in believing that we are only on the threshold of turning to account the hidden forces of nature.  There would be great danger of human presumption and conceit in this progress if the conceit were not so widely diffused, and where we are all conceited there is no one to whom it will appear unpleasant.  If there was only one person who knew about the telephone he would be unbearable.  Probably the Eiffel Tower would be stricken down as a monumental presumption, like that of Babel, if it had not been raised with the full knowledge and consent of all the world.

This new spirit, with its multiform manifestations, which came into the world nearly nineteen hundred years ago, is sometimes called the spirit of Christmas.  And good reasons can be given for supposing that it is.  At any rate, those nations that have the most of it are the most prosperous, and those people who have the most of it are the most agreeable to associate with.  Know all men by these Presents, is an old legal form which has come to have a new meaning in this dispensation.  It is by the spirit of brotherhood exhibited in giving presents that we know the Christmas proper, only we are apt to take it in too narrow a way.  The real spirit of Christmas is the general diffusion of helpfulness and good-will.  If somebody were to discover an elixir which would make every one truthful, he would not, in this age of the world, patent it.  Indeed, the Patent Office would not let him make a corner on virtue as he does in wheat; and it is not respectable any more among the real children of Christmas to make a corner in wheat.  The world, to be sure, tolerates still a great many things that it does not approve of, and, on the whole, Christmas, as an ameliorating and good-fellowship institution, gains a little year by year.  There is still one hitch about it, and a bad one just now, namely, that many people think they can buy its spirit by jerks of liberality, by costly gifts.  Whereas the fact is that a great many of the costliest gifts in this season do not count at all.  Crumbs from the rich man’s table don’t avail any more to open the pearly gates even of popular esteem in this world.  Let us say, in fine, that a loving, sympathetic heart is better than a nickel-plated service in this world, which is surely growing young and sympathetic.

A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE

In Autumn the thoughts lightly turn to Age.  If the writer has seemed to be interested, sometimes to the neglect of other topics, in the American young woman, it was not because she is interested in herself, but because she is on the way to be one of the most agreeable objects in this lovely world.  She may struggle against it; she may resist it by all the legitimate arts of the coquette and the chemist; she may be convinced that youth and beauty are inseparable allies; but she would have more patience if she reflected that the sunset is often finer than the sunrise, commonly