teach the spectator that art is simply nature adorned.  Rachel in all her glory was not adorned like one of these.  We have changed all that.  The actress used to have a rehearsal.  She now has an “opening.”  Does it require nowadays, then, no special talent or gift to go on the stage?  No more, we can assure our readers, than it does to write a book.  But homely people and poor people can write books.  As yet they cannot act.

ALTRUISM

Christmas is supposed to be an altruistic festival.  Then, if ever, we allow ourselves to go out to others in sympathy expressed by gifts and good wishes.  Then self-forgetfulness in the happiness of others becomes a temporary fashion.  And we find—­do we not?—­the indulgence of the feeling so remunerative that we wish there were other days set apart to it.  We can even understand those people who get a private satisfaction in being good on other days besides Sunday.  There is a common notion that this Christmas altruistic sentiment is particularly shown towards the unfortunate and the dependent by those more prosperous, and in what is called a better social position.  We are exhorted on this day to remember the poor.  We need to be reminded rather to remember the rich, the lonely, not-easy-to-be-satisfied rich, whom we do not always have with us.  The Drawer never sees a very rich person that it does not long to give him something, some token, the value of which is not estimated by its cost, that should be a consoling evidence to him that he has not lost sympathetic touch with ordinary humanity.  There is a great deal of sympathy afloat in the world, but it is especially shown downward in the social scale.  We treat our servants—­supposing that we are society —­better than we treat each other.  If we did not, they would leave us.  We are kinder to the unfortunate or the dependent than to each other, and we have more charity for them.

The Drawer is not indulging in any indiscriminate railing at society.  There is society and society.  There is that undefined something, more like a machine than an aggregate of human sensibilities, which is set going in a “season,” or at a watering-place, or permanently selects itself for certain social manifestations.  It is this that needs a missionary to infuse into it sympathy and charity.  If it were indeed a machine and not made up of sensitive personalities, it would not be to its members so selfish and cruel.  It would be less an ambitious scramble for place and favor, less remorseless towards the unsuccessful, not so harsh and hard and supercilious.  In short, it would be much more agreeable if it extended to its own members something of the consideration and sympathy that it gives to those it regards as its inferiors.  It seems to think that good-breeding and good form are separable from kindliness and sympathy and helpfulness.  Tender-hearted and charitable enough all the individuals of this “society”