One wonders if--in those far-off days of angel-singing--there was such a thing as a millionaire? Not a merely “rich” man;--not a “Wise Man of the East,” who, possessing knowledge and insight as well as wealth, hastened to bring his gold with frankincense and myrrh, and to lay these reverently in the humble manger which served as cradle to a Child, whose vast power was destined to conquer and subdue all the mightiest kings of the earth:--but an actual money-gorged, banknote-stuffed ruler of some octopus-like “Trade,” whose tentacles clutched and held everything within its reach--some owner of huge factories where human creatures “sweated” their lives out to fill his pockets, and died in their hundreds,--perchance their thousands--in order that he, like some monstrous bloated leech, should swell to the point of bursting on the blood he sucked from their throbbing arteries! Was there such an one existing in the miracle days when the “Glory to God in the Highest!” rang from star to star, from point to point of the myriad constellations, like a great wave of melody breaking against illimitable and endless shores? Surely not!--else there would have been some break in the music!--some ugly jar in the divine chorus! For instance, if there had at that time been living a multi-millionaire at all resembling the one whose strange experiences are now about to be related, the angels would have fled in dismay and weeping from the spectacle of a soul so warped from good, so destitute of sympathy, so drained and dry of every drop of the milk of human kindness, and so utterly at variance with the “peace and goodwill” of which they sang!