[AN EMPTY STOCKING.]
BY MRS. MARGARET SANGSTER.
I am very sure that most boys and girls will agree with me that there is nothing in the whole year quite so delightful as taking down the Christmas stocking. Of course it is charming to hang it up; but one never feels the least bit sleepy on Christmas-eve, and it seems so long to wait until morning shall come. The air is astir with excitement and mystery, and Santa Claus is known to be hovering about waiting for eyes to be closed, and children to go comfortably away to dream-land. By-and-by everybody does manage to fall asleep, and then by some strange magic the long, limp stockings are crammed with toys, books, bonbons, tools, dolls, and skates, or lovely ribbons, laces, watches, and gems. How beautifully they bulge out, every inch of room packed, while the overflow, which could not possibly be forced into any stocking, is piled temptingly on the tables and chairs.
Now look at this poor little girl who hung up her stocking on Christmas-eve, hoping that the good Santa Claus would come down the chimney and put something nice in it. She was afraid he would forget her, and still she hoped that maybe he might bring just one dolly, and slip it away down into the toe, where she would find it, and be, oh! so glad. Little Jennie is used to being cold and hungry, and does not mind a great many privations which more fortunate children never have to endure. She can sweep crossings in old shoes, and wear a ragged shawl, without envying girls who are wrapped in soft furs. These merry holidays have not made her envious; and yet when Florence and Susie and Mabel have flitted by on the street, their arms full of parcels, and their fathers and mothers buying them every beautiful thing that the shop windows show, she has wished and wished that she might have just one dolly—only one. So, thinking that maybe if she hung up her stocking her desire would be granted, she did so on Christmas-eve, and went to bed that night without minding the cold. The stocking hung where she placed it. Nobody came down the chimney, or up the stairs, or in at the door. Her mother was so tired and discouraged that she took no notice of Jennie's stocking, and if she had, it is doubtful whether she could have found a gift to gladden the child.
Sometimes little girls like Jennie have parents who are not kind and good like yours, because they love liquor and spend their earnings to procure that. There are plenty of empty stockings on Christmas in homes where fathers and mothers are drunkards.
Little Jennie looks very forlorn holding her empty stocking in her hand. The picture is a shadow on the gayety of this festive time, but it is inserted in the New-Year's number of Harper's Young People, that some of the readers may be prompted to think what they can do to send pleasures to little ones whose lives are seldom gay.
A very large part of your Christmas happiness came from the gifts you bestowed as well as from those you received. It was not a selfish festival in homes where brothers and sisters exchanged love-tokens; and the weeks you spent in making pretty presents with your own hands, in saving your pocket-money, and in planning to surprise your dear ones, were very happy weeks indeed. Now I have something to propose, which you need not wait a whole year to carry out. You know there are Flower Missions and Fruit Missions, which send flowers and fruit to the homes of the sick poor. Why should there not be a Toy Mission too? Most of you have a dolly, or two, or three, perhaps, which you could spare, and some of you have books you have read, and playthings which you have outgrown, which would make poor children wild with joy. Some of the Sunday-schools have tried this way of keeping Christmas, and have brought their gifts to be distributed among the poor. And some of the benevolent enterprises of the city send out holiday bags, to be filled and returned with all sorts of necessary things. A Toy Mission would be a little different from these, and with a little help from and organization by older brothers and sisters, it could be easily put into operation. The city missionaries and Bible-readers can tell just where there are children like Jennie in the picture, and some of the express companies willingly carry packages and parcels of the kind I mean, free of charge.
The House of the Good Shepherd, Tompkin's Cove, New York, has for several years sent cute-looking cloth bags to its friends, with the request that they be filled with gifts for its inmates. One Christmas season the children of the Wilson Industrial School of this city undertook to fill one of these, and their teacher told me it was very touching to see the eagerness and generosity with which they, so poor themselves, brought their carefully kept and mended treasures to send to the "poor children who had no friends to love them."