light and life, so do all human souls pursue their appointed courses, tied all together by the invisible bonds of love that centre in the heart of the great Father of all and which Christians believe are guided thither by the hands of him who died on Calvary, and whose birth is celebrated at this Christmas festival.

Though all the nations do not acknowledge Christ as himself the Light of the World, yet all must admit him worthy to be the divine attendant, God-appointed, to keep alive the sacred flame in the lamp whose light is Love. Therefore it is of him that at this season, in Christian lands, the people, both young and old, high and low, rich and poor, those who wear a crown of gold, and those who wear a crown of thorns, to the accompaniment of the bells in every cross-tipped steeple and of the organs in every cathedral choir, exultantly sing "Hosannah to Son of David, Hosannah in the Highest"-and all because Christ loved much and taught us that God is Love.

A CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR TALK

(Delivered at the Christmas Dinner of the Bohemian Club, New Year's Eve, 1898.)

FEL

ELLOW-BOHEMIANS: It was a novel idea to give a Christmas dinner at the birth of the new year. The two occasions are not only different; they are opposites. The one concerns divinity and eternity, the other time and humanity. The one sees the cross upon its horizon, the other hopes for a crown. The one is the season when to give is a pleasure; the other, when to receive is an expectation. The two combined are extremely suggestive. Would that my tongue could utter the thoughts they suggest to me!

At this moment, when memory is chained to the departing year by mingled links of successes and failures, victories and defeats, rejoicings and repinings, thanksgivings and supplications, smiles and tears, heartaches and lovers' whisperings, orange-blossoms and cypress-boughs, cradles and new-made graves, and 1898 is going glimmering through the dream of things that were, its pathway lit by the light of other days, one becomes reminiscent and fain would exclaim: "Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight."

At this moment, when memory is garlanded by hope, and hope is reaching out with eager hands to grasp the year now dawning, and anticipation, outstripping expectation, and paced by ambition, speeds along the rainbow path of promise to golden fulfillment, one would fain also exclaim, "Hasten, oh, hasten, Time, in your flight!"

At this moment of such conflicting emotions, when the mind wanders from pleasures past to joys to come, and from honors to be gained to laurels worn and won, let us solve the doubt by letting go of the yesterdays we can not hold, by looking only toward the tomorrows we needs must face, and by joining in sincerest welcome to the future that comes apace.

At this moment, when Christmas carols, sung anew to the accompaniment of New-Year's bells, glorify the birth of this new year, the youngest born child of Time, the heir of all the years before and since Christ was born, let us imagine that our hearts are belfries pointing to the skies, and that in each the bells in joyous chorus are ringing out a New-Year's carol of peace and prosperity to all who dwell beneath the stars.

If such be the outcome of our thoughts this evening, then will the magic of true philosophy have entered our lives, and started us aright as path-finders through the unexplored days of 1899, each one to his own El Dorado.

And now that, after the storm and stress of war, whitewinged Peace, like the dove of old, has returned bearing the olive-branch to intertwine with the mistletoe in Spanish and American homes alike, and in the islands of the eastern and western seas, and at this Christmas-tide all the Christian nations again can join in the chorus the angels sing, "Peace on earth, good will to men," may this nation at the opening of its new-born, battle-christened career prove itself a safe path-finder through the days of the year this night beginning; may this path lead to its El Dorado, the happiness of its people, and the leadership of the nations in the cause of man's humanity to man, and may its sun by day and its pillar of fire by night through all the coming years be the torch that liberty holds to light the world! Then will all mankind acclaim that every American soldier

and sailor who gave his life for his flag in the SpanishAmerican War of 1898 nobly died, whereby millions may nobly live.

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

(Delivered at the High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, December 22, 1900.)

[The theme was the meeting of the three wise men as narrated in "Ben Hur," adapted to the occasion. The scene is the tent of a Sheik in the desert. A Hindoo, an Egyptian, and a Greek enter, and tell each the story of his faith, and the revelation as to the birth of Christ. The Greek speaks this speech.]

From the prince to the peasant, all alike ever wanted to know what would follow the setting of the sun.

In this insatiable longing to anticipate the slow march of time, to peep behind the curtain of the future and know what of good or ill tomorrow holds for our weal or woe, to unlock the gates of Fate, and tread before our time the pathways of the gods; in this impatience with the present, this curiosity as to the future, lie man's surest promise of life hereafter, the cause of his unrest, the mainspring of his ambition, the inspiration of his highest aspirations towards eternity.

In my youth I believed in all the gods that the fertile. fancy of my people could create. I found gods in stones,