The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-12-24
Christmas 1912 Marks Division Of Labor; Some Heal The Wounded; Some
 Pursue The Thieves On The Jericho Road

The first Christmas was great day for the world, many people knew it. The first Christmas day when sat her hills, mistress of the nations dispensing the rude laws she had framed the first important law giver of the nations Those laws were not much understand law in these days but they better anarchy that had gone before there much justice in them that they became the basis of much modern law
 There difficulty about this Roman law. It chiefly for Roman citizens. There another diff fcuty about it. It exalted the state debased the dividual. Women and slaves had almost status.
 slave chattel. little more. Roman citizen might divorce his wife almost his whim. He might kill his slave without account to any 
 Such freedom as there was belonged to the Roman citizen There had not been for centuries democracy Greece has passed democracy, the constitution of Greece was actually the imposition of the will of group of free citizens upon vastly greater number of slaves.
 War the chief business of society. Labor was degraded The small farmers, upon whose sturdy right valor fourshed above other peo- pes, being replaced by slave labor their land passing into great holdings, owned by few land lords
 That first Christmas was dreary time. Its advent little remarked. But the attention of Herod attracted He ordered slaughter of the little chil dren because it had been told to him that born should be king. He didn't want any claimants throne, and he took his measures accordingly.
 For five hundred years Christmas succeeded Christmas For five centuries the doctrine gained the minds of though yet the minds the intellectual and the powerful
 Through all those many many decades, it does not appear that the brainiest of times any quate conception of what these C1istmases meant, what to from them.
 But from them, nevertheless, come enamel patton of the individual Christmas gave mortal soul That soul set the highest place the universe He became the child of Deity His fate upon this earth of little consequences The thing beyond of inrneasurable importance. The was freed Her place in the home received be taken from her except by due process of law.
 The condition of the slave aneiorated, and among the Christian peoples slavery gradually disap- peared though Christmas and went for almost 800 years before that about. L. Many miseries remain. There is needless poverty war and ideness and leeching sin. These things w be ameiorated disappear, kindly Christmas makes it's annual appearance.
 The world, standing the security, that was gained by Christmas through the Child in the Manager come scientific world
 The very quality altruistc effort has changed or rather, has been added to.
 The charity of yesterday the reformative effort of earlier Chrstmases akin activity the Good Samaritan
 There fell among thieves. Many passed the by, but the Samaritan tended him, dressed his wounds and tried to make him whole The thieves maned. They wounded many others Sometimes there to dress the wounds Sometimes the wounds were mortal
 The Christmas spirit of to-day looks upon race broadened by the Christmas spirit of yesterday that 1t says:
 Behold, will dress the wounds of him whom the thieves have set uon but also will pursue the thieves to their long extinction, that the JERICHO ROAD may hereafter be SAFE to travel'
 evident ergy Verdi wrote Aida 1s