John would insist upon playing with
them all by himself. Children can always become philosophers in half a
day. It is their special genius.

Only grown up people have forgotten how to forget. And Christmas,
although the most lovable of all the festivals of the year, is also the
saddest--and the most lonely, alas! There are so many "gaps"--so many
empty places in the heart which the passing of the years will never,
never be able to fill. That is why Mother weeps--it is her privilege.
And, truth to tell, so many people would like to weep too, only they dare
not--they dare not. So they throw themselves into the feverish jollity
which Christmas seems to demand for the sake of the children, and for the
sake of the young people who, because they were so young, will never
realise the aftermath of loneliness which to-day elder people know _meant
war_! So they say to themselves, "Let us eat and drink and appear merry
because to-morrow . . . to-morrow--who knows?--peradventure we may all
meet again!" Thus the true spirit of Christmas is always as a
benediction.

_The New Year_

There is something "tonic" about the New Year which there isn't about
Christmas, and Birthdays certainly do not possess. After thirty, you
wake up on Christmas morning, look back into the Long Ago, and sigh;
after forty, you wake up on the morning of your birthday, look forward,
and ofttimes despair. But New Year's Day has "buck" in it, and, when
you wake up, you lay down the immediate future with those Good
Intentions which somebody or other once declared paved the way to Hell,
but are nevertheless a most invigorating exercise. Christmas, besides,
has been seized upon by tradesmen and others in whose debt you happen
to be to remind you of the fact. I suppose they hope that the Good
Will of the Season will make you think kindly of their account--which,
in parenthesis, perhaps it might, did not that same Good Will run you
into debt in other directions. As for Birthdays--well, the person who
remembers Birthdays is the person at whose head I should like to hurl
the biggest and heaviest paving-stone with which, as I lie in bed on
New Year's morning, I lay out my way to Hell. No, as I said before,
Christmas Days and Birthdays are failures so far as festivity goes.
The former brings along with it bills and accounts rendered, and you
are fed with rood which immediately overwhelms any feeling of
kindliness you may happen to have in your hea