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 Rh What a rush! How well I remember in Ancient Egypt—as I think you call it—seeing them getting out their Christmas things, all cut in hieroglyphics, always two or three years ahead.”

“Two or three years!” I exclaimed.

“Pooh,” said Time, “that was nothing. Why in Babylon they used to get their Christmas jokes ready—all baked in clay—a whole Solar eclipse ahead of Christmas. They said, I think, that the public preferred them so.”

“Egypt? ” I said. “Babylon? But surely, Father Time, there was no Christmas in those days. I thought”

“My dear boy,” he interrupted gravely, “don’t you know that there has always been Christmas?”

I was silent. Father Time had moved across the room and stood beside the fire-place, leaning on the mantelpiece. The little wreaths of smoke from the fading fire seemed to mingle with his shadowy outline.

“Well,” he said presently, “what is it that is wrong with Christmas?”

“Why,” I answered, “all the romance, the joy, the beauty of it has gone, crushed and killed by the greed of commerce and the horrors of war. I am not, as you thought I was, a hundred years old, but I can conjure