poor lone widow, with nothing but her God to trust in.'"

"Oh, dear me," said Uncle Nathan, "it is a queer world,--a queer world;
but after all it's the best we've got. Let us try to make it better
still."

Aunt Kindly could not sleep much all night for thinking over the
details of the plan. Before morning it all lay clear in her mind. Monday
afternoon she went round to talk with the neighbors and get all things
ready. Most of them liked it; but some thought it was "queer," and
wondered "what our pious fathers would think of keeping Christmas in New
England." A few had "religious scruples," and would do nothing about it.
The head of the Know-nothing lodge said it was "a Furrin custom, and I
want none o' them things; but Ameriky must be ruled by 'Mericans; and
we'll have no Disserlutions of the Union, and no Popish ceremonies like
a Christmas Tree. If you begin so, you'll have the Pope here next, and
the fulfilment of the seventeenth chapter of Revelations."

Hon. Jeduthan Stovepipe also opposed it. He was a rich hatter from
Boston, and a "great Democrat;" who, as he said, had lately "purchased
grounds in Soitgoes, intending to establish a family." He "would not
like to have Cinderella Jane and Edith Zuleima mix themselves up with
widow Wheeler's children,--whose father was killed on the railroad five
or six years before,--for their mother takes in washing. No, Sir," said
he; "it will not do. You have no daughters to marry, no sons to provide
for. It will do well enough for you to talk about 'equality,' about
'meeting the whole neighborhood,' and that sort of thing; but I intend
to establish a family; and I set my face against all promiscuous
assemblages of different classes of society. It is bad enough on
Sundays, when each man can sit buttoned up in his own pew; but a