red-haired children piled about promiscuously.

"There is a wretched little German girl, always managing to have a boil
either on her forehead or the back of her neck,--I believe in my soul
it's from overfeeding,--who follows my footsteps like a misanthropic
vampire. By what ingenuity she manages to cajole me out of my money I
know not, but I positively assert that in the last fortnight, according
to her account, her unhappy mother has suffered from eleven different
incurable diseases. My God! what a complication of misfortune! Why not
let them starve? When a man is not capable of maintaining a family, why
in Heaven's name does he ever have one?

"I think I will follow the maxims of political economists and all
respectable members of society, and vote beggars a nuisance. I wonder
how many people to-day, praying for deliverance by Christ's 'agony and
bloody sweat,' by his 'cross and passion,' his 'precious death and
burial,' his 'glorious resurrection and ascension,' and the 'coming of
the Holy Ghost,' don't?

"This _is_ a charitable frame of mind to precede a Christmas morning.
When did I contract the habit of talking to myself?

"I must be impressed with the two grand reasons of the man we all know
of: first, I like to talk to a sensible man, and second, I like to hear
a sensible man talk.

"I wonder if there is not something under the surface in Sol Smith's
charity sermon? I rather like its pithy style:

"'He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord. Now, brethren, if you