It is something to think of when he first wakes in the morning—­a time when most people are badly put to it for want of something pleasant to think of.  This fact about giving is so incontestably true that it is a wonder that enlightened people do not more freely indulge in giving for their own comfort.  It is, above all else, amazing that so many imagine they are going to get any satisfaction out of what they leave by will.  They may be in a state where they will enjoy it, if the will is not fought over; but it is shocking how little gratitude there is accorded to a departed giver compared to a living giver.  He couldn’t take the property with him, it is said; he was obliged to leave it to somebody.  By this thought his generosity is always reduced to a minimum.  He may build a monument to himself in some institution, but we do not know enough of the world to which he has gone to know whether a tiny monument on this earth is any satisfaction to a person who is free of the universe.  Whereas every giving or deed of real humanity done while he was living would have entered into his character, and would be of lasting service to him—­that is, in any future which we can conceive.

Of course we are not confining our remarks to what are called Christmas gifts—­commercially so called—­nor would we undertake to estimate the pleasure there is in either receiving or giving these.  The shrewd manufacturers of the world have taken notice of the periodic generosity of the race, and ingeniously produce articles to serve it, that is, to anticipate the taste and to thwart all individuality or spontaneity in it.  There is, in short, what is called a “line of holiday goods,” fitting, it may be supposed, the periodic line of charity.  When a person receives some of these things in the blessed season of such, he is apt to be puzzled.  He wants to know what they are for, what he is to do with them.  If there are no “directions” on the articles, his gratitude is somewhat tempered.  He has seen these nondescripts of ingenuity and expense in the shop windows, but he never expected to come into personal relations to them.  He is puzzled, and he cannot escape the unpleasant feeling that commerce has put its profit-making fingers into Christmas.  Such a lot of things seem to be manufactured on purpose that people may perform a duty that is expected of them in the holidays.  The house is full of these impossible things; they occupy the mantelpieces, they stand about on the tottering little tables, they are ingenious, they are made for wants yet undiscovered, they tarnish, they break, they will not “work,” and pretty soon they look “second-hand.”  Yet there must be more satisfaction in giving these articles than in receiving them, and maybe a spice of malice—­not that of course, for in the holidays nearly every gift expresses at least kindly remembrance—­but if you give them you do not have to live with them.  But consider how full the world is of holiday goods—­costly goods too—­that are of no earthly use, and are not even artistic, and how short life is, and how many people actually need books and other indispensable articles, and how starved are many fine drawing-rooms, not for holiday goods, but for objects of beauty.