ones.  There were still the strong black jaws to do all needful work with, and in addition, delicate mouth-parts, for their food was now to be the honey from flowers.  In fact, they looked and were just like their mamma, the gauzy wasp.  One after another they crept to the end of the passage that led from their dark homes to the bright world without.  They stood one minute at the little dark hole, and then, spreading their wings, flitted out into the beautiful world of sunshine and flowers.

THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS,

“A great spiritual efficiency lies in story-telling.”—­Froebel.

Christmas Day, you knew, dear children, is Christ’s day, Christ’s birthday, and I want to tell you why we love it so much, and why we try to make every one happy when it comes each year.

A long, long time ago—­more than eighteen hundred years—­the baby Christ was born on Christmas Day:  a baby so wonderful and so beautiful, who grew up to be a man so wise, so good, so patient and sweet, that, every year, the people who know about him love him better and better, and are more and more glad when his birthday comes again.  You see that he must have been very good and wonderful; for people have always remembered his birthday, and kept it lovingly for eighteen hundred years.

He was born, long years ago, in a land far, far away across the seas.

Before the baby Christ was born, Mary, his mother, had to make a long journey with her husband, Joseph.  They made this journey to be taxed or counted; for in those days this could not be done in the town where people happened to live, but they must be numbered in the place where they were born.

In that far-off time, the only way of traveling was on a horse, or a camel, or a good, patient donkey.  Camels and horses cost a great deal of money, and Mary was very poor; so she rode on a quiet, safe donkey, while Joseph walked by her side, leading him and leaning on his stick.  Mary was very young, and beautiful, I think, but Joseph was a great deal older than she.

People dress nowadays, in those distant countries, just as they did so many years ago, so we know that Mary must have worn a long, thick dress, falling all about her in heavy folds, and that she had a soft white veil over her head and neck, and across her face.  Mary lived in Nazareth, and the journey they were making was to Bethlehem, many miles away.

They were a long time traveling, I am sure; for donkeys are slow, though they are so careful, and Mary must have been very tired before they came to the end of their journey.

They had traveled all day, and it was almost dark when they came near to Bethlehem, to the town where the baby Christ was to be born.  There was the place they were to stay,—­a kind of inn, or lodging-house, but not at all like those you know about.

They have them to-day in that far-off country, just as they built them so many years ago.