Washington stands alone and unapproachable, like a snow-peak rising above its fellows into the clear air of morning, with a dignity, constancy and purity which have made him the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding generations. JAMES BRYCE (England) _George Washington dies, 1799_ December Fifteenth Of late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices? JAMES LANE ALLEN December Sixteenth I fill this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'Tis less of earth than heaven. EDWARD C. PINKNEY ("_A Health_") December Seventeenth Her every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds, And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, And from her lips each flows As one may see the burdened bee Forth issue from the rose. EDWARD C. PINKNEY ("_A Health_") December Eighteenth ... Nay, more! in death's despite The crippled skeleton "learned to write." "Dear mother," at first, of course; and then "Dear Captain," inquiring about the men. Captain's answer: "Of eighty-and-five, Giffen and I are left alive." FRANCIS O. TICKNOR ("_Little Giffen_") _Francis O. Ticknor dies, 1874_ December Nineteenth Word of gloom from the war, one day; Johnston pressed at the front, they say. Little Giffen was up and away; A tear--his first--as he bade good-bye, Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye. "I'll write, if spared!" There was news of the fight; But none of Giffen.--He did not write. FRANCIS O. TICKNOR _Crittenden's compromise opposed by dominant party in Congress, 1860_ Some of the manufacturing states think that a fight would be awful. Without a little bloodletting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush. Z. CHANDLER (_Senator from Michigan_) December Twentieth