Christmas Is A Season For Kindling The

There Rise Authors Now And Then, Who Seem Proof Against The Mutability Of Language, Because They Have Rooted Themselves In The Unchanging Principles Of Human Nature.

There Is A Serene And Settled Majesty To Woodland Scenery That Enters Into The Soul And Delights And Elevates It, And Fills It With Noble Inclinations.

How We Delight To Build Our Recollections Upon Some Basis Of Reality,--a Place, A Country, A Local Habitation! How The Events Of Life, As We Look Back Upon Them, Have Grown Into The Well-remembered Background Of The Places Where They Fell Upon Us! Here Is Some Sunny Garden Or Summer Lane, Beautified And Canonized Forever, With The Flood Of A Great Joy; And Here Are Dim And Silent Places,--rooms Always Shadowed And Dark To Us, Whatever They May Be To Others,--where Distress Or Death Came Once, And Since Then Dwells Forevermore.

Over No Nation Does The Press Hold A More Absolute Control Than Over The People Of America, For The Universal Education Of The Poorest Classes Makes Every Individual A Reader.

In Civilized Life, Where The Happiness, And Indeed Almost The Existence, Of Man Depends So Much Upon The Opinion Of His Fellow-men, He Is Constantly Acting A Studied Part. The Bold And Peculiar Traits Of Native Character Are Refined Away Or Softened Down By The Levelling Influence Of What Is Termed Good-breeding, And He Practises So Many Petty Deceptions And Affects So Many Generous Sentiments For The Purposes Of Popularity That It Is Difficult To Distinguish His Real From His Artificial Character.