1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by
writing down the story.

That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hourglass parcels, was the
ruin of the Confederate navy, army, ordnance, and treasury; and it led
to the capture of the poor President too.

But, Heaven be praised, no one shall say that my office did not do its
duty!

CHRISTMAS WAITS IN BOSTON.

FROM THE INGHAM PAPERS.

[When my friends of the Boston Daily Advertiser asked me last year
to contribute to their Christmas number, I was very glad to recall
this scrap of Mr. Ingham's memoirs.

For in most modern Christmas stories I have observed that the rich
wake up of a sudden to befriend the poor, and that the moral is
educed from such compassion. The incidents in this story show, what
all life shows, that the poor befriend the rich as truly as the
rich the poor: that, in the Christian life, each needs all.

I have been asked a dozen times how far the story is true. Of
course no such series of incidents has ever taken place in this
order in four or five hours. But there is nothing told here which
has not parallels perfectly fair in my experience or in that of any
working minister.]

I always give myself a Christmas present.

And on this particular year the present was a carol party, which is
about as good fun, all things consenting kindly, as a man can have.

Many things must consent, as will appear. First of all, there must be
good sleighing; and second, a fine night for Christmas eve. Ours are not
the carollings of your poor shivering little East Angles or South
Mercians, where they have to plod round afoot in countries which do not
know what a sleigh-ride is.

I had asked Harry to have sixteen of the best voices in the chapel
school to be trained to five or six good carols, without knowing why. We
did not care to disappoint them if a February thaw setting in on the
24th of December should break up the spree before it began. Then I had
told Howland that he must reserve for me a span of good horses, and a
sleigh that I could pack sixteen small children into, tight-stowed.
Howland is always good about such things, knew what the sleigh was for,
having done the same in other years, and made the span four horses of
his own accord, because the children would like it better, and "it would
be no difference to him." Sunday night, as the weather nymphs ordered,
the wind h