Page:Our American Holidays - Christmas.djvu/131

   About elder-wine?
   About pantomimes?
   About cards?
   About New-Year's Day?
   About gifts?
   About wassail?
   About Twelfth-cake?
   About king and queen?
   About characters?
   About eating too much?
   About aldermen?
   About the doctor?
   About all being in the wrong?
   About charity?
   About all being in the right?
   About faith, hope, and endeavor?
   About the greatest plum-pudding for the greatest number?
   Esto perpetua,—that is, faith, hope and charity, and endeavor; and plum-pudding enough by and by, all the year round, for everybody that likes it. Why that should not be the case, we cannot see,—seeing that the earth is big, and human kind teachable, and God very good, and inciting us to do it. Meantime, gravity apart, we ask anybody whether any of the above subjects are exhausted; and we inform everybody, that all the above customs still exist in some parts of our beloved country, however unintelligible they may have become in others. But to give a specimen of