shall write and tell her to choose something herself, and send the bill
to me!" And he writes. And though he does not suspect it, what he really
writes, and what So-and-So reads, is this: "Dear So-and-So. It is
nothing to me that you and I are alive together on this planet, and in
various ways mutually dependent. But I am bound by custom to give you a
present. I do not, however, take sufficient interest in your life to
know what object it would give you pleasure to possess; and I do not
want to be put to the trouble of finding out, nor of obtaining the
object and transmitting it to you. Will you, therefore, buy something
for yourself and send the bill to me. Of course, a sense of social
decency will prevent you from spending more than a small sum, and I
shall be spared all exertion beyond signing a cheque. Yours insincerely
and loggishly * * *." So managed, the contrivance of present-giving
becomes positively sinister in its working. But managed with the
sympathetic imagination which is infallibly produced by real faith in
goodwill, its efficacy may approach the miraculous.

* * * * *

The Christmas ceremony of good-wishing by word of mouth has never been
in any danger of falling into insincerity. Such is the power of
tradition and virtue of a festival, and such the instinctive
brotherliness of men, that on this day the mere sight of an
acquaintance will soften the voice and warm the heart of the most
superior sceptic and curmudgeon that the age of disillusion has
produced. In spite of himself, faith flickers up in him again, be it
only for a moment. And, during that moment, he is almost like those
whose bright faith the age has never tarnished, like the great and like
the simple, to whom it is quite unnecessary to offer a defence and
explanation of Christmas or to suggest the basis of a new faith therein.