It is a winter night,
And the stilly earth is white,
With the blowing of the lilies of the snow;
Once it was as red,
With the roses summer shed;
But the roses fled with summer, long ago.
We sang a merry tune,
In the jolly days of June,
As we danced adown the garden in the light,
But now December's come,
And our hearts are dark and dumb,
As we huddle o'er the embers here to-night.
WHAT THE LITTLE GIRL SAID.
"Ma's upstairs changing her dress," said the freckle-faced little girl, tying her doll's bonnet strings and casting her eye about for a tidy large enough to serve as a shawl for that double-jointed young person.
"Oh, your mother needn't dress up for me," replied the female agent of the missionary society, taking a self-satisfied view of herself in the mirror. "Run up and tell her to come down just as she is in her every-day clothes, and not stand on ceremony."
"Oh, but she hasn't got on her every-day clothes. Ma was all dressed up in her new brown silk dress, 'cause she expected Miss Dimmond to-day. Miss Dimmond always comes over here to show off her nice things, and ma doesn't mean to get left. When ma saw you coming she said, 'the dickens!' and I guess she was mad about something. Ma said if you saw her new dress, she'd have to hear all about the poor heathen, who don't have silk, and you'd ask her for money to buy hymn books to send 'em. Say, do the nigger ladies use hymn-book leaves to do their hair up on and make it frizzy? Ma says she guesses that's all the good the books do 'em, if they ever get any books. I wish my doll was a heathen."
"Why, you wicked little girl! what do you want of a heathen doll?" inquired the missionary lady, taking a mental inventory of the new things in the parlor to get material for a homily on worldly extravagance.
"So folks would send her lots of nice things to wear, and feel sorry to have her going about naked. Then she'd have hair to frizz, and I want a doll with truly hair and eyes that roll up like Deacon Silderback's when he says amen on Sunday. I ain't a wicked girl, either, 'cause Uncle Dick—you know Uncle Dick, he's been out West and swears awful and smokes in the house—he says I'm a holy terror, and he hopes I'll be an angel pretty soon. Ma'll be down in a minute, so you needn't take your cloak off. She said she'd box my ears if I asked you to. Ma's putting on that old dress she had last year, 'cause she didn't want you to think she was able to give much this time, and she needed a muff worse than the queen of the cannon-ball islands needed religion. Uncle Dick says you oughter get to the islands, 'cause you'd be safe there, and the natives would be sorry they was such sinners anybody would send you to 'em. He says he never seen a heathen hungry enough to eat you, 'less 'twas a blind one, an' you'd set a blind pagan's teeth on edge so he'd never hanker after any more missionary. Uncle Dick's awful funny, and makes ma and pa die laughing sometimes."
"Your Uncle Richard is a bad, depraved wretch, and ought to have remained out West, where his style is appreciated. He sets a horrid example for little girls like you."