toe nearer than the Himalayas! Christmas Eve without a dance, without a single “merry Christmas” wish! Christmas Eve and no chilblains, no miserable Waits, no Christmas boxes or Christmas bills! well, well, — the past is the past, a bitter sweet at best; let it pass. Our Christmas Eve in India is a strange affair. Instead of church-bells we have jackals, and instead of holly-berries the weird moon-convolvulus. Look at the ghostly creeper there, holding out its great dead-white moons of blossom to beautify the owl’s day. The natives in the south of India have a legend, — the Legend of the Moon-flower. There was once, they say, a maiden, exceedingly beautiful, and modest as she was beautiful. To her the admiration of men was a sorrow from morning to night, and her life was made weary with the importunities of her lovers. From her parents she could get no help, for they only said, “Choose one of them for your husband, and you will be left alone by the others.” From her friends she got less, for the men called her heartless, and the woman said her coyness would be abandoned before a suitor wealthier than her village wooers. But how could they know that one evening, soft and cool, as the maiden sat at her father’s porch, and there were no eyes near but the little owls’ on the roof and the fireflies’ under the tamarinds, there had come out from the guava-trees a stranger youth who had wooed her and won her, and who, with a kiss on her fair, upturned face, had sealed the covenant of their love? But she knew it; and sitting, when the evenings were soft and cool, at her father’s porch, she waited for the stranger’s return. But he never came back; and her life, sorely vexed by her lovers, became a burden to her, and she prayed for help to the gods. And they,
