Monday, December 31, 2018

Socialism and Competition


Socialism and Competition, article in Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine 1910

As to eliminating competition, we might as well speak of stopping the movement of the waves upon the ocean, of the clouds in the sky. How would strength be developed, were there no rivalry, no competition? If you are strong, it is because you have had to do battle with circumstance and competitors. If I am strong, it is because I have been a fighter, from my youth up. As long as the contest is a fair one, nobody is wronged. The loser pays— that's all. Over the whole universe is written by the hand of Jehovah the stern old Roman adage vae victis—woe to vanquished. Good heavens! How bat-like these Socialists are! They ignore the simplest facts that lie right before their eyes. On the earth, in the sea, in the air, is the fiercest competition, going on by night and by day. The race is to the swift, the battle to the strong. Nature has no pity, no hate, no love. She smites all who violate her laws, whether we know what those laws are, or not. You violate some unwritten rule as to health, and down you go, no matter how good and useful your life may be. The Pestilence does not spare the righteous: Famine takes no account of your faith: Misfortune never separates sheep from goats. "Obey my laws, or perish", is the inexorable command of Nature. The man who fails to see this is either hopelessly stupid, or the victim of hereditary superstition. Be honest with yourself, Reader. See things as they are. Be as hopeful as you can; work, like fighting fire, to make the world better; but don't enwrap yourself in delusions.

Competition is the law of life, and the survival is to the fittest. Ever and ever, Nature works to get rid of the feeble. Ever and ever, she labors to evolve the perfect. The wisdom of the sages has been devoted to the fixing of the rules which govern competition; and so long as those rules are followed, competition is as natural and as harmless as the flow of the sap and the birth of the flowers.

Work! Without haste and without rest. WORK! All nature cries it. The constellations on high proclaim it. The restless tides of the seas, bear witness to it. The bounding blood in our veins, the crowding thoughts in our minds, the eager longing in our souls are ever present, never failing reminders that the Hymn of Life sounds the order for the battle and the march. The muffled drums within us beat the everlasting Reveille; and with the sun of each day, begins the fight anew.

Abolish all this? How could we? The stream cannot rise higher than its source, and humanity cannot escape its own limitations.

Co-operation on a small scale is a perfect success. Why? Because it competes. It brings the power of unionized effort to bear against individual enterprise. But no Socialist experiment ever succeeded. It has been tried, over and over again, both in America and in Europe, in ancient as well as modern times. Wayland himself chose a nice lot of human angels, and tried his fad at Ruskin, Tennessee. He discovered that his cherubs were just human bipeds, and Ruskin failed to become a Paradise. Instead, there was a lovely row among the Elect, and the colony was torn to pieces by factions. Scores of times, carefully selected men and women, who imagined themselves congenially altruistic, have turned their self-complacent backs upon us common clod-hoppers, and gone off to themselves to make a Garden of Eden. But never have they succeeded in making one. The serpent invariably enters; and it is the old story of Paradise Lost.

If the selected colonies fail to make a success of Socialism, how could the miscellaneous mass do it? If elemental human traits bring dismal failure to the chosen, congenial, altruistic groups, how can a person gifted with ordinary common-sense bring himself to believe that a similar experiment would succeed, when made with all the wicked people taken into the venture? If Socialism meets with invariable failure, when tried by the best people, could you reasonably expect better results from it, when the worst people are included in the venture?

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Celebrating George Orwell


Great audio, I listened to this years ago and I never forgot it. Christopher Hitchens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about George Orwell. Drawing on his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens talks about Orwell's opposition to imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, his moral courage, and his devotion to language. Along the way, Hitchens makes the case for why Orwell matters.

Watch Animal Farm (1954 - Cartoon) George Orwell on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4egC00K7Dg


Listen to the entire audiobook of Orwell's 1984, something I recommend everyone read, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM3GFyuJwQ8

Watch the old 1984 movie at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LiZnuRQmmM

Read or download 1984 at https://archive.org/details/Orwell1984preywo ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Watch Christopher Hitchens on Why Orwell Matters at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY5Ste5xRAA

Watch also All Art Is Propaganda: Christopher Hitchens on George Orwell - George Packer Interview (2009) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W32BEjvU7QM

Watch George Orwell: A Life in Pictures Full Documentary at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuVYvkdTYWc

Read: 1984 The Book That Killed George Orwell By Robert McCrum

Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell by Jeff Riggenbach (1903–1950) Audio at https://mises.org/library/eric-arthur-blair-aka-george-orwell-1903%E2%80%931950
(George Orwell presents us with yet another case of a writer who was not himself a libertarian as we understand the term today, but whose last two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, have earned him a place in the libertarian tradition.)


What was Ayn Rand’s stance on George Orwell’s famous novel 1984? by Leonard Peikoff (podcast)

My hero: George Orwell by John Carey
Orwell was a truth-teller whose courage and sense of social justice made him a secular saint By John Carey 

The Connection Between George Orwell and Friedrich Hayek-A tale of two anti-authoritarians by Sheldon Richman 

Orwell's 1984 Still Matters, Though Not in the Way You Might Think
A Washington, D.C., readathon reminds us that the left once hated this anti-totalitarian classic. by Charles Paul Freund

From Spencer's 1884 to Orwell's 1984 by Henry Hazlitt

John Stossel: Orwell's Animal Farm & The Political Class

5 Ways George Orwell's 1984 Has Come True Since It Was Published 67 Years Ago by Tyler Durden

From 1944 to Nineteen Eighty-Four by Sheldon Richman

From ‘1984’ to ‘Atlas Shrugged’: When the News Boosts Book Sales By Emily Temple

Ayn Rand and "1984"

Discussion: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell with Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio

The genius of George Orwell by Jeremy Paxman 


“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” ~George Orwell


Thursday, December 27, 2018

Art is the Science of Beauty


The Ultimate Significance of Art

Art...does not rise and decay—Art is eternal. What does decay and rise and decay is craftsmanship, the skill to produce Art, the power of beautifully uttering Art. It is this craftsmanship that is so often confused with Art—a misunderstanding that leads to all the sad confusion and casuistry to which Mr. Bennett, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is the victim. I will try to put it clearly. The most vastly interesting thing to man is Life. Whence it comes, whither it goes—these are a part of the eternal mystery. But we can and ought to know all of life 'twixt its coming and its going. We can only know of life by personal experience, or at second hand by the communicated experience of our fellows. Now our personal adventures in life, even though we bestride the world like a Napoleon, can at best be a small and parochial affair, when all is said, set beside the multitudinous experience of all our generation. But we may know of life through the experience of our fellows, by the communication of their sensations to us, that is to say by Art: for, just as our thoughts are communicated to our fellows through Speech, so may we communicate our Emotions to our fellows by transferring those Emotions through the senses, whether by sound, as in music, or the poetry of verse or prose, or oratory, or by the sight, as by colour in painting, or by form, as in sculpture or architecture, or by the drama, and the like. Art is the Emotional statement of Life. Speech is the intelligent utterance of Thought; Art is the intelligent utterance of the Emotions. Craftsmanship is the grammar of Art.

Now, it is not enough to have uttered a Thought to account it Speech; it is vital that the Thought shall be so uttered as to arouse the like thought in the hearer, otherwise are we but in a jibbering Babel of Strange Sounds. It is not enough to have uttered Emotion to account it Art: it is vital that the Emotion shall be so uttered as to arouse the like emotion in the onlooker; otherwise are we but in the tangled Whirl of Confusion. And just as Thought is the more perfectly understood as it is deftly expressed, so is Emotion the more powerfully transmitted as it is most perfectly uttered. In other words Art depends for its strength on the perfection of its craftsmanship. Craftsmanship is the perfection or beauty of statement by and through which Art is uttered. A poker may be a beautiful thing; it is not art. A photograph may be beautiful—it is not art. A woman may be very beautiful—she is not art. Art must create—it must transfer Sensation from the creator to us, whether by colour or sound or form, or the rhythmic effects produced by the emotion-arousing use of words such as oratory or the poetry of verse or prose. Now, the Greek genius set up Beauty as the ultimate goal of Art. The Greeks did really mean that Beauty of Craftsmanship alone was not enough, that Art must create Beauty. This absolute aim to achieve Beauty was the cause of the triumph of Greece in Art—a greatly over-rated triumph and one of which the schoolmasters tell us much ; it was also the cause of her limitations and of her eventual failure to achieve the supreme mastery in Art, of which we hear little. For, splendid as was the mighty achievement of Greece in Art, she never reached to the majesty and grandeur of that masterpiece that stands upon the edge of Africa, head and shoulders above her genius, in the wondrous thing that is called the Sphinx. The genius of Egypt spent itself upon the majesty and the mystery of life; and it moved thereby to a higher achievement than that of all Greece. When a school arose that had for its battle-cry Art for Art's sake, it really meant Art was for Craft's sake—that the aim of Art lay solely in the Beauty of its Craftsmanship. To show the deeps of their confusion, what they said, therefore, was this, that if a Whistler painted a wall white, he by his trick of thumb created a work of Art When Whistler said that Art was the science of Beauty, he reminded one of the wiseacre's definition of a crab, that it was “a scarlet insect that walked backwards"; the which was not an unworthy definition except that the crab is not an insect, is not scarlet, and does not walk backwards. Art concerns itself with tears and pathos and tragedy and ugliness and greyness and the agonies of life as much as with laughter and comedy and beauty. How much did Shakespeare concern himself with Beauty: Is jealousy beautiful? Yet “Othello” is great art. Is man's ineffectual struggle against destiny beautiful? Yet “Hamlet” is accounted the masterpiece of the ages. What did Isaiah concern himself with Beauty: Are killing and suffering and judgment beautiful? Mr. Bennett says that the killing of a hog is beautiful. I utterly deny it. It is wholly unbeautiful. Had Millet made it beautiful he had uttered the stupidest of lies. Nevertheless the statement of it may be Art. Indeed, Millet's aim in Art, a large part of his significance in Art, is a protest against the pettiness of mere beauty. He took the earth, this great soul’d man, and he wrought with a master's statement the pathos and the tragedy and the might and the majesty of the earth and of them that toil upon the earth. The “Man with the Hoe" is far more than beautiful, it holds the vast emotions of man's destiny to labour and of man's acceptance of that destiny; it utters the ugliness as loudly as it states the beauty of the earth and of toil; and it most rightly utters these things, so that they take equal rank, and thereby add to our experience of life through the masterly power and the beauty of craftsmanship whereby he so solemnly uttered the truth.

HALDANE MACFALL.

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Anthony Trollope on Reading and Books


"If he was in any degree a man of genius (and I hold that he was), it was in virtue of this happy, instinctive perception of human varieties. His knowledge of the stuff we are made of, his observation of the common behaviour of men and women, was not reasoned nor acquired, not even particularly studied. All human doings deeply interested him, human life, to his mind, was a perpetual story; but he never attempted to take the so-called scientific view, the view which has lately found ingenious advocates among the countrymen and successors of Balzac. He had no airs of being able to tell you why people in a given situation would conduct themselves in a particular way; it was enough for him that he felt their feelings and struck the right note, because he had, as it were, a good ear. If he was a knowing psychologist he was so by grace; he was just and true without apparatus and without effort. He must have had a great taste for the moral question; he evidently believed that this is the basis of the interest of fiction." ~Henry James

See also See also The Best Victorian Literature, Over 100 Books on DVDrom

Anthony Trollope on Reading and Books:

The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.

To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

Of all needs a book has,
the chief need is to be readable.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.

Who would ever think of learning to live out of an English novel?

The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good.

The end of a novel, like the end of children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plum.

As for reading, I doubt whether she did much better by the sea-side than she had done in the town. Men and women say that they will read, and think so—those, I mean, who have acquired no habit of reading—believing the work to be, of all works, the easiest. It may be work, they think, but of all works it must be the easiest of achievement. Given the absolute faculty of reading, the task of going through the pages of a book must be, of all tasks, the most certainly within the grasp of the man or woman who attempts it. Alas! no; if the habit be not there, of all tasks it is the most difficult.

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.

(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.

No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, --truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational.

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows.

A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you’d like to get.

For a list of all of my disks and ebooks (PDF and Amazon) click here

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Satan's Supper by James Bowker 1882



Satan's Supper by James Bowker 1882


I.

 The 'Old Lad' sat upon his throne,
Beneath a blasted oak,
And fiddled to the mandrake's groan,
The marsh-frog's lonely croak;

II.

Whilst winds they hissed, and shrieked, and moaned
About the branches bare,
And all around the corpses groaned,
And shook their mould'ring hair;

 III.

As witches gathered one by one,
And knelt at Satan's feet,
With faces some all worn and wan,
And some with features sweet,

IV.

The earth did ope and imps upsprang
Of every shape and shade,
Who 'gan to dance as th' welkin rang
With tunes the 'Old Lad' played;

V.

At which the witches clapped their hands,
And laughed and screamed in glee;
Or jumped about in whirling bands,
And hopped in revelry,

VI.

Till Satan ceased, when all did rest,
And swarmed unto the meat:
The flesh of infants from the breast,
The toes from dead men's feet,

VII.

With sand for salt, and brimstone cates,
With blood for old wine red;
On glittering dish and golden plates
The dainty food was spread.

VIII.

From heavy cups, with jewels rough,
The witches quenched their thirst;
Yet not before the ruddie stuff
Had been by Satan cursed.

IX.

But one lank fiend of skin and bone,
With hungry-looking eyne,
Gazed at the food with dreary moans,
And many a mournful whine;

X.

For Satan would not let him feed
Upon the toothsome cheer,
(He had not done all day a deed
To cause a human tear);

XI.

And so he hopped from side to side,
To beg a bit of 'toke,'
And, vagrant-like, his plea denied,
He prayed that they might choke

XII.

Themselves with morsels rich and fat
Or die upon the floor,
Like paupers (grieving much thereat
The guardians of the poor).

XIII.

A cock then flapped his wings and crew,
Announcing coming light;
When, seizing on a jar of stew,
The snubbed imp took his flight.

XIV.

And at the solemn sound of doom
The witches flew away,
While Satan slunk off through the gloom,
Afraid of break of day;

XV.

And in the darkness drear he cried—
His voice a trifle gruff,
'Those omelettes were nicely fried;
I have not had enough!'

XVI.

A blight fell on the trembling flowers
And on the quivering trees—
No buds there drink the passing showers,
Or leaves wave in the breeze;

XVII.

For Satan's presence withered all
The daisies and the grass,
And all things over which like pall
His sulphurous tail did pass.

Friday, December 21, 2018

Christmas Customs Throughout the Ages by Elizabeth T. Nash 1899


Yuletide Customs

The exact date when Yuletide became an established season of feasting is not known, but long ago when the heathen gods still ruled the minds and lives of the Teutonic tribes, certain ceremonies customarily took place from the 14th of December to the 6th of January. The people believed that the sun's wheel, Jul, paused in its course and rested after its yearly round, a belief easy of credence to the minds of far Northern people, as the sun did not rise above the horizon at that season. For these three weeks there was Yule peace, all feuds were dropped for the time, and solemn sacrifices were offered to ensure the fruitfulness of fields and animals. Relics of these ceremonies are still observed in some parts of Hessen. At midnight of the 24th of December the village youths parade the streets and proclaim the advent of the days of peace. During the remainder of Jul everything must rest, neither wagons nor spinning-wheels may be used, lest harm should overtake the flocks and fields.

The Icelanders by law and ancient custom date the beginning of their year from Yule Day; they also count a person's years by the number of Yules in his life, just as a Chinese man reckons his age by the number of New Year's Days he has seen.

The English revert to the ancient Saxon feasts on the 25th of December, when a great wassailing and feast was held in honor of great Thor, the anniversary being known as the "Mother Night," as the progenitress of all other nights in the year. The distinctive names for this festival were Gule, Gwyl, Jul, or Yule,—the belief of the learned being that these terms expressed the idea of a wheel or circle, embodying the central idea of a holy day. Gwl in Welsh and Geol in Saxon signify holy day, and seem to be interchangeable with Yule or I-ol, signifying ale,— the foremost ingredient in early Saxon or English feasts.

Christmas, a variation of Christ-mass, owes its name to the fact that in the Greek and Roman churches a mass in honor of Christ's birth was celebrated on that day. In many languages the word for Christmas means birthday, as the French word Noil, the Italian Natale, and indirectly the German Weihnachten, or sacred night, alluding to the birth of Christ as the event that consecrated it. The correct date of Christ's birth is unknown, nor was the day observed as Christmas until two hundred years after his birth, but Yuletide had been observed five hundred and fifty years before, the Persians keeping holiday very much as we of the present day. Then Rome took up its observance, and borrowed customs from Egypt, Persia, and Greece, adopting also the mistletoe and its rites from the Druids. Julius, pope of Rome in 400 A. D., fixed upon the 25th of December as being the day of the winter solstice, and to replace the pagan rites and festivals the Church introduced grand masses or Christmasses. Gradually came Christmas carols or Christmas hymns, then Christmas trees and a revival or survival of the pagan rites used with a Christian significance. Christmas now has come to mean simply the day, whereas formerly it was a season. Our English ancestors observed the holiday for twelve days and nights, finishing with Twelfth Night. In Ireland the little altar is kept up, with its candles and decorations, until "Little Christmas Day," two weeks from Christmas, and from the poems of Herrick (whose authority on ancient customs is undoubted) the Christmas decorations may be left until Candlemas Day, the 2d of February, when they must all be taken down unless the inmates wish to see a goblin for every leaf left on the wall. One poem says

"End now the white loaf and the pye, 
And let all sports with Christinas dye."

Another poem commences —

"Down with the rosemary and bayes,
Down with the mistletoe, 
Instead of holly, now upraise 
The greener box for show. 
The holly hitherto did sway; 
Let box now domineere 
Until the dancing Easter Day 
Or Easter Eve appeare."

The use of evergreens at Christmas comes from the Romans, who thus ornamented their temples during the feast of Saturn, while ivy was universally used in feasts in honor of Bacchus. The ancient Druids hung green branches and mistletoe over their doors as a propitiation to woodland sprites; they used also to cut green trees and carry them into their houses to protect the spirits of the forest and streams from the death-dealing winds, thinking the spirits, thus protected, would go forth in the spring to reclothe the forests with beautiful foliage and unlock the ice-bound streams. A survival of this superstition was found among the English peasantry not more than two hundred years ago. They hung evergreens in their cottages in the belief that they would attract sprites, and that the boughs would remain unnipped by the frosts and furnish a shelter for the woodland deifies. "Standard trees" in the city were originally "nailed fule of holme and ivy" showing that the external aspect of Christmastide was a public concern in the days of our ancestors. In "Poor Robin's Almanac," 1695, is this allusion to the Christmas evergreens:

"With holly and ivy,
So green and so gay. 
We deck up our bouses 
As fresh as the day. 
With bays and rosemary 
And laurel compleate 
And every one now 
Is a King in concrete."

These must be taken down by Twelfth Day.

"Down with the rosemary, and so 
Down with the baies and mistletoe, 
Down with the holly, ivy, all 
Wherewith you drest the Christmas hall 
So that the superstitious find 
No one least branch there left behind."

As mistletoe and holly are our principal decoration, it may be well to know the origin of their use and their supposed power. The Druids at Yuletide used to cut the mistletoe to place upon their altars with elaborate ceremonies. Their name for it was All-Heal or All-Healing. There was a large procession, headed by the Druidical priests, with bards singing canticles and hymns; then a herald preceded three Druids, furnished with implements for severing the sacred plant; then the prince or chief of the Druids, accompanied by all his followers. The chief mounted the oak and with a golden knife detached the mistletoe and presented it to the priest, who received and bore away the branches with great reverence. Two white bulls were sacrificed during the rite. On the first day of the new year, the branches, after resting on the altars in the interval, were distributed among the people as a sacred and holy plant, the Druid priest crying, "The mistletoe for the New Year." Just when the mistletoe became known as the "kissing-bush" is not known. There are many superstitions in regard to the mistletoe,—it being usually accounted friendly in British traditions, though in other nations it has been used for evil. In Northern mythology it was used to destroy the "god of light." Balder, the "white god" or the "god of light," dreamed that his life was in danger, and his mother, Frigga, exacted a promise from all animate and inanimate things, from sickness, and from fire and water, that they would bring no harm to her son. Because she thought the mistletoe too insignificant she omitted to make the same request of it, and the evil god Loki fashioned an arrow of it, which he put into the hands of Hoeder, Balder's blind brother, who, joining the other gods in playful attacks upon the invulnerable Balder, unconsciously gave him the fatal wound.

Many English girls believe that they will not be wedded inside of twelve months unless they have at least one kiss under the mistletoe. In many counties a berry is plucked from the mistletoe with each kiss, and when there are no berries no kisses are allowed. Mistletoe used to be considered a charm or amulet to ward off the baleful influence of witches. It was also considered that its influence was irresistible, that no one could possibly pass beneath it without yielding to its power, and hence both matron and maid must submit to the salutation which has since become customary.

The holly, with its traditions and customs, comes down to us from the old Romans and Teutons, and "bringing in the holly" used to be a matter of some ceremony. The good folk of Rutland, England, never bring holly into the house before Christmas Eve, believing that to do so would entail upon them a year of ill luck; and in Derbyshire it is believed that the roughness or smoothness of the holly that comes into a house at Christmas foreshadows whether husband or wife will rule during the coming year. The superstition that the holly is to remind us of Christ's suffering is of later origin than most of the Christmas customs. A little Christmas carol, in the Christmas number of "Harper's Magazine," 1898, prettily embodies this idea:

"The holly berry's red as blood, 
And the holly bears a thorn: 
And the manger-bed is a Holy Rood, 
When Jesus Christ was born."

In the Black Mountains at the present day the custom of bearing home the Yule log is still carefully observed in all its ancient detail. The house-father fells the chosen tree, then he utters a prayer, and carefully lifts up his log and bears it home on his shoulder. His sons follow his example, each bearing a log for himself. The father then leans his log up against the house, being careful that the freshly cut end is uppermost, the lesser logs or ends surround it. As the father places each log he says, "A merry log day."

The fire thus kindled is not allowed to go out until the following year, or great evil will befall the household. Portions of the preceding Yule log lighted the new logs, and the remains of each year's fire were carefully stored away among the household treasures for this purpose.

In the Highlands of Scotland it is, to this day, considered a great misfortune if the fire goes out, and it is said "Tae nae luck, ye've let oot the fire." The Yule log of England is chosen for its knots and rugged roots, a cross-grained block of elm being usually chosen, as it will burn longer. This used to be decorated with garlands of greens and ribbons and drawn to its place with much merriment.

Formerly the members of a family and the guests sat down in turn upon the Yule log as the throne of the Master of Revels or the Lord of Misrule, sang Yule songs, drank to the Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and as part of the frolic ate Yule dough or Yule cakes, drank furmenty, spiced ale, and from the wassail bowl.

Then they played Yule games, and finally kindled the Yule log from brands kept from the previous year. Herrick writes:

"Kindle the Christmas brand, and then 
     Till sunneset let it burne; 
 Which quencht, then lay it up agen, 
     Till Christmas next returne. 

"Part must be kept, wherewith to teend 
   The Christmas log next yeare: 
 And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend 
   Can do no mischief there." 

A similar custom was retained on the Continent called Souche de Noel. In Norfolk and other counties, as long as any part of the Yule log remained burning, all the servants were regaled at their meals with the best of cider and ale.

The early English and Irish people called Christmas the "Feast of Lights" and used to burn the "Christmas candle," which was so large as to burn several nights before being consumed. It is one of the most interesting of the Christmas customs, for very early it was made symbolical of the "Light of the World," and its burning became a religious observance. Whether it was, as is claimed, a pagan rite, offered to the sun for its returning warmth at Yuletide, is not really known.

Used as a Christian symbol, however, the Christmas candle grew larger and larger until it assumed such huge dimensions as to last the whole twelve nights of the holidays. The candle was often ornamented with a lamb, typical of the Lamb of God. These candles are still sold in various places at Christmas time. In the buttery (pantry) at St. John's College, Oxford, may still be seen an ancient stone candlestick bearing a figure of the Lamb. This candlestick used to be placed upon the "high table" each of the twelve nights of the Christmas festival, and in it burned the famous candle of St. John's.

One of the Christmas games used to be "jumping the candles." Twelve candles, representing the months of the year, were placed at intervals on the floor, and each person in turn was required to jump over them. If all were successfully passed over and still burned brightly, good fortune would be the jumper's during the coming year; but if any candle flame was put out it betokened ill-luck coming in the month it represented. If all were put out, the bachelor or maid who committed the direful deed would not only not marry during the coming year but might expect a disappointment in love. This custom is now used on Halloween-night.

A hundred years ago the English chandlers used to pay tribute to their patrons in the form of huge mould candles, and the coopers presented their patrons with great logs, called Yule dogs or blocks, and direct descendants of the Yule log.

The poor little Puritan children were not allowed to keep Christmas, because to do so savored of popery in their elders eyes. Governor Bradford, on the second Christmas in the New World, 1621, wished people to work, but if they would not work they must not play; if they kept Christmas at all it must be as a "matter of devotion." One thing, however, the children did have in the early days of New England was the "Christmas candle." This candle was home-made, of tallow, large, with the wick divided at the lower end to form three legs, while at its heart was concealed a quill well filled with gunpowder. On Christmas Eve it was lighted, and the quaint little Puritan folk sat around it, telling stories, until suddenly the candle went off with a bang, filling the children with glee, and giving them their only taste of holiday fun.

Germany is the Fatherland of the Christmas tree and of Kriss Kringle, the "Merry Man;* and Kriss Kringle still adorns the top bough of every tree, large or small, in Germany.

It is said that Christmas trees were used to place gifts upon as early as 1632; they certainly were by 1744, as Goethe in "The Sorrows of Werther" alludes to the custom. France adopted the Christmas tree about 1840, and Prince Albert introduced it into England the first Christmas after his marriage. The Queen still keeps up this custom, having a tree for her own gifts, one for her children and grandchildren, and one for the household. Since then the custom has become world-wide. The "Tree of Candles," is of more ancient date. There is an old French romance of the thirteenth century in which the hero sees a tree whose branches from top to bottom are covered with burning candles, while on the top is a figure of a child shining with a still greater radiance.

This tree symbolized humanity — the upper lights being the souls of the good, those below, of the wicked, while the child represented Christ. The poetic idea of the Christmas tree as a symbol of the renewed life of nature which begins with the lengthening of the days comes from Germany. From the Norse mythology comes the suggestion of the Christmas tree as typical of the new-born sun in that it was bedecked with lights, and was an emblem of spring on account of its rich green. Probably the Norse mythology was the origin of the "tree of candles" more than of the present Christmas tree. On the introduction of Christianity the Christmas tree, although not known then by that name, became the type of Christ.

The following quotation from L. P. Lewis gives these emblems of the Christmas tree:

"The tree itself, stately and tall, was symbolical of His Majesty and grandeur; the green, of His godliness and immortality; the lights, of His glory and of the Star in the East, and the angel on top (which was then never omitted), of the angels who gave to the shepherds the words still spoken each Christmas Day, "Peace on earth, good-will to men."