Page:My father as I recall him (IA cu31924013473610).djvu/53

 his own family and friends—a beautiful Christmas spirit.

"It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its Mighty Founder was a child himself," was his own advice, and advice which he followed both in letter and spirit.

One morning—it was the last day of the year, I remember—while we were at breakfast at "Gad's Hill," my father suggested that we should celebrate the evening by a charade to be acted in pantomime. The suggestion was received with acclamation, and amid shouts and laughing we were then and there, guests and members of the family, allotted our respective parts. My father went about collecting "stage properties," rehearsals were "called" at least four times during the morning, and in all our excitement no thought was given to that necessary part of a charade, the audience, whose business it is to guess the pantomime. At luncheon someone asked