the occasion,” the originator of the scheme triumphantly announced. Preparations commenced without delay. All the young people put their heads together in one corner, and many were the explosions of laughter as the programme grew. Trunks were visited by their owners and small articles abstracted therefrom to serve as gifts for the emigrants and train-men, to whose particular entertainment the evening was by common consent to be devoted.

{15}

Just as the lamps were lighted in the train, our hero, who had disappeared early in the afternoon, returned, dragging after him a small stunted pine tree, which seemed to have strayed away from its native forests on purpose for the celebration. On being admitted to the grand hall, Bob further added to the decorations a few strings of a queer, mossy sort of evergreen. Hereupon a very young man with light eyebrows, who had hitherto been{16} inconspicuous, suddenly appeared from the depths of a battered trunk, over the edge of which he had for some time been bent like a siphon, and with a beaming face produced a box of veritable tiny wax candles! He was “on the road,” he explained, for a large wholesale toyshop, and these were samples. He guessed he could make it all right with the firm.

{16}

Of course the affair was a great success. I have no space to tell of the sheltered walk that Bob constructed of rugs from car to car; of the beautified interior of the old baggage car, draped with shawls and brightened with bits of ribbon; of the mute wonder of the poor emigrants, a number of whom had but just arrived from Germany, and could not speak a word of English; of their unbounded delight when the glistening tree was disclosed, and the cries of “Weihnachtsbaum! Weihnachtsbaum!” from their rumpled children, whose faces waked into{17} a glow of blissful recollection at the sight. Ah! if you could have seen the pretty gifts, the brave little pine (which all the managers agreed couldn’t possibly have been used had it been an inch taller); the improvised tableaux, wherein Bob successively personated an organ-grinder, a pug dog, and Hamlet, amid thunders of applause from the brakemen and engineers! Then the passengers sang a simple Christmas carol, Miss Raymond leading with her pure soprano, and Bob chiming in like the diapason of an organ.

{17}

Just as the last words died away a sudden hush came over the audience. Could it be an illusion, or did they hear the muffled but sweet notes of a church bell faintly sounding without? Tears came into the eyes of some of the roughest of the 

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