... “whose little feet, Pacing life’s dark journey through, Have safely reached the heavenly seat They had ever kept in view.” And I know Berkie is there with them, and I cannot wish him back, though his going from us made a sad vacancy in our little school, and left his parents’ hearts so desolate. Children cannot be sorry long, neither is it right they should; and so the members of Berkie’s class, although they did not forget him, soon began to wear their cheerful faces again, and look forward to the Christmas festival, when the church was hung with garlands of green, and in the chancel was set up the young pine-tree, which, away in the marsh by the lake, had been growing year by year, and gathering strength in its young limbs to bear the many gifts hung upon it by parents, and teachers, and friends, when, on Christmas eve, they came together to keep the birthnight of the child born in Bethlehem’s manger more than eighteen hundred years ago. Children are always happy on such occasions, and it seems to me that the children of St. Luke’s, in Carrollton, are particularly so, judging from the eager joy which lights up their faces, and beams in their eyes when they hear their own names called, and go up the aisle to receive the expected gift. I wonder every church in the land does not have the Christmas trees, and thus give to the children pleasant remembrances of that day, without which we had indeed been shrouded in the deepest gloom! True, we do not know the exact date of Christ’s birth, but we know near enough, and children should be early taught that Christmas has a far deeper meaning than merely a day for festivity and mirth. As far as possible the little ones of St. Luke’s were taught to understand why the day was kept; and that rosy, round-cheeked Fred did understand was proved by his saying to his mother, “I know what the Christmas-tree means. It is Jesus’ birthday party.” Freddie had caught the spirit of the thing, if not its exact meaning; and as often as Christmas comes round he will remember the child Jesus, whose birth the church then commemorates.