A little smile, a word of cheer, A bit of love from someone near, A little gift from one held dear, Best wishes for the coming year. These make a merry christmas!

Few have borne unconsciously the spell of loveliness.

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty; Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty.

Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real love-liness.

Despair is infidelity and death.

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his "Highland Mary!"

So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature’s geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow!