are white, gilded with green garlands, and they never are seen out at
any time of the year without Christmas wreaths on their heads. Every
morning they file in a long procession into the chapel to sing a
Christmas carol; and every evening they ring a Christmas chime on the
convent bells. They eat roast turkey and plum pudding and mince-pie
for dinner all the year round; and always carry what is left in
baskets trimmed with evergreen to the poor people. There are always
wax candles lighted and set in every window of the convent at
nightfall; and when the people in the country about get uncommonly
blue and down-hearted, they always go for a cure to look at the
Convent of the Christmas Monks after the candles are lighted and the
chimes are ringing. It brings to mind things which never fail to cheer
them.

But the principal thing about the Convent of the Christmas Monks is
the garden; for that is where the Christmas presents grow. This garden
extends over a large number of acres, and is divided into different
departments, just as we divide our flower and vegetable gardens;
one bed for onions, one for cabbages, and one for phlox, and one for
verbenas, etc.

Every spring the Christmas Monks go out to sow the Christmas-present
seeds after they have ploughed the ground and made it all ready.

There is one enormous bed devoted to rocking-horses. The rocking-horse
seed is curious enough; just little bits of rocking-horses so small
that they can only be seen through a very, very powerful microscope.
The Monks drop these at quite a distance from each other, so that they
will not interfere while growing; then they cover them up neatly with
earth, and put up a sign-post with "Rocking-horses" on it in evergreen