se
with his slipper.

"Make her quite understand that he wants her for his wife. She may live
where she likes and how she likes, only it must be with him."

"I will tell her."

"Say he has grown old, but not cold; that he loves her now perhaps
better than he did twenty years ago; that he has been faithful to her
all through his life, and that he will be faithful till he dies."

The Californian broke off suddenly. The widow answered still, "I will
tell her."

"And what do you think she will say?" he asked, in an altered tone.

"What _can_ she say but _Come_!"

"Hurrah!"

The stranger caught her out of her chair as if she had been a child, and
kissed her.

"Don't--oh, don't!" she cried out. "I am Sam's Maria!"

"Well--I am Maria's Sam!"

Off went the dark wig and the black whiskers--there smiled the dear face
she had not forgotten! I leave you to imagine the tableau; even the cat
got up to look, and Bose sat on his stump of a tail, and wondered if he
was on his heels or his head.

The widow gave one little scream, and then she--

But, stop! Quiet people like you and me, dear reader, who have got over
all these follies, and can do nothing but turn up our noses at them,
have no business here. I will only add that two hearts were very happy,
that Bose concluded after a while that all was right, and so lay down to
sleep again, and that one week afterward, on Christmas Eve, there was a
wedding at the house that made the neighbors stare. The widow had
married her First Love!

THE OLD MAN'S CHRISTMAS.

BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

I.

Though there was wrong on both sides, they never would have separated
had it not been for the old man.

He was Ben's father, and Ben was an only child--a spoiled, selfish,
high-tempered lad, who had grown up with the idea that his father, Anson
English, or the "old man," as his dutiful son called him, was much
richer than he really was, and that he had no need of any personal
effort--any object in life, aside from the pursuit of pleasure.

Ben's mother had died when he was fifteen years old and his father had
never married again. Yet it was not any allegiance to her memory which
had kept Anson English from a second marriage. He remembered her, to be
sure, and scarcely a day passed without his mentioning her. But after
her death, as during her weary life, he used her name as a synonym for
all that was undesirable. He compared everybody to "'Liz'beth," and
always to her