CHRISTMAS SENTIMENT.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 73, 19 December 1907, Page 3

CHRISTMAS SENTIMENT.

THE GKACIOUSNESS OF GIVING. AN; APPEAL.' "What havo you got there, John?" The person addressed was an eminently respectable person, wearing the conventional morning coat and black hard hat (though the thermometer registered over eighty in the shade), ami whoso "office" deportment was twisted slightly out of its centre in an endeavour to look just as usual while carrying an unevenly constructed brown paper parcel. Found out,' he broke into perspiration and a cheery smile. "Toys, my boy, for the youngsters!" ho said with buoyant humour, evidently aware that tho other was a husband and a father. "I took home some oil Saturday; couldn't pass the shops for the life of me —saw the rcmains'about the yard this morning!" Then both mounted a car, and were whirled beyond earshot. What a power this White- Man's Festival is! Who is the one who can say with his hand on his heart that the Christmas feeling has no place in the compass of his emotions ? There was ono once, an imaginative man nemed Scrooge, who was advised of his miserable state by his subconscious self, and became happy over afterwards. will go as far as to assume that there are Scrooges among us to-day, poor creatures who are more to be pitied than blamed, for they know not that Christmas feeling that comes with the year end to those having any pretence to receptive sentimentality, to those who know the joy of giving, and, if they cannot give, to be bright, jolly, and kindly towards one 'another. Wellington has been called bad names by dwellers in cities of a more lethargic temperament, but these have resulted from the feverish activity which our citizens are able—thanks to a Heaven-sent air—to throw into their business from January to December, and the kindly emotions that come with tin trumpets and tho hold rocking-horse—items of commerce that the dust gathers on during tho rest of the year, but which assail the ear and eye in quite another fashion in mid-December. But there is something deeper and more hallowed in tho atmosphere of Christmas week that makes most people. mors forgiving, more benign, and, shall we say, more religious (in a broad sense) than at all other times, it is aptly expressed by Shakespeare in the lines— . ■

"Some say that, ever 'gainst that season ; comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, ■ .. No fairy tales, nor • witch hatli power to : charm, ' So hallowed and so gracious is the time." It is this graciousness that causes the city man to shed a little of his dignity by carrying'ungainly parcels home to his dear ones, anc) that makes us all secretly think what a good chap Joplin is in "Bluebell in Fairyland." Wellington has been asked to give with somewhat monotonous' continuity during tho last six months, and it has given royally, but there is Christmas a week away, and the.poor are always with us, ami so we ask all who can to give again an'd again. "Give to whom—what about the rates?" says a Scrooge. ' "Vcs, the rates have to be met, and some of the money goes to tho institutions pleaded for, but the rates don't make a Christinas any moro than ono swallow does a summer — ergo, give of your , bduiity to the little incurables tended by'the. Rev. Mother Aubert; tho deserted toddlers carod for by the Salvation Army; the children of the Orphanago; the sick at the hospital; and the indigent aged of tho Benevolent Homo. Such lives'stand in need of a little brightening— and they do say the year has been a prosperous one.