“But I am sometimes tempted to ask the use of your lecture-room for one evening, to call together an audience from which all persons of the masculine gender shall be excluded, and, then and there, harangue my own sex upon a subject that has engrossed much of my time and thoughts for eight years past.” “What is it--cookery or dry goods? Either topic would be popular.” “Something more important than both put together!” I retorted. My theme would be-- “‘_The Rights of Babies and the Responsibilities of Mothers!_’” My auditor raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips very slightly--just enough to give one the impression that he would have whistled, had not politeness restrained him. Seeing that I was in nowise abashed by these discouraging manifestations, he offered an amendment to my resolution. “Better write your discourse, instead, and have it printed.” “But,” I objected, “what I would say would be addressed to women alone. We don’t care to let men know how unmercifully we can handle one another. Moreover, I should use great plainness of speech”-- “I think I can set your mind at rest on that point,” interrupted my companion, drily. “I don’t believe many men would read your treatise.” Whereupon he picked up _his_ treatise and withdrew to his sanctum, leaving me to arrange the heads of my “discourse,” or to ponder the meaning of his last equivocal observation. And thus it came to pass, that, sitting lonely here, and arranging plans for the coming festival--the jubilee that, throughout Christendom, commemorates the birth of a little Child in the grotto of far-off Bethlehem; musing of that Child and his mother, while from the wall, the Mater Dolorosa, wondrous in beauty and in sorrow, looked down upon me--thought followed thought, and memories--sweet, tender, and full of joy, others sad, yet precious, and mingled with wistful yearning, flowed in upon me, and I have taken up my pen, not to indite a lecture or an essay, but a simple, homely, heartfelt Christmas letter to my fellow-workers in the great mission to which God has called us. “And first, let me remark, by way of ‘beginning at the beginning,’ as old-time teachers were wont to exhort their scholars to do--that _Babies have a right to be_.”