1N THE sors, By the time you read these lines the New Year will: be well under way. But the Christmas season is now to the fore, and we are bidding the year farewell in a right jovial manner. The shops are bewildering in their stores of pretty things; it is well that Christmas comes but once a year else our purses would be empty all the time. Gifts suitable to the season are displayed in the London shops as temptingly as they are shown in Paris, for what with the growing taste of the English, and the custom of large firms sending their buyers every sharon to the French capital, London has become as extravagant and luxurious as any continental city. To the Germans we owe much of the fashion of indoor festivity. The Christmas Tree was brought to Windsor Castle by the late Prince Consort who was a thorough German, loyal to the customs of the Fathor-Jand. Who can read Hans Andersen's tender tale of the "Little Fir Tree," that grew so ambitious and ended as a Christmas tree, and later when ite usefulness was over was relegated to the dust bin, without a sense of pity for the poor vain little tree
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.