The Glad Season.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 237, 22 December 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Glad Season.

(By Charles Dickeas.)

And numerous indeed are the hearty to which Christmas brim s a brief seison of happiness and enj ynient. Hot many i'uniiies \;■] ose members kava been dispersed far and wide in the restless struggles of life, are then united, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual good-wiil, which is a source <t such pine and unalloyed-delight, and one so incompatible with the cares and scrrows of the world, that the religious •■diet's of (he most uvilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the lust joys j; a future state of existence, p/ovided for the blest and happy, flow many old recollections, and how nianv cui-mant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

\\ e write these words now, many miles 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 t 0 boat; many of tlie looks that shone so brightly then have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped have grown cold; the eyes we sought have hid their lustre in the grave, and yet the old Jiou.se, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the mast minute and trivial circumstance connected with those hapy meetings crowd upon our mind at oath recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterdav.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth,, and transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to h's own fireside and his quiet home! — Pickwick Papers.