actress used to have a rehearsal. She now has an "opening." Does it
require nowadays, then, no special talent or gift to go on the stage? No
more, we can assure our readers, than it does to write a book. But homely
people and poor people can write books. As yet they cannot act.




ALTRUISM

Christmas is supposed to be an altruistic festival. Then, if ever, we
allow ourselves to go out to others in sympathy expressed by gifts and
good wishes. Then self-forgetfulness in the happiness of others becomes a
temporary fashion. And we find--do we not?--the indulgence of the feeling
so remunerative that we wish there were other days set apart to it. We
can even understand those people who get a private satisfaction in being
good on other days besides Sunday. There is a common notion that this
Christmas altruistic sentiment is particularly shown towards the
unfortunate and the dependent by those more prosperous, and in what is
called a better social position. We are exhorted on this day to remember
the poor. We need to be reminded rather to remember the rich, the lonely,
not-easy-to-be-satisfied rich, whom we do not always have with us. The
Drawer never sees a very rich person that it does not long to give him
something, some token, the value of which is not estimated by its cost,
that should be a consoling evidence to him that he has not lost
sympathetic touch with ordinary humanity. There is a great deal of
sympathy afloat in the world, but it is especially shown downward in the
social scale. We treat our servants--supposing that we are society
--better than we treat each other. If we did not, they would leave us. We
are kinder to the unfortunate or the dependent than to each other, and we