THE TRIFLE GATHERER.

CHRISTMAS REFLECTIONS.

BY BARRY BURTON.

I returned home the other evening | has been quenched; and the hate conand found some pages of manuscript sequent upon the deceit and the lying on the table. I read a page or betrayal has grown with the years, two, and remembered that Henry had till the very heart in its pulsings, injects promised to give me his thoughts on its deadly venom into all the currents what he was pleased to term, "hypo- of the blood. Victims of this hate, critical gush." save to the special objects of their wrath, I have known to be the most generous of men. They counsel the

others they would allay, and incite in them the divine forgiveness of the Saviour of the world. But the fierce

The compliments of the season he sends to nobody in particular, in these words: This is the season of gush-afflicted with kind words; the anger of refined gush-gush that pushes, temporarily, to the fore-front, a great deal of sweet sentimentalism, about peace on earth and good-will toward men. You fires of their own hate they allow not meet no man in this festive season to be quenched. That is a sacred who does not echo the sentiment, "With warmth, specially reserved for their charity for all, with malice toward own heart's ease. none;" but hundreds you meet, who, "Yours, my friend," this man of inthough given to the most elevated lip finite sorrows will say to you, "is a language, rarely put in practice the common grief. The common lot of advice they so eagerly bestow. To humanity is sorrow and tears, but the quarrel with the sentiment were foolish, grief that saps the mind and unships to forbid its lingering on the lips were the reason is reserved by an all-wise vain, but with its influence on men's Providence for a few. I am of this latlives and actions, a word of censure ter class. Compare not therefore your might not be out of place. "Millions little griefs unto mine." Wonderful for charity, not a cent for good-will" logic! admirable reasoning! Did He is a sentiment that expresses the whose wearied shoulders bore the sinpractical workings of the Christmas fulness of the world, reason thus? Did He single out one cause of enmity and treasure in his heart a hate that would not be allayed? Scan closely His three and thirty years of bitterness, and say if ever, by word or deed, he resented

season.

We all know men who are princes in giving, but the veriest misers in forgiving. A friendship that in early years bound two hearts has been broken; a love that kindled two lives

If, therefore, you would preach goodwill as a panacea for others, you should first make known its efficacy, by putting it in practice toward the objects of your own hate.

Subjoined to these observations of Henry was this little poem, intended by him to express the duties of the Christmas season.

This is the season of joyance,

This is the season when love,
Like a clear crystal streamlet of hyssop,
Flows from the fountains above.

even one of the taunts, the injuries, or you, indulge in that meaningless twadthe scourgings he received? Come, dle about peace and good-will wherecome, let us be candid! Do these with in this holy season we are surfine sentiments of ours reflect faithfully feited. For the truest believer in his our individual lives? Does the Christ- own creed is he who blends its teachmas season, with its plethora of gush ings in the actions of his life. and its paucity of reconciliations, bring together the thousand hearts that years and years have estranged? Are all our hates and enmities forgotten under the holly bough? Does the earnest desire of our hearts run out into our Christmas greetings, or rather, is not our "merry Christmas" the merest wagging of the tongue? I ask you seriously—you, my young man, with life bounding in your veins; you, my merry maiden, with the blush of roses in your cheeks; you, my gray-haired sire, whose feet linger but a little while this side of the grave; you and each of you I ask calmly but seriously, "How stands the record of your hates?" Has not the Saviour been born unto you, year after finding hatred in your hearts? And has not his natal day faded from your vision, leaving behind the hatred on which it dawned? You have resolved to be reconciled, no doubt; but has not your reconciliation been postponed? "It was your enemy's fault," you say, "he would not be reconciled." Have you tried to reconcile him? "No-but"-There, there, that "but " is sufficient evidence of your shortcoming. You have not sought reconciliation with him, and—is not the reasoning plain-he would not be reconciled.

year,

I am sermonizing, you say. Granted. But I fear it will have little effect on your heart. I do fear it. But grant me this request. If you disbelieve in Christmas as a reconciler of hearts in your own life, do not, I pray

This is the season when anger

Yields to the influence mild
Of Pity, that changes the nature
Of man into that of a child.

This is the season when mercy,

Forgiveness, and friendship unite
In prayer for the hearts that lie bleeding,
From slander and sorrow and spite.

This is the season, my brother,

To trample the hate and the strife
That darken the home of another,
And poison the spring of thy life.
For the star o'er Bethlehem's manger
Announceth glad tidings to men,
"Behold," says the angel, "the Saviour
Has come to redeem ye again!"

Reading these pages of Henry's called up an incident in my own life. A year ago, Henry and I were conversing on this same subject, when Maurice Cullen, a fellow-lodger, dropped in and joined in the conversation. Maurice believed in the sentiment, but abjured the practice of forgiveness. After a half hour's argument, in which neither succeeded in convincing the

evening of the second day, the superintendent came, and he employed me. I hastened home the following morning, to get my working clothes, and to bring the good news to my mother and sisters. There wasn't a man in that train that carried a gladder heart than

other, Maurice said, "Barry, I have me, and not having money to keep but one enemy in the world, and though running up and down. Late in the an angel from heaven counselled me, I would not forgive him. Listen. "Five years ago I was the sole support of my widowed mother and two little sisters. I had just served my apprenticeship, and commenced work at my trade. My employer would not pay me the wages I demanded, so I sought mine. 'Thank God,' I cried, 'the and found employment elsewhere. cold and winter can't touch those I love, Work was brisk for some time and I now.' I fairly flew down the street to managed, by the strictest economy, to the house, but as I approached, I saw keep a couple of rooms for my mother furniture on the sidewalk, and my heart and sisters. Things went on well for sank when I saw my mother and little some time, and had work continued, I sisters trying to gather up the few could have kept my little family without little relics that were as nothing to much trouble. But work got slack, and I, those who ruthlessly flung them on the being a new hand, was discharged. I sidewalk, but which were as a boon of tried hard to get something to do, but in heaven to us. Can I describe my feelvain. Finally a kind old gentleman ings at that moment? Can I tell you gave me a few odd jobs to do, but the lit- how my blood boiled, and my mouth. tle I earned barely sufficed to give us fairly foamed with rage? I met the something to eat. I could not pay the dastardly landlord in the doorway, who rent. I told the landlord that if he would told me in a gruff manner, to 'take allow us to remain until work got brisk my traps off his sidewalk or he'd have I would pay him all. He gruffly re- them pitched in the street.' I could plied, 'My house isn't an infirmary bear it no longer, and the next moment for paupers.' I calmed my feelings, he was lying, craving mercy, and bepocketed the insult, and walked away. seeching me not to kill. Mercy! to Almost another month passed by, and I, him! I knew no such virtue. I had neither work nor rent. I managed, trampled him as I would a rabid dog. by putting in a ton of coal now and Some neighbors interfered, and told me, then, to keep the wolf from the door. as I loved my helpless family, to fly at Finally I heard of something up the once. Alive to the sense of danger, I river, and I resolved to run up and get rushed upstairs, commended my little work if any was to be had; it was family to the care of a neighbor, bade about the first of December, an awful a hurried farewell to my mother and cold day, that I scraped together sisters, and succeeded in catching the enough to buy my ticket. I arrived twelve o'clock train, and getting to late in the afternoon at my destination. work by one o'clock P. M. In two The superintendent being absent I was weeks I remitted enough to pay my forced to remain all the next day, not neighbor, and to provide winter shoes caring to have any one get ahead of for the girls. But the third week was

man."

a week of sorrow. My mother had might change the sordid nature of the contracted a severe cold from exposure, Putting these thoughts in on the day she was dispossessed, and words, I addressed myself to Maurice. that, with the rheumatism that had I first asked him to consider how the troubled her for some years, brought landlord's patience was being sorely her to her dying bed. My sisters tried by the unworthy ones who further informed me that I must not defrauded him of his rent; how it come near the house, as the landlord was not given him to be a searcher of had sued out a warrant for my arrest, hearts; and how, because of the many and the detectives were awaiting my unworthy persons he had met with, he

arrival at the bedside of my dying was unable to tell the sheep from the

goats.

Maurice admitted that this was a phase of the question he had not studied.

mother, to drag me to prison. You can imagine my grief. My mother died, and was buried; and though I knew she blessed me with her dying breath, yet nature in me craved to be near her, "Then again," said I, "you must and kiss the cold lips that could not consider how far-reaching in its respond to mine. My younger sister nature is an act of forgiveness. also contracted a severe cold, and in a Toward numberless others may it not few months followed her poor mother soften your enemy's heart? If to forto the grave. Surely, Barry, God give is to heap coals of fire on an has given me my share of griefs. enemy's head, may it not also set free In three or four years I returned to the currents of sympathy that harsh the city, thinking the landlord had conflict with the world has chilled into forgotten me. But his fury displayed ice? Suppose it were made known to itself even then; I was arrested, tried, you by heaven that your act of forand convicted, but through the aid giveness would alleviate the sufferings of kind friends, sentence was sus- of a hundred poor, would you still pended. These are my wrongs. A cherish hate in your heart? dead mother and sister cry to me "Nay, nay, shirk not the question, from their graves, and can I refuse with your, 'ifs,' and 'perhaps.' to heed them? Put yourself in my kind deed, like a blessing from place, and answer the question, 'Can heaven, is boundless in its influence for you forgive ?""

A

good. God touches as well the heart that receives as the heart that gives; and He can be trusted with the care of an act that tends to promote peace and good-will among men."

As he told me of his miseries I shared in the anger of his heart, and my confusion can easily be imagined when he asked me if I could forgive. I reflected a moment, and thought of Maurice was silent; I forbore to the misery it was within his enemy's press him further, for I knew that his power to inflict. The want, the heart was touched. Changing the subject therefore, I said, "Maurice, let us go to St. Stephen's to-morrow."

hunger of those with whom he had to deal, were known to me, and I inwardly said, "Perhaps one, act of forgiveness

"Very well, Barry, and as I see you

have something to do before you go to bed, I will no longer interrupt you but bid you good night."

He was an old man, and as he approached, Maurice nervously grasped my arm, and said, "Barry, the "Good night," I replied, "and don't galleries are not crowded, let us go up forget our conversation."

"I'll try hard to remember it," he said, as he closed the door.

there."

I divined the reason for the change. I was about to frame an excuse, when Christmas morn dawned bright and a young lady standing near us, fainted beautiful. The crisp, frosty air seemed away. Maurice grasped her arm, and alive with the pealings of the bells. he and I brought her through the Henry and I had just taken our throng to the vestibule. Maurice ran last look in the mirror, and finding for a glass of water for the fair sufferer. each particular hair rigidly kept to its Ere he returned, he who had taken up own side of the fence, we were about the collection was in the vestibule to start, when Maurice entered, fresh standing by our lady patient. In a and ruddy, with a "Well, boys, are few moments he returned with a glass you ready?" of water, and ere he was aware of it, Early as we arrived, we found the he stood face to face with his deadliest church crowded in every part. In a enemy. Their eyes met, Maurice's few moments the white-robed altar face grew white as a sheet, and I boys, followed by the priests in splendid vestments stood before the altar, the Introit was recited, the organ poured forth its wealth of harmonic sounds, and the Gloria, with its bursts of gladness and of praise, filled the We turned toward the old man, who hearts of an immense congregation. drew nigher and addressing Maurice, It was a moment when all earthly said:

feared with the returning blood, his passion would overcome him. He turned his head away, but I caught his arm and said, "Forgive! that you may be forgiven."

struggles and vicissitudes were for- "My son, I have done you and gotten, and the soul, on waves of those dear to you a great wrong. I harmony, seemed to float unto God. I have resolved to atone for it many noticed Maurice once or twice during times, but circumstances and a stubborn the mass, and thought I saw a strangely heart forbade it. I thought of you often beautiful expression in his eyes. Does and prayed, "I am drawing near my the soul visibly express the joy that it end, O God, but let not the grave shut feels? Does the halo of the sanctified me in, until I have asked my enemy to irradiate the faces of the penitent of forgive. My son, I offer you, this heart? While the collection was being Christmas morn, the hand of friendship taken up, I looked in Maurice's eyes and of brotherly love. again, and I noticed they were fixed on accept it?" some one in the church. I followed his look, and became convinced that he who passed the collection box in our aisle was Maurice's enemy.

Will you

"Gladly, gladly," replied Maurice, his eyes filling with tears, "I have borne you hatred these many years, but this morning I drive it from my