e difficulty of choosing a present that will suit a
friend. Certainly it will not be necessary, from sheer indifference and
ignorance, to invite the friend to choose his own present. On the
contrary, one will be, in secret, so intimate with the friend's
situation and wants and desires, that sundry rival schemes for
pleasuring him will at once offer themselves. And when he receives the
present finally selected, he will have the conviction, always
delightfully flattering to a donee, that he has been the object of a
particular attention and insight. * * * And when the cards of greeting
are despatched, formal phrases will go forth charged, in the
consciousness of the sender, with a genuine meaning, with the force of a
climax, as though the sender had written thereon, in invisible ink: "I
have had you well in mind during the last twelve months; I think I
understand your difficulties and appreciate your efforts better than I
did, and so it is with a peculiar sympathetic knowledge that I wish you
good luck. I have guessed what particular kind of good luck you require,
and I wish accordingly. My wish is not vague and perfunctory only."

* * * * *

And on the day of festival itself one feels that one really has
something to celebrate. The occasion has a basis, if it had no basis
for one before; and if a basis previously existed, then it is widened
and strengthened. The festival becomes a public culmination to a private
enterprise. One is not reminded by Christmas of goodwill, because the
enterprise of imaginative sympathy has been a daily affair throughout
the year; but Christmas provides an excuse for taking satisfaction in
the success of the enterprise and new enthusiasm to correct its
failures. The symbolism of the situation of Christmas, at the turn of
the year, develops an added impressiveness, and all the Christmas
customs, apt to produce annoyance in the breasts of the unsentimental,
are accepted with indulgence, even with eagerness, because their
symbolism also is shown in a clearer light. Christmas becomes as
personal as a birthday. One eats and drinks to excess, not because it
is the custom to eat and drink to excess, but from sheer effervescent
faith in an idea. And as one sits with one's friends, possessing them in
the privacy of one's heart, permeated by a sense of the value of
sympathetic comprehension in this formidable adventure of existence on a
planet that rushes eternally throug