Many girls, young, like yourselves, to whom it is just as natural to be glad and happy, have little to make them so, and to bring some brightness into their lives would indeed be worth forming a society for. There are various ways in which kindness may be done these girls, and so many avenues will open to those seeking to benefit them, that it is needless to attempt any instruction as to what work may be performed by the society; if this suggestion is adopted, I know it will be safe to leave it to the quick sympathy and warm hearts of the girls to do the right thing at the right moment. What think you, girls, would it not be worth while to make of this last Thursday of November a Thanksgiving for others as well as for yourselves? and would not your own pleasures be doubly enhanced when sweetened with the thought of having done what you could to make someone else happy? [Illustration: Four Little “Injun” Boys] FOOTNOTE: [F] Of course we all know that our Pilgrim fathers did not have the daily papers, but this fact makes it the more absurd. [Illustration: Winter] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIX. CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES AND HOME-MADE CHRISTMAS GIFTS. AMONG all the days we celebrate Christmas stands first and foremost in our thoughts, the holiday of holidays. Coming in the season of frost and snow it brings a cheering warmth to our hearts that defies the icy atmosphere, and the feeling of kindliness and good will toward everyone, which it awakens, seems in response to the words the angels sang on our first Christmas, “On earth peace, good will toward men.” Christmas is not merely a day set apart for feasting, giving and receiving presents, and for merrymaking. The day on which we celebrate the birth of our Lord is a time of rejoicing for rich and poor alike, and Christmas is Christmas still, although we may receive and can offer no presents and our feast is humble indeed. Feeling this, let us keep the Christmas festival as it should be kept, right happily and merrily. Let us decorate our homes to the best of our ability in honor of the day, and supply all deficiencies with happy hearts and smiling faces. A friend of the writer’s once remarked, as she busied herself with some Christmas-cards she was preparing to send to the hospitals, “I always like to tie a sprig of evergreen on each card; it looks and smells so Christmasy.” And so it does. Even a few pieces of evergreen, tacked over doorways or branching out from behind picture-frames, give a room a festive, Christmas-like appearance that nothing else can, and as evergreens are so plentiful here in America there are few houses that need be without their Christmas decorations. Holly, too, with its brilliant red berries peeping cheerily forth from their shelter of prickly leaves, adds brightness to the other adornments, and when the white-berried mistletoe can also be obtained all the time-honored materials for the Christmas decorations are supplied.