looked browner or juicier, and the blaze on the pudding-sauce never burned bluer; the kissing under the mistletoe was never more delightful, nor the blindman’s-buff ever played with a greater zest:  but the merriest Christmas must end.  Your little girl, tired and sleepy, kneels at your feet, and you pass your fingers through her soft curls, while she repeats her simple prayer:  “God bless pa, God bless ma, God bless grandpa, God bless little brother, and God bless Santa Claus;” and you hope that God will bless Santa Claus.  You thank your Creator you are the master of that quiet home and the father of those dear children, and go to your rest with a heart full of gratitude.  You hope that all the newspaper-boys, and all the milkmen and bread-men’s children, and all the little boys and girls who have no fathers or mothers or grandpas, and all the poor, and all the sick, and all the blind, and all the distressed, have had a merry Christmas.

At a time like this, when the security of your own reward relaxes scrutiny for the shortcomings of others, I would have you take up these “Trifles.”

A CHRISTMAS MELODY.

The Prelude.

“Twenty-nine dollars!  Very well, Mr. John Redfield:  I think you have cut your allowance a little low.  With bracelets, bonbons, and other gewgaws for your interesting friends, I must say your enjoyment of this prospective Twenty-fifth of December is somewhat reduced.  When a man has skated over the frozen surface of society a little matter of one-and-thirty years, it is just reasonable to hope he has reached that desideratum known as years of discretion.  There is a little adage relating to the immeasurably short time the feeble-minded enjoy pecuniary advantages, which I think decidedly applicable to you.

“A rather severe epigram, occurring in the Holy Scriptures, goes to show the impossibility—­even though the somewhat unsatisfactory argument of the pestle and mortar be resorted to—­of separating the same class of people from their rather confused ideas of the fitness of things.  However, when the Mussulman, careering over Sahara, finds himself, by a stumble of his horse, rolling in the sand, with his yataghan, pistols, and turban scattered around him, he rises quietly, and exclaims, ’Allah is great!’ I know a Christian would have expended his wrath in a variety of anathemas highly edifying, and close by wishing his unfortunate steed in a much warmer climate than the Mohammedan has any idea of.  I am a poor church-man:  let me emulate the philosophy of the simple child of the desert, and when I fall into trouble bear it patiently.

“I wonder what the grim savage would do were he short of money in a land thronging with beggars and other blissful adjuncts of civilization?  Woe unto every blind or club-foot man, and every one-armed or scalded woman, I meet to-day!  They shall work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, or I’m an idiot.