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Show i i 4 J Letter to aFriend J I salute you.. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you nave not got; but there is much, very rnuch, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No Heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take Heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present litde instance. . Take Peace! The gjoomofthe world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is Toy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see--and to see we have only to look. I beseech is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, scast them away as udv or heavy nr hard. Remove the coveting and you will find beneath it a living splenebr, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the Angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial or a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that Angels hand is there; the gift is there, ana the wonder of an overshaaowinresence. Our joys too: be not content with them as joys. Tney too conceal diviner gifts. TJfe is so full, of meaning and purpose, so full cf beauty-beneath its covering-thai you will find .earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claimit, that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through .unknown country home.. i&dso,attMs(Sristmastime,Igreetyou. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away. Fm Giovanni And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. Hdw many families whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggle of life, are then reuriited,and meet once again in that happy state ot companionship and mutual good-will, which is a source . of such pure and unalloyed delight, and one so inrompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world; that the religious belief of the most rivilized nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first days of a future state of existence, provided for the blest and happy! Hjw manv old recollections, and how many abrmant sympathies, Christmas-time awakens! We write , these words now, many niles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so bristly then, have ceased to glow: the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their luster in the grave; andyet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstance connected with those nappy nreetines crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as. if the last assemblage had been but yesterday. Happy, happy (staTas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home! Charles Dickens |
