It is said that man’s material achievements have outrun his imagination; that poets and painters are too puny to grapple with the world as it is.  Certainly a visitor from another sphere, looking on our fantastic and exciting civilization, would find little reflection of it in the Christmas card.  He would find us clinging desperately to what we have been taught to believe was picturesque and jolly, and afraid to assert that the things of to-day are comely too.  Even on the basis of discomfort (an acknowledged criterion of picturesqueness) surely a trolley car jammed with parcel-laden passengers is just as satisfying a spectacle as any stage coach?  Surely the steam radiator, if not so lovely as a flame-gilded hearth, is more real to most of us?  And instead of the customary picture of shivering subjects of George III held up by a highwayman on Hampstead Heath, why not a deftly delineated sketch of victims in a steam-heated lobby submitting to the plunder of the hat-check bandit?  Come, let us be honest!  The romance of to-day is as good as any!

Many must have felt this same uneasiness in trying to find Christmas cards that would really say something of what is in their hearts.  The sentiment behind the card is as lovely and as true as ever, but the cards themselves are outmoded bottles for the new wine.  It seems a cruel thing to say, but we are impatient with the mottoes and pictures we see in the shops because they are a conventional echo of a beauty that is past.  What could be more absurd than to send to a friend in a city apartment a rhyme such as this: 

  As round the Christmas fire you sit
    And hear the bells with frosty chime,
  Think, friendship that long love has knit
    Grows sweeter still at Christmas time!

If that is sent to the janitor or the elevator boy we have no cavil, for these gentlemen do actually see a fire and hear bells ring; but the apartment tenant hears naught but the hissing of the steam in the radiator, and counts himself lucky to hear that.  Why not be honest and say to him: 

  I hope the janitor has shipped
    You steam, to keep the cold away;
  And if the hallboys have been tipped,
    Then joy be thine on Christmas Day!

We had not meant to introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark back to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any of the romance of to-day.  You may protest that Christmas is the oldest thing in the world, which is true; yet it is also new every year, and never newer than now.

ON UNANSWERING LETTERS

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There are a great many people who really believe in answering letters the day they are received, just as there are people who go to the movies at 9 o’clock in the morning; but these people are stunted and queer.