854 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
December 22 
From Day to Day. 
THE SONG OF THE ANGELS. 
Once, only once, In the revolving years, 
Celestial song has gladdened mortal ears; 
Once, only once, has heaven come down to 
earth 
With angel tidings of a Saviour’s birth. 
Not to the mighty, to the wise or great, 
Did God unroll the starry scroll of fate; 
But simple shepherds, keeping watch by 
night, 
Beheld the glory break on mortal sight; 
And humble ears, attuned to lofty word. 
The gracious "Fear not” rapturously 
heard— 
Angelic prelude to the carol high 
That swept with harmony the earth and 
sky. 
Once, only once, that song to mortals 
came— 
Divinest spark of music’s heavenly flame; 
But evermore the deepening echoes roll 
In tender cadence through each humble 
soul; 
And simple folk, while keeping watch by 
night, 
At duty’s lowly shrine, with glorious light 
Are flooded as of old from Bethlehem’s 
sky. 
And know that Christ, the Lord, is drawing 
nigh. —Lipplncott’s Magazine. 
* 
We approach once more the children’s 
festival—the Feast of the Nativity. 
Wise men who want nothing but facts— 
facts of the hardest and baldest type— 
tell us that we don’t really know any¬ 
thing about the actual date of Christmas, 
and that many of the customs we cele¬ 
brate in connection with it are nothing 
but pagan ceremonies, stolen bodily 
from the heathens, and christened with 
other names. We are told that Yule- 
tide merriment is merely the Roman 
worship of Saturn under a Christian 
name; that the mistletoe is com¬ 
mandeered from the Druids, and that 
many Christmas games are inherited 
from the Babylonian goddess Ash- 
taroth or Astarte. All this is very 
likely; when the early Christians were 
converted from paganism, they were apt 
to cling to social or family customs 
which were, in themselves, of heathen 
origin. But the sentiment tnereof was 
wholly Christian, and we have scant 
sympathy with those who would curtail 
Christmas joys on the ground of pos¬ 
sibly heathen origin. 
* 
Near the old town of Glastonbury, 
England, there stood, for many gen¬ 
erations—centuries, if tradition may be 
believed—an ancient thorn bush. In ap¬ 
pearance it was simply the ordinary 
hawthorn or may, common all over Eng¬ 
land, but it had one striking peculiarity, 
and that was the habit of blooming at 
Christmas, or rather about the first 
week in January. Old Christmas, still 
kept in the Greek Church, is January 6, 
instead of December 25, but other 
churches keep the former date under 
the name of Epiphany, in honor of the 
visit of the Three Wise Men. Accord¬ 
ing to the old legend, Joseph of 
Arimathea visited the British Islands 
on a missionary tour about the year 
60 of the Christian Era, and striking 
his staff into the earth on Glastonbury 
Plain, it there took root and became the 
Glastonbury thorn. All sorts of legends 
gradually sprang up about it, but the old 
hawthorn grew and flourished, bloom¬ 
ing when the spirit moved, without any 
reference to the habits and customs of 
everyday thorn bushes. It was a 
gnarled and knotted veteran in the days 
of the Commonwealth, with the promise 
of a Christmas-blooming old age, when 
some of Cromwell’s troopers chopped it 
to pieces and burned the fragments! 
In their eyes it was a relic of idolatry, 
and its removal was an act of faith, but 
many a sweet and ennobling idea was 
destroyed with the old thorn. Some of 
our critics who aim to destroy the le¬ 
gendary fancies clustering about Christ¬ 
mas rather remind us of the Crom¬ 
wellian soldiers. And did the Glaston¬ 
bury thorn really bloom at Christmas? 
It truly did, in the mild English Win¬ 
ters; it is described by botanists as an 
early-flowering form of the common 
hawthorn, and, according to a note in 
an English gardening paper, four or five 
years ago, a Glastonbury thorn at 
Dublin was in full bloom December 22. 
But whether the thorn grew out of the 
legend, or the legend grew out of the 
thorn, we would hesitate to say. 
* 
Among dishes proper to Christmas, 
mince pie, which seems more favored 
by American housewives than plum 
pudding, is the older of the two dishes, 
being served at early Saxon feasts. 
Plum pudding, which does not appear 
in cook books before 1675, was a gradual 
development from plum porridge or 
frumenty, made by boiling hulled wheat 
in milk, and adding sugar, spice and 
fruit, It is estimated that, every year. 
Great Britain consumes 8,000 tons of 
plum pudding, and quantities of this 
national dessert are sent abroad to the 
Colonies from the mother country. The 
largest plum pudding on record was 
made in 1858, to celebrate the opening 
of a railway. It weighed 3,000 pounds, 
and required 573 pounds of flour, 191 
pounds of bread, 382 pounds of raisins, 
191 pounds of currants, 382 pounds of 
suet, 320 lemons, 144 nutmegs, 95 pounds 
of sugar, a large quantity of eggs and 
360 quarts of milk. It was cooked in 
sections, and afterwards built together. 
We may. add a plum pudding recipe 
which has been used by one English 
family for over a century: One pound 
finely chopped suet, one pound stoned 
raisins, 1 y 2 pound currants, one pound 
flour, one pound bread crumbs, one-half 
pound sliced candied citron peel, one 
pound sugar, six eggs, one nutmeg 
grated, one saltspoonful each of ground 
cinnamon, allspice and cloves. It will 
be very stiff, and must be very 
thoroughly mixed; according to old 
3678-Boy's Coat. 
2 to 8 years. 
custom, each member of the family must 
give it a stir. If a little more moisture 
seems necessary, use milk or sweet 
cider. Pack the pudding in a stone 
crock, and keep in a cool place; we like 
to make it two weeks before using. Put 
in a well-buttered mold, and boil for 
eight hours; put a well-floured cloth over 
the top, leaving room for the pudding to 
swell. The long boiling is a necessity. 
The pudding may be boiled for four 
hours on any convenient occasion and 
given another four hours when used. 
It will keep well after the preliminary 
boiling. 
The Rural Patterns. 
For a small boy, a box coat with 
coachman’s capes is very becoming. 
Any cloak material may be used for it; 
as illustrated it is made of beaver broad¬ 
cloth in hunter’s green, and is finished 
with tailor stitching and lined through¬ 
out with silk of the same shade. Wise 
mothers include the silk lining even if 
economy must be practiced in other 
ways, as nothing else allows the coat 
to be slipped on and off with ease. 
Both fronts and back are loose fitting 
in box style, and hang stylishly from 
3664 Girl’s Long Box Coat 
4to I 2 years. 
the shoulders. The under-arm seams 
are provided with underlaps and left 
open for a few inches at the lower edge 
to allow greater freedom, and the stitch¬ 
ing of the back holds the overlap in 
place of the seam. The left front laps 
over the right in double-breasted style, 
and is held by handsome smoked pearl 
buttons and buttonholes, a second row 
of buttons being placed on the left front. 
Pockets are inserted and finished with 
laps and should be deep enough to make 
the little wearer happy. Two capes fall 
over the shoulders, either one of which 
may be omitted, and the neck is finished 
with a turn-over collar. The sleeves 
are two-seamed in regular coat style, 
and include turn-over cuffs that are 
slashed at the upper side. To cut this 
coat for a boy of 4 years of age 5 yards 
of material 21 inches wide, 3% yards 27 
inches wide or 1% yard 50 inches wide, 
will be required. The pattern No. 3678 
is cut in sizes for boys of 2, 4, 6 and 8 
years of age; price 10 cents from this 
office. 
The girls’ box coat shown is a very 
pretty one; it completely covers the 
frock, and its loose fit makes it easily 
slipped off and on. As illustrated, the 
material is covert cloth in a tan shade, 
with collar, shield and cuffs of velvet in 
the same shade, machine stitched; the 
lining, taffeta in flowered stripes. The 
back is seamless, shaped only by under¬ 
arm seams. The fronts are cut simply, 
and hang straight from the shoulders. 
They are lapped one over the other, and 
are closed by means of handsome but¬ 
tons and buttonholes. The sailor collar 
is stitched to the neck and hooked over 
to the left beneath the collar, but can be 
omitted as shown in the small cut. The 
under-arm seams are left open for a 
short distance from .the lower edge to 
give ample freedom, and the edges of 
the coat are finished with applied bands 
of the cloth. The sleeves are two- 
seamed, with roll-over flare cuffs. To 
cut this coat for a girl of 8 years of age 
1 % yard of material 50 inches wide, 2%, 
yards 44 inches wide, with % yard of 
velvet for collar, cuffs and shield, will 
be required. The pattern No. 3664 is 
cut in sizes for girls of 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 
years of age; price 10 cents from this 
office. 
Too Busy for Kindness. 
“I sometimes think we women nowa¬ 
days are in danger of being too busy to 
be really useful,” said an old lady, 
quoted by a writer in the Young 
Woman. "We hear so much about mak¬ 
ing every minute count, and always hav¬ 
ing some work or course of study for 
spare hours, and having all our ac¬ 
tivities systematized, that there is no 
place left for small wayside kindnesses. 
We go to see the sick neighbor, and re¬ 
lieve the poor neighbor, but for the 
common, everyday neighbor, who has 
not fallen by the way, so far as we can 
see, we haven’t a minute to spare. But 
everybody who needs a cup of cold water 
isn’t calling the fact out to the world, 
and there are a great many little pauses 
by the way that are no waste of time. 
The old-fashioned exchange of garden 
flowers over the back fence, and friendly 
chat about domestic matters helped to 
brighten weary days and brought more 
cheer than many a sermon. We ought 
not to be too busy to inquire for the 
girl away at school, or to be interested 
in the letter from the boy at sea. It’s 
a comfort to the mother’s lonely heart 
to feel that somebody else cares for 
that which means so much to her. Espe¬ 
cially we ought not to be too busy to 
give and receive little kindnesses in our 
own home.” May no one be able to say 
that we are too busy to be kind. 
There is a sublime trust implied in 
caxm and conquering cheerfulness. The 
soul seems to have such an understand¬ 
ing with the universe, such a childlike 
confidence that its Father will do all 
things well.—N. A. Staples. 
Elgin Watches 
possess every desirable modern 
improvement — are acknowl¬ 
edged to be 
The World’s Standard 
in accurate time-telling and en¬ 
durance. Jewelers everywhere 
sell and warrant the 
Genuine Ruby Jeweled Elgin 
An Elgin Watch always 
has the word “Elgin” en¬ 
graved on the works— 
fully guaranteed. 
llooklct Free. 
ELGIN NATIONAL WATCH CO. 
ELGIN, ILL. 
