It is, perhaps, our vivid recollection of the glories of those memorable Christmas Eves that leads us to be gentle with the little boys and girls who sing at our door to-night. We have all listened to the eloquent persons who can prove that Christmas is not what it used to be. They point to the decadence of pantomime, the decay of the waits and mummers, and the democratic impudence of those who demand Christmas-boxes. Well, it may be—but children do like modern pantomimes in spite of the generalisations of critics; and though a Salvation Army band is an unpicturesque substitute for such a village orchestra as is described in “Under the Greenwood Tree,” it at least satisfies the ear of the sentimentalist at two o’clock of a frosty morning. That Christmas-boxes are a nuisance is no new discovery. We find Swift grumbling to Stella about them exactly two hundred years ago. Mummers, we are told, are still to be found in the country; five years back we saw them ourselves and were satisfied that they had learnt their rather obscure rhymes from their fathers before them, and not from any well-meaning society for faking old customs. This said, it must be admitted that carol-singers are not what they were. Of the long procession of ragged children who have sung “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” at our gate this December, not one had taken the trouble to learn either the words or the tune accurately. When asked to sing some other carol they broke down, and it was apparent that they were trusting to their hungry and thinly clad appearance rather than to their singing as a means to obtain alms from the charitable. Sometimes—this we fear is really a modern note—the father was waiting in the background to collect the takings! It is rather difficult to know what to do in such cases, for the children may be punished if they are not successful; and yet the practice of sending insufficiently clad children into the streets on a winter’s night is hardly to be encouraged. Nevertheless, though the abuse is manifest, we would hesitate to say that the custom of singing carols at our doors should be stopped. It is difficult to read the heart of a child aright, but it seems to us at least possible that a few of the children win more than a mere handful of pennies from their singing. Though they mumble their words to a tune they only half remember, it is not likely that the spirit that made wonderful the Christmas Eves of long ago shall altogether pass them by. Surely the night conspires with lights of the world to enchant them, and for their own ears their voices achieve beauty beyond the measure of mortal song.