The soul of man is not outcast from this glory, this freedom, this safety of law.  We speak as if we might break it, evade it; we forget it; we deny it:  but it never forgets us, it never refuses us a morsel of our estate.  In spite of us, it protects our growth, makes sure of our development.  In spite of us, it takes us whithersoever we tend, and not whithersoever we like; in spite of us, it sometimes saves what we have carelessly perilled, and always destroys what we wilfully throw away.

A Simple Bill of Fare for a Christmas Dinner.

All good recipe-books give bills of fare for different occasions, bills of fare for grand dinners, bills of fare for little dinners; dinners to cost so much per head; dinners “which can be easily prepared with one servant,” and so on.  They give bills of fare for one week; bills of fare for each day in a month, to avoid too great monotony in diet.  There are bills of fare for dyspeptics; bills of fare for consumptives; bills of fare for fat people, and bills of fare for thin; and bills of fare for hospitals, asylums, and prisons, as well as for gentlemen’s houses.  But among them all, we never saw the one which we give below.  It has never been printed in any book; but it has been used in families.  We are not drawing on our imagination for its items.  We have sat at such dinners; we have helped prepare such dinners; we believe in such dinners; they are within everybody’s means.  In fact, the most marvellous thing about this bill of fare is that the dinner does not cost a cent.  Ho! all ye that are hungry and thirsty, and would like so cheap a Christmas dinner, listen to this

BILL OF FARE FOR A CHRISTMAS DINNER.

First Course..—­GLADNESS.

This must be served hot.  No two housekeepers make it alike; no fixed rule can be given for it.  It depends, like so many of the best things, chiefly on memory; but, strangely enough, it depends quite as much on proper forgetting as on proper remembering.  Worries must be forgotten.  Troubles must be forgotten.  Yes, even sorrow itself must be denied and shut out.  Perhaps this is not quite possible.  Ah! we all have seen Christmas days on which sorrow would not leave our hearts nor our houses.  But even sorrow can be compelled to look away from its sorrowing for a festival hour which is so solemnly joyous as Christ’s Birthday.  Memory can be filled full of other things to be remembered.  No soul is entirely destitute of blessings, absolutely without comfort.  Perhaps we have but one.  Very well; we can think steadily of that one, if we try.  But the probability is that we have more than we can count.  No man has yet numbered the blessings, the mercies, the joys of God.  We are all richer than we think; and if we once set ourselves to reckoning up the things of which we are glad, we shall be astonished at their number.

Gladness, then, is the first item, the first course on our bill of fare for a Christmas dinner.