was 1 to do? hadn't any home—and I, didn't .know how soon_ she might get hutigry again. Besides, was all gone inside ;myself. I re- membered seeing womeh with children begging in the streets iaad at the fer- ries; as for that, I'd done beggin,g on my own account many and many a time, and got up heel big .enough to squeeze out money to get drunk on. So I went' ,to the nearest ferry and watched my chances, and stood on the side of the crowd where the policeman wasn't and held Out my hat. It fetch- ed a good many of the women. I was astonished at what I took in from one single boatful and I didn't wait for " VIRILE 18 NOTHIgG any more, but put out fora shanty I knew of where they sold coffee and cakes aid milk and that sort of a thing, and I gave Chick a good feed before I ate anything myself. The woman that ran the place was a rough creature, that could outswear a tramp if he made her mad—rd heard her do it, but.she had a heart like other folks, and she told me 'twas a shame I didn't take better care of my child. My child ! The mere mentioh of it made me fee —well, as I'd never felt before. 1 tol her that the mother was dead and th youngster had rtin down some in ap pearance, but if I could get it start right I thought 1 could keep it so The upshot of it was that she !told m where rcould get it some cheap ne clethes with what motley was left fro what I'd begged at the ferry, and she' gige it a cleaning up for me in the little kitchen behind the shop as Boole as I got back. She was as good as he word. After it was over Chick put FUNNY ABOUT THAT." anything. Bet she said, Don't want any mothers ; ,don't want nobody but papa.' Now, just imagine—hut pshew ! you can't—nobedy can. I "Meanwhile she picked up some very strange expressions, or .11.ade them hp, I don't know which. I suppose you know how young ones get a notion here and another one there and then put them together in a agsy that a grown person never would think of. One day, when she was about six years old, she paralyzed me by saying :— "'Now, papa, I'm going to take you in hand. I think you neeedra mother's care.' She was as good as 4er word; she's had me in hand ever since. I thought I'd made a great insprovenient in myself in the first two or three years of our acquaintance, but 'twas nothing to what she put me up to. She began to go to school, and nothing would do but that she and 1t• should study the lessons together. Now that she's older, I think that trick of malting school • .4444444.44 fun to me to get her lessonswith her and then recite to her, while she look- ed as grave as a cage full of owls, and gave me reproofs, and corrections, and marks, and report cards, and every- thing that the teachers at school gave her. "'Twas.tough, though, when she:got further along and put -me into fractions and grammar. .Did ycitt ever study grammar? Of all infernal—but that's neither here nor there. • She had to study it, and what her little bead could take in I wasn't going to flunk at, so sweated my way through it, and 1 got fractions into my head - so solidly that Eve never been able to get them out again, though I wish I could. "In the course of time I was troub- led about Chick. 11faybe'twas because she was mine that I ithought her a great deal better and smarter than any of the other children I saw, and that she ought te have better,chances and better company. The mate of the family we lived with died, and'his wife was pretty old and had no faMily, so I told her that if she'd keep house for me we'd move into a better heighborhood. I'd hire a little fiat instead of apartments in a tenement housel and she and Chick could live like ladies. She took to the notion, for she had, good stuff in her and her manners had always been a mile above most of the folks in the house where we'd lied, though it's a great mistake to suPpose all the poor are rOugh and coarse. We came here five or six years ago. I've worked up to be foreman in a pretty big business, and though I can't make much of a show of myself I stand well with every- body that knows me, and Chick has any number of nice friends whom she's slowly picked up at school and church, and she takes pains to make all of them understand that her papa is the great- est, smartest, dearest, funniest., best man in the world. Some of them have opinions of the same Kind about their own fathers, but Chick makes no allow- ances for any one although I've tried to teach her that c!ihildren have a right to their own opinions in family matters of that kind. "Well, that ought to be the end of the story, but it isn't. All the years Chick and I had been together it had never occurred to me that she didn't know there wasn't any relationship between us. I'd beencareful not to tell othecaepeople anything about the way I came by her, for I was afraid there might be a law of some kind by which somebody might take her away from me. There was no reason why they should do so, but people are al- ways fearful about their treasures, you know. One day when I was sick at home, and lying in bed, and Chick sat on my bedside saying loving and funny things to cheer me, and looking like the beautiful angelic hearted thing she is, she suddenly said :— • " never knew a father and daugh- ter look so unlike. It's positively funny that we haven't a single feature in common. I've been noticing it a great deal since I began to study draw- ing.' "I thought a moment, and then—I don't think I would have done it if I hadn't been sick and weak and babyish —I told her the story of our first meet- ing and what happened afterward. It broke her up; it broke me up too, but it brought her heart out a hundred times more than it had been, though she al way i had been all that was loving. She looked at me as I never had seen her look before at any �n°, except when she was saying her prayers. From that hour she was a woma,n—a woman before her time, though all her life had been leading up to it. She had long times of sitting at my feet and crying—not unhappily, for she said it comforted her a great deal to think how good I'd been to her. I was afraid she would grow morbid and looney, so I made light of all I'd done, and told her that I'd been repaid a thousand times, which was true. She was thoughtful for a few days, and then announced that she was going to be everything to me that I'd been to her; she was going to take me in hand again and give me everything I had given her. "Well, she's been at it ever since. She's twenty years old now, and being very smart naturally and having had every advantage of education that gond advisers could suggestand money could buy, she knows a great deal --and rm being taught it all. I have to take music lessons, with her for teacher ; she makes me practice, only an hour an eveuing, as I have a long day le business. I'm obliged to practice drawing and study languages while riding to and from home, and practice on her while at home. I've got a good grip on •Geienan, having plenty of ohance to use it as fast as I learn it; but French—well, I've my opinion of the people who got up such chatter. I won't show you any of my sketches, but she will if you stay long eneugh. We were on our way home from the fall exhibition at the Academy when you met us, and I'd been obliged to weed out the pictures with my own eyes and tell her which were the dozen best, And to her great delight—and mine; too, as to that—I was right in most cases, according to the experts' reports that she had clipped from the newspapers. As I said, there's none of my sketches that I would think of showing you, but there's one picture in the house that I want you to see, for a certain reason. A few years ago I found myself for- getting what I had been and .1 didn't want to—I wanted to keep my grati- tude very lively as long as I lived. So I asked my employer, whom I knew was well up about pictures, who was a good artist in lowlife characters—this was before Chick went into art. He gave me a name and I put in part of my summer vacation in having a pic- ture painted—a picture of a tramp holding a shabby child whose arms were around his neck. I was the model for the tramp. It took a long time to find a child that would do, though, til "HERE SHE is Reamer." the hour. I never told her the story of it until the night when she learned she was not my daughter; even then I told her only to quiet her, and show her by comparison, what she had done for \me. Here's the picture." As Cherriten spoke he rose and drew a curtain which I had noticed on entering the room. The picture was a three-quarter length, by a very clev- er artist, and the principal figure was an offensively realistic tramp. "Nothing fancy about it, is there'?" he asked. "1 told him I wanted real, and he obeyed orders. I think it's the ugliest thing of the kind on the face of the earth; I made myself up to look that way, and I don't think I over -did my old self a. bit. But what do you suppose happened when Chick learned the story of that picture? Why, she put this curtain before it the very next day; she said it was to be her shrine. Every night since then before going to her room, she kneels before that picture to say her prayers. I kneel beside her; that is one of the many habits she's taught me, and I'm not a bit ashamed of it. If any one had told me-- Sh—h--hh 7 She's coming I" "Robert has come to tea, papa." All right, Chick, be there in a moment." Then he said Co me, "Rob- ert is my employer's son, and one of the finest young fellows alive; I've been noticing him closely for more than ten years, for he is always with his father. He saw Chick one day when she came in to ask me for some- thing, and he lost his head at once and wanted me to take him home with me some evening. I knew something of the 'sort would happen some time, with somebody, if Chick were to be as hap- py as she had the right to be, so I told him I would think about it. What I did was to have a talk with his father first making the old man promise to hold his tongue. I made a clean breast of it, but the old man didn't scare worth a cent; he said his own parents had come over as emigrants. As to me having been a tramp, he made light of - it. The fact was, as he acknowledged, he had seen Chick himself, and he would be delighted if the boy could persuade her to make a match of it. Chick did not understand it for a long time, though the prising fellow came very often. When it did come over her she tried to back out --said she never would leave me, and all that sort of thing. I told her she might always count upon me being around. Then she did a braver thing still—she brought the young fellow in hero, showed him this picture and told him the story of it. By the merest chance I happened into the room just then, and— and " — " Well?" " Well, Robert threw his arms around her, and instead of seeming embarrassed when he saw me be spoke up as manly as you please, and said Thank you, Mr. Cherriten." "That's about all there is to the story. You're welcome to tell it to any of the old boys if You meet any of them. I wish you'd come to the wed- ding ; I'll send you an invitation. If you want to see the happiest mah there, though, look at me— not at the bride- groom." • To Decorate a Church. When flowers or other bright decor- ations are hard to obtainea most pleas- ing substitute is afforded by the cones of pine or Norway spruce. These, in their natural color, are very pretty, lout their effect can be gdeatly heightened by bronzing or gilding them. The' liquid gold paints sold by all dealers in artists' goods, are cheap, and produoe good results. Apply two coats, so that the cone willbe well covered. A cluster of them, shining against a background of dark -green, will stand out brilliant- ly by lamp -light. For a good deal of the decorative work about arches over the altar, and in the making of crosses and similar designs, they are much pre- ferable to flower S or fruit, as they are more in harmony with the evergreens among which they are,used. Provided your gilding is good, most pleasing re- sults can. be secured by giving cones such a covering. Try it, and you will be sure to be pleased with this new method. It is always well to remem- ber that artistic effects do not depend upon elaborate designs. The simplest' decorations, especially in a church altar, are ofttimes the most effective, and where taste is used rather than quantity, success is, as a- rule far more certain. Father Christina Hark 1 the C:hristmas bells are chiming ; Let your voice with them be rhyming On this festal morn. Hear them heralding my corning,— Heard you not amid their humming • Blast of bugle -horn? I am patron of the season! From my realm I banish treason; Crown me Christmas' King! Unto children I am gracious, And for them in bag capacious Gifts of toys I bring. By my beard and hair so hoary, Ne'er Was known in lite or story A Christmas Hymno Rejoice! rejoiee ! on Christmas -day, Let every heart be glad and gay; Be joyful for for that distant morn When 'Christ, the Prince of Peace, was The holy time is here, 'Tis Christnias day, Good cheerl good cheer! Angels are near. Loud let the joy -bells ring, And sing, oh, sing, 'Tis Christmas -day. He loved the world and came to be The Helper of Humanity. The lowly tenant of a stall, fle brought great gifts of love to *all. Rejoice! rejoice ! your glad heart bring; The dear Lord loves such offering. He brought you joy which naught can dim— Give back your gladness in this hymn. The holy time is here, 'Tis Christmas -day, Good cheer! good cheer! Angels are near. Lnitid let the joy -bells ring, And sing, oh, sing, 'Tis Christmas -day. —[William S. Lord. Christmas Eve. The children dreamed the whole night through Of stocking hung the hefkrth beside; And, bound to make each gift come true, Went Santa Claus at Christmas -tide. Black stockings, red, brown, white and gray— Long, little, warm, or patched and thin— The kindly Saint found on his way. And, smiling, popped his presents in. But as he felt his hoard grow light, A tear drop glistened in his eye; " More children on this earth to -night, Than:stars are twinkling in the sky." Upon the white and frozen snow He knelt his empty bag beside— "Some little socks must empty go, Alas !"—said he—" this Chrismas-tide! " Though 1 their stockings may not heap With gifts and toys and Christmas • cheer, These little ones from sorrow keep; For each, dear Lord, to Thee is dear 1 " Thou wert a little Child like them "— Prayed he—" For whom I would pro- vide Long years ago in Bethlehem, That first and blessed -Christmas -tide 1 As soothed Thee then Thy mother's kiss, And all her comfort, sweet and kind, So give them love, lest they may miss The gifts I now not were to find! "That sweetest gift, dear Lord, bestow On all the children far and wide; And give them hearts as pure as snow" Prayed Santa,' Claus—" at Christmas- tide 1" -411111ti•---—...=•••••••=m• The Birth of Motherhood. To me, that Christmas night at Bethlehem has no more beautiful sig- nificance than that it was the birth of an honored motherhood as well as ofa Saviour. Two angels on their wings might have brought an infant Saviour to Bethlehem without Mary being there at all. When the villagers, on the morning of December 25th, awoke, by Divine arrangement and in some un- explained way, the child Jesus might have been found in some comfortable cradle of the village. But no, no ! Motherhood for all time was to be con- secrated, and one of the tenderest re- lations was to be the maternal relation, ilia one of the sweetest words "Mother !" In all ages God has honor- ed_ good motherhood. John Wesley had a good mother; St. Bernard had a good mother; Samuel Budget, a good mother; Doddridge, a good mother; Walter Scott, agood mother; Benjamin West, a good mother. In a great audience, most of 'whom were Chris- tians, I asked that all those who had beenblessed of Christian mothers arise, and almost the entire assembly stood up. Don't you s ie how important it is that all motherhood be consecrated. When you hear some one in sermon or oration speak in the abstract of a good, faithful, honest mother your eyes fill up with tears, while you say to yourself, that was my mother. The first word a child utters is apt to be "mamma," and the old man in his dying dreams calls, "Mother ! Mother I" It matters not whether she was brought up in the surrounding of a city, and in affluent home, and was dressed ap- propriately with reference to the de- mands of modern life, or whether she wore the old-time cap, and great round spectacles, and apron of her own make, and knit your socks With her own needles, seated by the broad fire- place, with great black log ablaze on a winter night. It matters not how -many wrinkles crossed and recrossed her face, and how much her shoulders stooped with the burdens of a long life, if you painted a Madonna her's would be the face. What a gentle hand she had when we were sick, and what a voice to soothe pain! And was there any one who could so fill up a room with Peace and purity, and light? And what a sad day that,was when we came homeandshe could greet us not, for her lips were forever still. Come back, mother, this Christmas day, take your old place, and as ten, .or twenty, or fifty years ago, come and open the old Bible you used to read, and kneel in the same place where you used to pray, and look upon as as of old when you wished us a 11erry Christmas ' or a Happy New Year! But, no! That would not be fair to call you back. You had troubles enough, and aches enough, and bereave - meats enough- while you were here. Tarry by the throne, mother, till we join you there, your prayers all answer- ed, and in the eternal homestead of our God we shall agein keep Christmas jubilee together. But speak from your thrones, all you glorified mothers, and. say to all these, your sons and daughters:, words of love, words of warning, words of cheer. They need your voice, for they have traveled far and with many a heart -break since you left them, and you do well to call from the heights of Heaven to the valleys of the earth. Hail, enthroned ancestry! We are coming. Keep a place for us, right beside you, at the banquet. Slow -footed years! Mote swiftyree 1 Into the gal of that unsesting sun ; 4ornesick we are for 0160— Calm land beyood the '4387 ,,, sp ray urys....s . le," 'ail iTV 4.44