The Castle
might look like other castles, but every enchanted brick and stone
and block of wood, every grain of mortar, every bit of glass and
marble, unlike all others of its kind, would be transformed by the
thought it represented and thrilled with the message it bore.
'Such an appeal I could make for my whole great family, but somehow
this seems almost a private matter, and I am sensitive about giving
it publicity. My love and hope for Lisa are so great, I cannot bear
to describe her "case," nor paint her unhappy childhood in the hues
it deserves, for the sake of gaining sympathy and aid. I may have to
do it, but would I were the little Croesus of a day! Still,
Christmas is coming, and who knows?
"Everywhere the Feast o' the Babe,
Joy upon earth, peace and good-will to men!
We are baptized."
Merry Christmas is coming. Everybody's hand-grasp is warmer because
of it, though of course it is the children whose merriment rings
truest.
'There are just one or two things, grown up as I am, that I should
like to find in the toe of my stocking on Christmas morning; only
they are impalpable things that could neither be put in nor taken out
of real stockings.
'Old as we are, we are most of us mere children in this, that we go
on hoping that next Christmas all the delicious happenings we have
missed in other Christmases may descend upon us by the old and
reliable chimney-route! A Santa Claus that had any bowels of
compassion would rush down the narrowest and sootiest chimney in the
world to give me my simple wishes.
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