little Bingles, nor had there ever been so much as one!

Mr. and Mrs. Bingle were childless. The tragedy of life for them lay
not in the loss of a first-born, but in the fact that no babe had ever
come to fill their hungry hearts with the food they most desired and
craved. Nor was there any promise of subsequent concessions in their
behalf. For fifteen years they had longed for the boon that was denied
them, and to the end of their simple, kindly days they probably would
go on longing. Poor as they were, neither would have complained if
fate had given them half-a-dozen healthy mouths to feed, as many
wriggling bodies to clothe, and all the splendid worries that go with
colic, croup, measles, mumps, broken arms and all the other ailments,
peculiar, not so much to childhood as they are paramount to
parenthood.

Lonely, incomplete lives they led, with no bitterness in their souls,
loving each other the more as they tried to fill the void with songs
of resignation. Away back in the early days Mr. Bingle had said that
Christmas was a bleak thing without children to lift the pall--or
something of the sort.

Out of that well-worn conclusion--oft expressed by rich and poor
alike--grew the Bingle Foundation, so to speak. No Christmas Eve was
allowed to go by without the presence of alien offspring about their
fire-lit hearth, and no strange little kiddie ever left for his own
bed without treasuring in his soul the belief that he had seen Santa
Claus at last--had been kissed by him, too--albeit the plain-faced,
wistful little man with the funny bald-spot was in no sense up to the
preconceived opinions of what the roly--poly, white-whiskered, red-
cheeked annual visitor from Lapland ought to be in order to make