hearts of children. It is certainly far more beautiful and just as
easy-if we desire to utilize Christmas gifts for educational purposes--to
stimulate children to goodness by telling them of the pleasure it will
give the little Christ Child, rather than by filling them with dread of
Knecht Ruprecht.

True, my mother did not fail to endeavor to inspire us with love for the
Christ Child and the Saviour, and to draw us near to him. She saw in him,
above all else, the embodiment of love, and loved him because her loving
heart understood his. In after years my own investigation and thought
brought me to the same conviction which she had reached through the
relation of her feminine nature to the person and teachings of her
Saviour. I perceived that the world as Jesus Christ found it owes him
nothing grander, more beautiful, loftier, or more pregnant with
importance than that he widened the circle of love which embraced only
the individual, the family, the city, or, at the utmost, the country of
which a person was a citizen, till it included all mankind, and this
human love, of which my mother's life gave us practical proof, is the
banner under which all the genuine progress of mankind in later years has
been made.

Nineteen centuries have passed since the one that gave us Him who died on
the cross, and how far we are still from a perfect realization of this
noblest of all the emotions of the heart and spirit! And yet, on the day
when this human love has full sway, the social problems which now disturb
so many minds and will permit the brains of our best citizens to take no
rest, will be solved.

OTHER OBLIGATIONS TO MY MOTHER, AND A SUMMARY OF THE NEW
AND GREAT EVENTS WHICH BEFELL THE GERMANS DURING MY LIFE.