actual, 'tis tangible and potable. And where, among all the Christmas
cards, is the airplane, that most marvelous and heart-seizing of all our
triumphs? Where is the stately apartment house, looming like Gibraltar
against a sunset sky? Must we, even at Christmas time, fool ourselves
with a picturesqueness that is gone, seeing nothing of what is around
us?

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