Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-12-25

was a medical student in large university
whose code of nonor admitted women cor
daily and graduated them we'll trained.
was there for several reasons, not for the
sake OF the medical school, which
never visited except to accom-
pany my student home, and of whose
CHASTITY mysteries 1 had and have to this
day an irrational horror. Nv friends turn
to dissect her portion of the iimaterial'' be-
fell her at the HOLIDAYS. We put the point
to vote between uS-two girls. and our
dog, the King Charles spaniel whose fate it
was to share our exile-and decided by n
majority OF two against one to sacrifice our
vacation, spend Christmas in the boarding
house, and by working steadily through the
recess finish the anatomical task which
frowned before us. The dog pleaded for the
country-for the great white house. the
blazing open fires. the dear faces, the pure.
fue air, the big garden, the sweep of snow.
lit fields, the glorious horizon, and tbe
sleighrides through the wooded roads and
dipping hills of Andover. But we sternlV
took the hand of duty, or the thing which
bore that aspect to our minds, and comfort
ed the dog for his misfortune in belonging
to such conscientious women, and promised
him Christmas dinner of fried liver, and
tried to forget how it looked in Audoyer.
and resolutely stayed by ''the subject
1t was poor little pauper Irish girl, I
remembered-lawtul material Nobody
had claimed her till the proper time was
over, and now, by the mysterious law of
sacrifice, it fell to her lot, as the last act of
her unknown earthly story, to teach the
solemn science of life and death; to this
more fortunate woman. Years. afterward
hundreds of suffering women called her
blessed who compassed her rare power as a
to hink IL r.
help of that Irish pauper girl and By the
surrender of those lost holidays
We sent of the Christmas packages and
wished We, TOO, could be tied up and ex-
pressed home prepaid, and sighed or cried
ourselves to sleep according to our nature,
and woke, and it was Christmas morning,
and the big boarding house was astir,
tramping restlessly and homelessly up and
down stairs-and where were the dear, the
dearest voices, wishing that our Christmas
might be merry and our souls at peace?
We came down to breakfast with aching
hearts, but smiling. faces, as in holy duty
bound. All the boarders we're mp, as We
say, by which We. mean that they were
down, all but one, On artist, not yet visible.
He bore an ancient and distinguished family
name, but he was not very popular in our
boarding house, enc could hardly say why.
Our landlady's daughter, pretty, gentle
girl, had ingeniously eontrived to lay some
little gift at every plate upon the long
table. She was pleased with the futter Of
kind words and thanks which greeted her
thoughtful effort to give to so many exiled
people a sense OF home, and her young face
flushed with pleasure.
As we sat there chatting and smiling and
warming each others homesick hearts and
hers as well as we could for Christmas sake,
the late boarder came down.
'Merrv Christmas, Mr.. --p' cried the
landlady's daughter She turned her sweet
face toward him with happy. trustful
look. He stood for a moment black as .
cyclone. Then he broke forth: merry
Christmas 1 should say! It's cold enough
in my room to freeze ont"
He mentioned a place TO which one is
not in the habit of alluding on Christmas
Day, and flung himself down to his break
fast amid silence such Gs man might re-
call with pang upon his dying day.
That night when I drew the curtain
stood for awhile and looked with less than
the usual shudder at the piazza roof where
the Irish girls heart, in jar of alcohol,
rested in the cold moonlight, painless and
calm. And L ssid:-
''ChIld of ignorance, sleep we'll You
have served i nobler end than any man who
trains his hand to sacred art while his un-
educated soul is grovelIing in blasphemvP'
And from that day to this have prayed
a separate holiday prayer: For all persons
doomed to board at Christmas timeP'
Then, now and forever, 1t is by what we
lose that We learn TO value what we have.
From that breakfast hour to this l have
known how to add to my Litany, "Bless
God for home on Christmas DayI" And
thus ends the moral of this brief tale-Hol-
iday Law. Ii you are in n home stay there.
If you have any to go to go there, and thank
heaven and pray pardon for your souls, if,
out of madness, or OF folly, or of that ig-
norance which is a compound of both, you
obey not this sacred clause in hfe'G long
code.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD