"Yes, indeed," said her aunt, fondly stroking her head. "I have had some Christmas presents that did me a world of good--a little book mark, for instance, that a certain niece of mine worked for me, with wonderful secrecy, three years ago, when she was not a young lady with a purse full of money--that book mark was a true Christmas present; and my young couple across the way are plotting a profound surprise to each other on Christmas morning. John has contrived, by an hour of extra work every night, to lay by enough to get Mary a new calico dress; and she, poor soul, has bargained away the only thing in the jewelry line she ever possessed, to be laid out on a new hat for him. "I know, too, a washerwoman who has a poor, lame boy--a patient, gentle little fellow--who has lain quietly for weeks and months in his little crib, and his mother is going to give him a splendid Christmas present." "What is it, pray?" "A whole orange! Don't laugh. She will pay ten whole cents for it; for it shall be none of your common oranges, but a picked one of the very best going! She has put by the money, a cent at a time, for a whole month; and nobody knows which will be happiest in it, Willie or his mother. These are such Christmas presents as I like to think of--gifts coming from love, and tending to produce love; these are the appropriate gifts of the day." "But don't you think that it's right for those who _have_ money to give expensive presents, supposing always, as you say, they are given from real affection?" "Sometimes, undoubtedly. The Savior did not condemn her who broke an alabaster box of ointment--_very precious_--simply as a proof of love, even although the suggestion was made, 'This might have been sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor.' I have thought he would regard with sympathy the fond efforts which human love sometimes makes to express itself by gifts, the rarest and most costly. How I rejoiced with all my heart, when Charles Elton gave his poor mother that splendid Chinese shawl and gold watch! because I knew they came from the very fulness of his heart to a mother that he could not do too much for--a mother that has done and suffered every thing for him. In some such cases, when resources are ample, a costly gift seems to have a graceful appropriateness; but I cannot approve of it if it exhausts all the means of doing for the poor; it is better, then, to give a simple offering, and to do something for those who really need it." Eleanor looked thoughtful; her aunt laid down her knitting, and said, in a tone of gentle seriousness, "Whose birth does Christmas commemorate, Ella?" "Our Savior's, certainly, aunt."