It is a mistake to have land-marks to remind you how time is running
on, how friends have left, how the loved ones have passed away. The
vacant place appears even more empty. The old happy times show out
even happier in contrast to the present. You cannot enjoy yourself or
forget the past, for

"A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."

It is far better to go away somewhere to places which recall no
sorrows or recollections and have no associations with the years gone
by.

He is growing such a foolish old man is Father Christmas. He rarely
visits us now with hoary head, his garments sparkling with frost and
snow. He is tired of all that. He likes a change of fashion, like
everybody else. He either comes so thickly enveloped in yellow fog
that you can scarcely distinguish the old man, or else he arrives so
drenched with rain and splashed up to the beard in mud that we
scarcely like to open our doors to him.

He is growing old, I suppose, and trembling on the brink of second
childhood, so we must not blame him. But still he is not a very great
favorite of mine, and I cannot refrain from echoing the complaint in
one of the comic papers--"_Why doesn't he strike, like the rest?_"




CHAPTER VII.