"Dear child," said he, "you have sung the song all your life. If you have thanked God for his goodness to you--if you have loved him for his love to you--if you have prayed to him to make you good and holy--you have sung the Song of the Mountain." "Praise to thee! Praise to thee!" murmured the old woman. Then she thought she heard the whole mountain singing as it did the morning she listened to it; and the great song was sung, and she sang also, and the voice beside her sang. * * * * * ----The people who lived about there say, that when they came in the morning to see Old Effie, she was sitting in her arm-chair, with her hands folded, and her lips half parted as if she had sung herself to sleep; and when they touched her she did not move--for Old Effie was dead. [Illustration] A Christmas Stocking With a Hole in it BEN'S STORY I. The Stocking is Hung. [Illustration] At Christmas-tide in New York, the people who live in the upper part of the city cannot hear the chimes that ring from Trinity steeple; but in the dwelling streets which run in and out among the warehouse streets, and in the courts which stand stock still and refuse to go a step further,--there the Trinity music is heard and the "merry Christmas" of the bells is flung out to all however poor. Beside Trinity there are but few chimes of bells in the city, neither do poor children there sing Christmas carols in the streets and thus unlatch the doors of even crabbed hearts. But the merriest chimes of bells are played and the sweetest carols sung even in New York. For when at Christmas one walks in the crowded streets he may hear on all sides the merry Christmas! merry Christmas to you! to you! rung out on every key and the chiming makes perfect music; the poor children sing carols too, for are they not each little songs as they stand in their rags before well-to-do folk--songs without words--reminding us of the poor child Jesus and the blessings which He brought? Yes, the bells ring in our hearts and we hear carols then at least if not at other times; and in some old cobwebbed heart does Christmas fancy or Christmas memory enter and ring disused bells that sound but a hoarse blessing, so rusty has their metal become, but a blessing at least well-meant. Blessed be Christmas that it knocks so at the door of our hearts.