LEAVES FROM A CHRISTMAS TREE.

New Zealand Graphic, 20 December 1894, Page 10

LEAVES FROM A CHRISTMAS TREE.

OR, THOUGHTS THAT HANG ON PLAYTHINGS. Pleasure is but a ball that a child runs after so long as it keeps rolling, but which he kicks away from him the moment it stops. The character that has holes pierced in it isn’t worth a pin, and you can say the same of a child’s drum. Drums, also, partake of the quality given by Napoleon to English soldiers, for ‘ they never know when they’re beaten.’ The child takes a pleasure in blowing its trumpet. What is music to itself is discord to others ; and yet it will persevere for hours. The man becomes often as great a nuisance when he allows his vanity to be incessantly pushing him before others to blow his own trumpet. A gong that is sounded too loudly only startles people. So, in sounding your praises you cannot do it with too light a hand. If you souud them too thumpingly persons will only run away from you, or else put their fingers in their ears, to prevent their being bored with such empty noise. The performer on a tin fiddle reminds one of the prosperous fool who is always boasting of having accumulated a large fortune. We generally make the most of any little danger. We shrink one moment and laugh at our fears the next, like young ladies pulling bonbon crackers. Most apprehensions have a ridiculous or a pleasant termination. The end is generally a motto or a sweetmeat. A good book is like travelling. The memory is sure to make some agreeable passage. The doll that speaks too frequently ends badly. The possession of its gift is the cause of its destruction. To find out the secret of its inspiration it is picked to pieces. It is the fate of genius all over. At Christmas-time, in the society of children, everyone

is presentable ; but more especially he who conies laden with presents. Whipping may make a humming-top go spinningly enough ; but it is thrown away on boys. Xerxes, after his ships were wrecked, flogged the sea ; but we never heard of the sea having taken a moral turn from that moment. In the same way many boys are wrecked at school, and the schoolmaster in his rage flogs the boy for it. The full mind, like a money-bag that is full, makes no noise : but the empty mind, like a money-bag with only two or three coins in it, keeps up such an incessant rattle that its emptiness soon betravs itself to all.