OCR Text |
Show CHILDREN'S DAY. B This is children's day above all others of the B year. They go to sleep on Christmas eve with Htt the miser's dream of a fabulous fortune to come HH! on e morrow wtn the dawn, the dream ma- B terializes and their babble fills the morning with B! gladness. Such surprises, such goodie-goodies, B such immense treasures. Santa Claus is a saint in B truth to them, and they do not for a moment B question his absolute divinity. The charm wears flB ff under the friction of the years, only the echoes come back now and then to memory, and for the H moment the intervening seasons with their dis- IB illusions are forgotten, and the loveliness of that Hi first home, with its caresses, its music and its dainties, causes men and women to forget that their eyes are growing dim and their locks are whitening. The benediction of those Christmas days of childhood remains a saving grace to many H a soul. When all was innocence, all was joy; when the knowledge of the harsh world's ways was as yet withheld, and when fulfilled desire filled the world with music. It was the perfect home that made the Saxon and the Anglo-Saxon great races. Men went out from them with such a reverence for their sacredness, with such a desire jHfl to in person reproduce them, that they could not fail in honor, or in truthfulness, or in any achievement achieve-ment needed to make an honored name. And that love of home, expanding, became patriotism at last; the love widened until it encompased the country, and as at first men would risk all things in defense of home, they found when tried, that it was a joy to risk all things for native land. This is what has held men up into the face of tempests at sea; up in the crises of battle on land; the thought has been that there must be no failure, lest it might cast a shadow back upon the old home, upon the graves of those who gave that old home sanctity and taught them that the highest high-est attribute of a man is a perfect sense of duty, that must be carried out regardless of cost. So teach the children what it is that singles Christmas out from every other day, and shower them with all the gifts possible, that it may be to them a day so filled with light and with joy that the impression impres-sion will cling to them through all their advancing ad-vancing years. The laugh and the babble of a child are the strains of music that come down to the world from where music has its birth, without one tone made harsh in the transmission; keep the babble up today; let there be no check to the laughter, for they are the advance signals of true manhood and womanhood to be; the best guarantee guaran-tee of the perpetuation of a free, great nation. |