but that they could at least
afford a fly-leaf. They defeat their own ends, too, for their letters
are never legible, and they have to write again to explain their
meaning, thus paying another penny away in postage.

Why do we not make a stand against the old forms? Why should we always
tread in the footmarks of our ancestors, instead of making tracks of
our own? "Dear Mr. So-and-So," we write to a man almost a stranger to
us. Imagine his surprise if we addressed him so to his face! And we
end in just such a foolish and unreasonable way, "Yours obediently,
faithfully, truly!" Where is the sense? Your signature should be quite
enough. You have to be so careful, too, in saying whether you are
obedient, faithful, or affectionate to your correspondent. If you end
too warmly, by mistake, the whole letter has to be written again. It
is not a thing you can scratch out or correct. It would look so very
bad.

People have different ideas of "Christmasing." Some prefer to adopt an
unsteady gait, and to spend the night in a ditch or a police-station;
some have a taste for family parties; some like it better by
themselves, and some go right away and spend the time at a different
place every year. These last are, I think, by far the most sensible.
It is a mistake to have land-marks to remind you how time is running
on, how friends have left, how the loved ones have passed away. The
vacant place appears even more empty. The old happy times show out
even happier in contrast to the present. You cannot enjoy yourself or
forget the past, for

"A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."

It is far better to go away somewhere to places which recall no
sorrows or recollections and have no associations with the years gone
by.

He is growing such a foolish old man is Father Christmas. He rarely
visits us now with hoary head, his garments sparkling with frost and
snow. He is tired of all that. He likes a change of fashion, like
everybody else. He either comes so thickly enveloped in yellow fog
that you can scarcely distinguish the old man, or else he arrives so
drenched with rain and splashed up to the beard in mud that we
scarcely like to open our doors to him.

He is growing old, I suppose, and trembling on the brink of second
childhood, so we must not blame him. But still he is not a very great
favorite of mine, and I cannot refrain from echoing the complaint in
one of the comic papers--"_Why doesn't he strike, li