tree, and Santa Claus to their heart's content! I did not get
home until the day after Christmas.

But, after all, what a Christmas I had enjoyed!

During a season of great privation we were much assisted by barrels of
clothing which were sent to us from the East. One day just before
Christmas, I was distributing the contents of several barrels of wearing
apparel and other necessities to the women and children at a little
mission. The delight of the women, as the good warm articles of clothing
for themselves and their children which they so sadly needed were
handed out to them was touching; but the children themselves did not
enter into the joy of the occasion with the same spontaneity. Finally
just as I got to the bottom of one box and before I had opened the other
one, a little boy sniffling to himself in the corner remarked, _sotto
voce_:

"Ain't there no real Chris'mus gif's in there for us little fellers,
too?"

I could quite enter into his feelings, for I could remember in my
youthful days when careful relatives had provided me with a "cardigan"
jacket, three handkerchiefs, and a half-dozen pairs of socks for
Christmas, that the season seemed to me like a hollow mockery and the
attempt to palm off necessities as Christmas gifts filled my childish
heart with disapproval. I am older now and can face a Christmas
remembrance of a cookbook, a silver cake-basket, or an ice-cream freezer
(some of which I have actually received) with philosophical equanimity,
if not gratitude.

I opened the second box, therefore, with a great longing, though but
little hope. Heaven bless the woman who had packed that box, for, in
addition to the usual necessary articles, there were dolls, knives,
books, games galore, so the small fry had some "real Chris'mus gif's" as
well as the others.

After one of the blizzards a young ranchman who had gone into the
nearest town some twenty miles away to get some Christmas things for his
wife and little ones, was found frozen to death on Christmas morning,
his poor little packages of petty Christmas gifts tightly clasped in his
cold hands lying by his side. His horse was frozen too and when they
found it, hanging to the horn of the saddle was a little piece of an
evergreen tree--you would throw it away in contempt in the East, it was
so puny. There it meant something. The love of Christmas? It was there
in his dead hands. The spirit of Christmas? It showed itself in that bit
of verdant pine o