ery handy at times; makes a good
Christmas present, one dollar down and a dollar a month for life. Nobody
can tell the difference between real pearls and imitation; somebody
ought to put the oysters wise. Save them a lot of trouble and anxiety.
Don't know just what duvetyne is, but there seems to be a lot of it
drunk nowadays. Hope that clockwork train for the Urchin will arrive
soon; we were hoping to have three happy evenings playing with it before
he sees it. Fine to have children; lots of fun playing with their
presents. We are sure that life after death is really so, because
children always kick the blankets off at night. Fine bit of symbolism
that; put it in a sermon, unless Doctor Conwell gets there first.

Grand time, Christmas! We vowed to try to take down our weight this
winter, and then they put sugar back on the menu, and doughnut shops
spring up on every street, and Charles F. Jenkins sent us a big sack of
Pocono buckwheat flour and we're eating a basketful of griddle cakes
every morning for breakfast. Terrible to be a coward; we always turn on
the hot water first in the shower bath, except the first morning we used
it. The plumber got the indicator on the wrong way round, and when you
turn to the place marked HOT it comes down like ice. Our idea of a
really happy man is the fellow driving a wagonload of truck just in
front of a trolley car, holding it back all the way downtown; when he
hears the motorman clanging away he pretends he thinks it's the
Christmas chimes and sings "Hark the Herald Angels."

Speaking of Herald Angels reminds us of a good story about James Gordon
Bennett; we'll spring it one of these days when we're hard up for copy.
Jack Frost must be a married man, did you see him try to cover up the
show windows with his little traceries the other day when the shopping
was at its height? There was a pert little hat in a window on Walnut
Street we were very much afraid someone might see; the frost saved us.
Don't forget to put Red Cross seals on your letters. Delightful to watch
the faces on the streets at Christmas time. Everybody trying hard to be
pleasant; sometimes rather a strain. Curious things faces--some of them
seem almost human; queer to think that each belongs to someone and no
chance to get rid of it; sorry we're not in the mirror industry; never
thought of it before, but it ought to be profitable. Happier most of us,
if mirrors never had been invented. Hope all our nice-natured clie