XXI

A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION


Christmas already! However welcome its coming, Christmas always seems to
take us by surprise. Is the year really so soon at the end of its
journey? Why, it seems only yesterday that it needed a special effort of
remembrance to date our letters with the new "_anno domini_." And have
you noticed that one always does that reluctantly, with something almost
of misgiving? The figures of the old year have a warm human look, but
those of the new wear a chill, unfamiliar, almost menacing expression.
Nineteen hundred and--we know. It is nearly "all in." It has done its
best--and its worst. Between Christmas Day and New-Year it has hardly
time to change its character. Good or bad, as it may have been, we feel
at home with it, and we are fain to keep the old almanac a little longer
on the wall. But the last leaves are falling, the days are shortening.
There is a smell of coming snow in the air, and for weeks past it has
already been Christmas in the shops.

Yes, however it strikes us, we are a year older. On the first of January
last we had twelve brand-new months of a brand-new year to spend, and
now the last of them is all but spent. We had a new spring to look out
for, like the coming of one's sweetheart, a new summer bounteous in
prospect with inexhaustible wealth of royal sunshine, a new autumn, with
ruddy orchards and the glory of the tapestried woods; and now of the