The Monticellonian., 1908-02-13

NilM5#llh#HY dfy. IL Is so won
 k$x4e#IEE ierful that it
 spreads its charm over the preceding week and the week that comes after For days and days the Small Person sneaks into the house With unnatural. unhealthy and suspicious quiet. holding queer shaped bulging packages under her coat or smuggled away in the innermost cav erns of her absurd little huff. The paste pot appears everywhere in the house. The paste brush disappears entirely and is finally found in state of suicide and the ink bottle. You see something on the floor that looks like a cherry. You pick it up and it is a red paper heart. While you are look Ing at it the Small Person trots into the room, gives you one mysterious glance, immediately separates you From your treasure and scampers away to hiding place under the din ingroom table. where she sits for three straight hours in billowy pool of white paper lace, big white envelopes and numberless samples of scissors.
 Then, after these charming hours of mysterious preparation, the great day approaches. The mail man is the Kris Kringle the Santa Claus, the good fairy. With pended shoulders he plods down the street, while the Small Person has her nose glued so tightly to the window pane that there is con- siderable question whether or not it will detaeh itself without the aid of . paper knife.
 At last! =Hooray, The bell rings. At imminent risk of catching every thing from a cold to a spanking the Small Person dashes out of the front door and fairly leaps into the mail bag.
 She emerges looking like young stationery establishment, nothing but envelopes, big, little and middle sized With a squeal and scurry she blows back into the house and opens up her treasures. There are paper trees filled with brilliant paper roses, and be- heath the forest trees sit little cupids without no clos on at all," just as If it were not February and chilly Great big, beautiful white swan cars more beautiful even than a new au- tomobile-are dragged out of their white casinss, and To. when you touch little spring somewhere the swan cars are flied with flowers and all sorts of wonderful, exquisite, beautiful things, like birds and jewels and lov- ing hearts. Oh, 1t is very, very de- lightful, being a child on St Valen- tines day.
 While all this excitement is beating sthe quiet home atmosphere into quiv- CTS you sit down in a faraway cor ner and think of the time when you were little girl. Perhaps you didn't have as much attention as the Small Person; perhaps things didn't some how come your way-and perhaps it's because you had so little that you are ready to make any sacrifice so that the Small Person shall have much. It Is from deprivations that you learn what good things mean and how much they mean.
 Somehow your mind goes way back. % far you wouldn't dare tell the years. You wouldn't even guess them. It seems so long ago that it must have been another world, or anyway an other life. Yeu see a dingy old school room, where the benches were fright fully hard and where the clock was % lazy it never moved its hands at all. The days were very long for a little tiny child who should have been Tomping and playing out of doors.
 One day there came strange whis- perings about St. Valentine. You won Aered if he were the man who came 1o trim the trees in the orchard It vas all very new to you, because Everything was new, and you had so much to get acquainted with in big Arrange world.
 f The other children talked knowing n about St. Valentines box Next Hay they filed in one after another. ond into a big wooden box they