LITMIR.BIZ

       Alas! (quoth he) but newly borne,

       In fierie heats I frie,

       Yet none approach to warm their hearts,

       Or feele my fire, but I;

       My faultless brest the furnace is,

       The fuell, wounding thornes:

       Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,

       The ashes, shames and scornes;

       The fuell justice layeth on,

       And mercy blows the coales,

       The metalls in this furnace wrought,

       Are Men's defiled soules:

       For which, as now on fire I am,

       To work them to their good,

       So will I melt into a bath,

       To wash them in my blood.

       With this he vanisht out of sight,

       And swiftly shrunke away,

       And straight I called unto minde

       That it was Christmasse Day.

      CHRISTMAS EVE

      HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

      [From "My Study Fire."]

      The world has been full of mysteries to-day; everybody has gone about weighted with secrets. The children's faces have fairly shone with expectancy, and I enter easily into the universal dream which at this moment holds all the children of Christendom under its spell. Was there ever a wider or more loving conspiracy than that which keeps the venerable figure of Santa Claus from slipping away, with all the other oldtime myths, into the forsaken wonderland of the past? Of all the personages whose marvelous doings once filled the minds of men, he alone survives. He has outlived all the great gods, and all the impressive and poetic conceptions which once flitted between heaven and earth; these have gone, but Santa Claus remains by virtue of a common understanding that childhood shall not be despoiled of one of its most cherished beliefs, either by the mythologist, with his sun myth theory, or the scientist, with his heartless diatribe against superstition. There is a good deal more to be said on this subject, if this were the place to say it; even superstition has its uses, and sometimes, its sound heart of truth. He who does not see in the legend of Santa Claus a beautiful faith on one side, and the naive embodiment of a divine fact on the other, is not fit to have a place at the Christmas board. For him there should be neither carol, nor holly, nor mistletoe; they only shall keep the feast to whom all these things are but the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.