Albany County Subdivision $ 4,500.00 Broome County 204.27 Chautauqua 301.36 Dutchess County 616.55 Glen Cove 165.25 New York County 255,701.04 Rensselaer Co. 2,952.19 Schenectady Co. 1,794.62 Ulster County 963.97 Brooklyn 9,278.70 Buffalo 1,947.74 Columbia County 311.00 Far Rockaway 10.00 Islip Township 140.00 Oneida County 1,323.30 Rochester 8,434.49 Syracuse 1,482.32 Westchester County 257.68 ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTMAS STAMP [Illustration: REPRODUCTION FROM AN ORIGINAL ENVELOPE BEARING ONE OF THE STAMPS REFERRED TO IN THIS ARTICLE.] “What was the origin of the Christmas Stamp?” was a question asked of Red Cross officials scores—doubtless hundreds—of times during the holiday season. This much we knew: On a letter received two years ago from Denmark Mr. Jacob Riis discovered a new and unknown stamp which aroused his curiosity. Inquiries brought its story, which he told a few months later in “The Outlook.” Miss Emily P. Bissell, the able and energetic secretary of the Delaware Red Cross Branch, read the story, and to the Annual Meeting of the Red Cross in 1907 brought a design for our first Christmas Stamp for the benefit of the anti-tuberculosis work, asking permission that the Delaware Branch might experiment with it, and so it had its birth in America. So successful proved the little stamp this past year, it became a national stamp. The story of its sale and success is told elsewhere. But what about its origin? Was it first thought of in Denmark? No one seemed to know. Then came the Tuberculosis Congress, and with it a report on Swedish tuberculosis work. What a surprise it was to find in this interesting pamphlet the origin of the “Charity Stamp,” as it is called, and still more of a surprise—a welcome surprise—to discover that its invention is due to our own “Sanitary Commission”—that precursor of the Red Cross. The Swedish report says: “The honor of having invented the Charity Stamp must be given to America—that land of inventions.” In the year 1862 the first Charity Stamps were sold at a great charity festival in Boston. These stamps, which were called “Sanitary Fair Stamps,” were sold to benefit the wounded in the war then proceeding between the Northern and Southern States. The idea was not adopted in Europe until thirty years later, when in 1892 Portugal produced the first Charity Stamps (private stamps for the Red Cross Society). Since then almost every country in Europe has used them and several hundred different types have been called into existence. Some of those used in Sweden are reproduced in this article. Learning this much from the