with the machinists, taking down the frame and
the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little bit of
wire,"--and he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful steel,
which poor I knew so well by this time,--"that little bit of wire had
passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the screens,
through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the
lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a
Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the
cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife--for you see it was a
knife, by that time--had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web
every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson,
because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."

On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I
got no salary on the 1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by
writing down the story.

That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hour-glass 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 sh