of my life tells me,—­of the way in which woman helps woman, and man helps man, when only the ice is broken,—­how we are all rich so soon as we find out that we are all brothers, and how we are all in want, unless we can call at any moment for a brother’s hand,—­then I could make you understand something, in the lives you lead every day, of what the New Covenant, the New Commonwealth, the New Kingdom is to be.”

But I did not dare tell Dod Dalton what Campbell had been doing for Todd, nor did I dare tell Campbell by what unconscious arts old Dod had been helping Lycidas.  Perhaps the sermon would have been better had I done so.

But, when we had our tree in the evening at home, I did tell all this story to Polly and the bairns, and I gave Alice her measuring-tape,—­precious with a spot of Lycidas’s blood,—­and Bertha her Sheffield wimble.  “Papa,” said old Clara, who is the next child, “all the people gave presents, did not they, as they did in the picture in your study?”

“Yes,” said I, “though they did not all know they were giving them.”

“Why do they not give such presents every day?” said Clara.

“O child,” I said, “it is only for thirty-six hours of the three hundred and sixty-five days, that all people remember that they are all brothers and sisters, and those are the hours that we call, therefore, Christmas eve and Christmas day.”

“And when they always remember it,” said Bertha, “it will be Christmas all the time!  What fun!”

“What fun, to be sure; but Clara, what is in the picture?”

“Why, an old woman has brought eggs to the baby in the manger, and an old man has brought a sheep.  I suppose they all brought what they had.”

“I suppose those who came from Sharon brought roses,” said Bertha.  And Alice, who is eleven, and goes to the Lincoln School, and therefore knows everything, said, “Yes, and the Damascus people brought Damascus wimbles.”

“This is certain,” said Polly, “that nobody tried to give a straw, but the straw, if he really gave it, carried a blessing.”

EDWARD E. HALE’S WRITINGS.

THE GOOD TIME COMING; or, Our New Crusade.

Square 18mo.  Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00

“It has all the characteristics of its brilliant author,—­unflagging entertainment, helpfulness, suggestive, practical hints, and a contagious vitality that sets one’s blood tingling.  Whoever has read ‘Ten Times One is Ten’ will know just what we mean.  We predict that the new volume, as being a more charming story, will have quite as great a parish of readers.  The gist of the book is to show how possible it is for the best spirits of a community, through wise organization, to form themselves into a lever by means of which the whole tone of the social status may be elevated, and the good and highest happiness of the helpless many be attained through the self-denying exertions of the powerful few.”—­Southern Churchman.