Page:The practical joke, or, The Christmas story of Uncle Ned.djvu/7

Rh and scanty apparel all the year, and have no time nor means to provide themselves or their children with the comforts and luxuries you enjoy. Each one can spare a little to minister to the enjoyment of those poor suffering children, many of whom, perhaps, have no fathers to provide for them, some of them not even a home to shelter them. Share with them your abundance, and the blessings of the poor shall rest upon you. And now, my patient little readers, for the story.

One Christmas night we were all gathered around a cheerful fire in the old-fashioned parlor. Father, mother, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins, were all there. The blazing pine knots sent a cheerful light into every nook and corner of the big room; the ponderous presses, and quaint old desk and bookcase, reflecting the warm glow from their polished surfaces.

The straight, high-backed, mahogany