At once your opinion of Mr. Blinker changes for the better. He assumes a new and radiant personality. Your Sunday school teacher has always exhibited to you virtues which you respect but do not enjoy; she has seemed to you lacking in magnetism. If she gives you for Christmas a Bible or a tale of juvenile virtue, you will write her a graceful letter of thanks (at your mother’s dictation), but your affection for the estimable lady will not be materially increased. But if your Sunday school teacher gives you a bowie knife or a revolver or a set of the Deadwood Dick novels! then how suddenly will the nobility of your Sunday school teacher’s nature be revealed to you! To elevator men, janitors, domestic servants, newspaper deliverers, and other necessary evils we always give something appropriate--money. And money does not express the personalities of most of us. We--that is, the general public, the common people, the populace, the average man, the great washed and the rest of us--do our duty in this matter, following religiously the admirable tradition of the Christmas box. But our retainers--if they will permit us thus picturesquely to address them--do not. They serve us during the year, and are duly paid for it, but they do nothing picturesque and extraordinary at Christmas time to justify our gifts to them. As a matter of fact, they are not upholding their part of the tradition. It is not enough for them to bow, and say, “Thank you,” while they feverishly count the money. They should revel romantically, as did their predecessors who established the custom by which they profit. The elevator boys should sing West Indian carols under our windows--especially if our apartment is in the twentieth story. The janitor and his family should enact in the basement a Christmas miracle play. It is pleasant to think of the janitor attired as a shepherd or as a Wise Man, with his children as angels or as sheep, to picture the Yule log on the janitorial hearth, and to hear in fancy, rising up the dumbwaiter shaft, the strains of “The Carnal and the Crane,” or of the excellent carol which begins: The shepherd upon a hill he sat; He had on him his tabard and his hat, His tarbox, his pipe and his flagat; His name was called Joly Joly Wat, For he was a gud herdes boy. Ut hoy! For in his pipe he made so much joy! In some places the newspaper deliverers and the telegraph boys feebly support this tradition by writing, or causing to be written, a “carrier’s address” and leaving printed copies of it with their customers. It would be better, of course, if they were to sing or to recite these verses, but even the printed address is better than nothing. It is a pity to see even this slight concession to tradition disappearing. In bygone days some of the most distinguished of our poets were glad to write these addresses--the late Richard Watson Gilder wrote one for the newspaper carriers of Newark.