home, has its special interest and value in the fact
that it brings together, so far as this is possible,
the scattered members of each household, streng
thening the ties of natural affection in those who
meet about the old fireside and calling forth
simultaneously kindly thoughts in the breasts of
the friends who are widely separated in space
but not in heart. But no true affection is narrow
and selfish; “thanks-living,” as an old writer
puts it, “is akin to thanks-giving,” and so the
spirit of Christmas, of “goodwill to men,” has
entered into our November holiday also, and
manifests itself in helping the poor, the orphan,
the friendless one, for the heart expanded by the
ome love and the thoughts of home friends
hrows tender in its thought of the homeless.
As the two holidays just named are related
to morals through the religious and the home
life, so is the remaining class related to patriotism
through the national life, commemorating now
the birthday of the nation or of him whom we rec
ognize as tne father of our country, now the death
of those who freely gave their lives ‘‘that the
government of the people, for the people, and by
the people should not perish from the earth.”
If the contemplation of worthy lives, of great oc
casions and of noble actions tends to exalt us
and fit us not only to comprehend but in some
degree to emulate what is so far above our com
mon life, no friend of liberty would take away
even one from this glorious trio of patriotic fes
tivals, so well adapted to develope a pure and
lofty love of country.
That we may value our festivals aright, let
us glance at those of some other countries. In
England, the great holiday is neither patriotic
nor moral. Parliament adjourns or sits without tl
quorum, shopkeepers close their shops, and Lon
don empties itself every May, on the Wednesday
following Trinity Sunday, to visit Epsom Downs
and there seethe racing for the “Derby” stakes
which are worth as much as $30,000. Now fliat
May-day and its may-poles are wholly things of
the past and that Christmas, the civilized fornvoi
LANCE.
THE FRE
our barbarian ancestors’ Yule-feast, has lost its
social prominence in England and is scarcely
more regarded than in the time of the Puritans,
our mother country—having neither Fourth of
July nor Thanksgiving—has only that glorification
of betting and horse-racing known as “Derby
day.”
If we look across the Channel, we find in
France the Celtic equivalent of our July 4th,
1776, to be July 14th, 1789, the day on which the
mob of Paris captured the old fortress-prison
which had for centuries enclosed as in a living
tomb the victims of every form of tyranny, po
litical, personal or ecclesiastical, and which thus
symbolized a.l despotic misrule. But while July
14th, Bastile day, has thus an origin similar to
that of July 4th, Independence day, the anni
versary of the former is not celebrated by all
good citizens but rather has fallen into the hands
of the mob and the Commune, whose leaders use
it as an occasion for declaiming against rightful
authority and for glorifying mob rule and an
archy.
In view of these facts, we cannot envy other
nations their festivals, for we would not wish
either to exchange for or-to adopt any that they
have. We would rather, realizing that a nation
needs every stimulus to patriotism and that the
worth of the national life depends on the depth of
the religions life and the purity of the home life,
seek to value more intelligently and use more
wisely those which already are ours. As good
citizens then we should all recognize the meaning
and the helpfulness of Feb. 22, May 30th and
July 4th, which remind us of the valiant deeds,
the noble lives and the glorious deaths of our
country’s heroes, and we should also, as good
citizens, consider well the worth to our nation of
that last Thursday of November which bids us
thrust aside all angry feelings and strengthens our
hold on our Saxon heritage of a pure home-life
by bringing us around the old hearth-stone, there
to reunite the broken family and weld heart to
heart more firmly than before, and we should es-