"Considering the season of the year, I think the best thing I can do is to devote practically all of it to Christmas benevolences--chiefly of the coal-and-blanket order. I have no quarrel with the very young, and I don't like to think of any child, male or female, going hungry or cold on Christmas Day. You can do a lot with forty-seven pounds ten, Philip. For about fourpence you can distend a small stomach to its utmost capacity, and you can wrap it up and keep it warm for very little more. What a blessed thing it is that these misguided females have some one to divert their foolish offerings into wise channels. This very week, but for us, forty-seven pounds ten would have dropped into the banking-account of some professional beggar, or gone to bolster up some perfectly impossible enterprise, such as the overthrow of the Church of Rome or the conversion of the Jews." Uncle Joseph laughed whimsically. "There is a touch of humour about it all," he said. "It would appeal to the editor of the 'Searchlight.' I must tell him all about it some day--when I go out of business! Yes, we'll stick to coal-and-blanket charities at present, Philip. After Christmas I want to tackle the question of emigration again. Now get your writing-pad. I want to dictate rough copies of the letters for next Monday." Uncle Joseph filled a fresh pipe, and began to stimulate his epistolary faculties by walking about the room. Philip silently took his seat at the table. "Aubrey Buck must go," was Uncle Joseph's first announcement. "Let us make a start upon his successor. His name shall be Arthur Brown, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Trinity is so big that it is very hard to trace all its late Fellows, especially if their name is Brown. John's is good, too, but we did very well with a Johnian missionary to Central Patagonia a couple of years ago, and we must divide our favours impartially. Now, take this down:-- "_Dear Madam,--Not long ago I was like yourself--a personality in the world of letters. Not of letters such as this, which (between you and I) it is with the utmost repugnance that I have brought myself to sit down and address to a fellow-scribe_-- "That's a purposely turgid and ungrammatical sentence, but she won't know. It does me good to dictate it-- "--_but of the great world of Literature, where the rarest spirits assemble and meet together_-- "That's out of the Prayer Book, and fits in rather well there-- "--_spirits that live as gods, and take sweet counsel together._ "That last bit is King David, but she will probably think it is Ella Wheeler Wilcox-- "_The busy life that you lead, as one of the protagonists of modern thought_-- "She won't know what a protagonist is, but it will please her to be called one--