Remember that no explanation, no apology, is quite as good as to have done the thing exactly as it should be in the first place. JACK'S CHRISTMAS BY EMMA K. PARRISH. Jack had just heard of Christmas for the first time! Ten years old, and never knew about Christmas before! Jack's mother was a weary, overworked woman, and had no heart to tell the children about merry times and beautiful things in which they could have no share. His parents were very poor. When I tell you that they lived in a log-house you might think so, although some people live very comfortably in log-houses. But when I say that the snow drifted through the cracks in the roof until the chamber floor was fit to go sleighing on, and that it was so cold down-stairs that the gravy froze on the children's plates while they were eating breakfast, and that the little girls had no shoes but cloth ones which their mother sewed to their stockings, you will see that they were poor indeed. Mrs. Boyd, Jack's mother, generally went about her work with a shawl tied around her, and a comforter over her ears, on account of the ear-ache; and on the coldest days she kept Jack's little sisters wrapped up from head to foot and perched on chairs near the stove, so they wouldn't freeze. No; she didn't feel much like telling them about Christmas, when she didn't know but they would freeze to death, or, may be, starve, before that time. But Jack found out. He was going to school that winter, and one learns so much at school! He came home one night brimful of the news that Christmas would be there in three weeks, and that Santa Claus would come down chimneys and say, "I wish you Merry Christmas!" and then put lots of nice things in all the stockings. Mrs. Boyd heard him talking, and was glad the children were enjoying themselves, but hoped from her heart that they wouldn't expect anything, only to be bitterly disappointed. Most of that evening little Janey, the youngest girl, sat singing: "Wis' you Melly Kitsmas! Wis' you Melly Kitsmas!" in a quaint, little minor key, that wasn't plaintive enough to be sad, nor merry enough to be jolly, but only a sweet monotony of sounds and words showing that she was contented, and didn't feel any of the dreadful aches and pains which sometimes distressed her so.