Daily press and Dakotaian. [volume] (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1875-1880, 1877-12-24
CHRISTMAS.
From B. F. Taylor's Baggage

Methuselah died pretty we'll along in his
years of discretion, but world at his age
would hardly have been out of its swad-
ding bands. There is star, less than two
thousand years old, that lights day for US,
the fairest. Youngest Of all the spaneled
multitude-the very Benjamin of Heaven
The telescope Of the astoronmer never sum.
moned it. Numbered in the celestial cen.
sus, I am sure it will not be there when the
consultations are rolled together as q scroll
1t is immortal as the candle of the Lord
It is the start Of the east that lights up
Christmas for Us With wonderful radiance
If there is ever time in all the year when
the two worlds touch, think it is Christ
mas Eve. What less than first small act
o. faith is that hanging million of empty
stockings by million pins at night, and
then tumbling the truudle-beds of Christen-
dom with the delightful and sleepless ex.
pectancy that they will find them all filled
In the morning? Let man play Saturn
and eat his children and be done with it;
but let him not set dog on their ANGELS
cur Of fact, that should have born with
Its nose in muzzle, upon Santa Claus or
Kriss Kringle, and worry him out of the
children's sweet kingdom of dreams.
Whoever wants to make his children
older than any wholesome grandfather
ought to be. has only to strip the world
stark naked before their faces; bare all it's
exquisite mystery that keeps one pair of
furnished interrogation-points for ever
dancing in another pair of eyes, resolve the
thrones and paradises and angels they see
in the plighted clouds, into heavy aud de-
lueive fog; and, bv-and-by, for the quick.
silverish atoms of humanity that hunt out
every grain of true gold in the rubbish Of
life, full of marvel and fancy and poetry as
any old ballad, be will have Q row of little
desiccated, unspeculative, philosophical
donkeys all draped in wet blankets.
visited, not long ago, the house where
happened to me when narrow
" escaped being too young to be counted.
but you can meyer guess Whist was the first
thing l looked for. It was not, as you
might think, the threshold worn smooth
and beautiful by the touch of feet that have
played truant forever, nor the dear home
room with its aItar-place for beech and
m,ple offerings, not yet the nook of darkness
under the stairs were goblins and ogres
held sweet counsel together by night.
1t was only the old chimney-top my eyes
FIRST sought. to whose rugged edges and
sooty mouthpiece a thousand boatswain
winds had put their lips and whistled up the
storms for eighty years. It was the homeliest
structure that eyer seemed beautiful to any
body. Shall I tell you why? Down that
chimney the angle descended with my first
Christmas gift. What was the ladder of
Jacob to me then, has turned, at last, into
rude unlettered monument to the dead past.
They whom surprised with my "Merry
in the gray Of the morning, have
gone away for the everlasting holidays. The
children with whom joined hands and
hearts are-where are they? There are
tences in the graveyard tipped with funeral
lrns of black. There are broken slabs
of marble bearing names that have fallen
out Of human speech. There are hard,
grim men. There are meek and sadeyed
women, full Of care. Has the sparkle Of
Ii fe utterly vanished from the cup? Can
The sleigh-bells' chime and the Rlittering
nights and the laugh Of young girls and the
measure Of old songs charm no more?
Oh, Comrades! oh, Sweetheart! Let me
give you a touch Of the time when happi-
nes was the very cheapest thing in the