Ah!
Christmas ! Christmas ! How welcome thou art to those whose pocketbooks have
golden linings. They smile now in their pleasant homes. Mince pies and
cranberry marmalade are getting ready on the upper shelf, out of little Bobby’s
reach, and mother is chopping the suet, picking the currants and raisins,
slicing the orange, lemon and citron peels for the plum pudding. What times of
rejoicing and preparation in anticipation of the Christmas homecoming, when the
absent ones will gather around the dinner table and the family will be complete
for at least one day in the year. Some may not return; they have wandered too
far from the old home and made new homes for themselves; but, if absent in
body, they will be present in spirit. Oysters on the whole shell, the half
shell or any way you want ‘em, for stuff in the turkey; or, if you prefer it,
goose stuffed with sage and onions, with apple sass on the side. Regular
old-fashioned cider, of pure apple juice without any chemical stuff in it, and
five-year-old grape juice of which you might drink a gallon and not feel any
bad effects, to wash down the dinner instead of stronger beverages that induce
headaches and bad temper, and make you wish that Christmas would never come
again. My! How it makes one’s mouth water in anticipation of the luxurious
treat a-coming. Well, all prudent and thrifty Hamiltonians have reason to be
grateful, for it has been a year of plenty for everybody able to work, and
there has been work for all to do. The rich can guzzle their wines and gobble
their venison, green turtle and canvasbacks for gold has poured into their
coffers : the man who labors with hands and brain will have his humble fare and
thank God that he has health and is able to provide for his family. But how is
it with the widow, the orphan, the sick man at death’s door, and all the
wretched paupers who throng the highways and byways? To them Christmas seems a
bitter sarcasm. Depending upon themselves, it will be a dark and dreary day,
for the light of hope had fled from their homes. The benevolent societies will
to some extent brighten the homes of the less fortunate; still, hundreds even
in our city will be passed by. Each individual reader of the Spectator can do
his or her part in making it a glad Christmas by doing a little missionary work
in looking up and providing for someone who might otherwise be forgotten. Do it
not as a charity, but in the spirit of the golden rule : “Whatsoever ye would
that others should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” Your own Christmas
will be brighter and happier when you have done one good act.
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Christmas is coming along in
seven-league boots, and the eyes of the children are bright and their hearts
are beating high with expectation. Christmas is essentially a holiday for the
little folks, and they grow out of their dreams of the ruddy-faced old myth
with sled and reindeers all too quickly. To many of those who have grown up and
put away childish things, the glad time is often more of a struggle between a
slim purse and a big heart than anything else, and yet they get their reward
out of the sacrifices they are called upon to make in the pleasure they get out
of making the children happy. Once upon a time we were all young ourselves,
though you might not think it to look at some of us, and the pleasantest
recollections of life, almost, hang around those memorable mornings when little
barefooted, night-gowned forms stole cautiously from the snug, warm bed to the
mantelpiece to see what Santa Claus had brought. The children don’t stay
children very long, and it is worth a good deal to make them wholly happy once
a year during the few years they are children, even if their little stomachs
are hopelessly out of order for a few days afterward. Make their childhood
bright and pleasant, and in after years, they will remember with gratitude and
thank God that they were blessed with affectionate parents.
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Hamilton is certainly entitled to the
bun for the number of fraternal societies and their membership. You can rarely
meet a man who has not his name enrolled in one or more lodges, and nearly
every society has at its foundation the beneficiary feature. Friendly, or
benevolent, societies are a British institution, inaugurated among the poorer
classes at the beginning of the eighteenth century for mutual insurance against
the distress arising from sickness, death, accident or other causes of
destitution. There were, at first, merely a banding together of a few persons
on unscientific principles, but, in later years, became subjects of
parliamentary action, and are now limited by law to operation on a basis
founded on the experience deduced from the actuaries’ tables of insurance. Two
hundred and eighty years ago, the Fund for Mercer’s Widows was started in
London. In 1765, Dr. Price, an English scientist, and Benjamin Franklin,
printer and philosopher, perfected actuary tables which still form the basis of
life insurance by stock companies, and have been adopted by many of the
fraternal societies. Hence fraternal benefits and commercial insurance owe
their beneficence and their success to British and American brains and
philanthropy, and the world is indebted to English-speaking people for working
out the problem of saving for the benefit of the widow and orphan. The first
railway accident insurance company was organized in London in 1849, and out of
it has grown that splendid system of insurance against accidents of every kind
that is now generally adopted.
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The Good Book commands up to lay up
treasures in heaven. Fraternal societies and old-line life insurance companies
teach us that the way to lay up treasure on earth is to enroll our names in
some order and by the payment of weekly or monthly assessments secure our
families when we have finished this earthly pilgrimage, a fund that will afford
at least temporary relief. When a member of one of these fraternal societies in
Hamilton dies, his family is paid, within a few weeks, from $1,000 and upward,
depending upon the policy carried. In a majority of cases, were it not for the
wise forethought in providing the insurance, the family would left with little
or nothing – barely sufficient to pay funeral expenses and for the medical
attendance during the last sickness. The fraternal societies not only furnish insurance,
but during life their members receive a weekly allowance in sickness and a re
provided with a doctor. And all these benefits cost merely a nominal sum. The
money some men spend in self-indulgence in liquor and tobacco alone would pay
all demands of any one of the fraternal societies and lay up a treasure that
would be handy to draw upon when incapacitated for labor by sickness or
accident; and, in case of their death, leave a couple of thousand dollars to
their families. Has it ever occurred to you, dear reader, that thousands of
dollars are paid out monthly in Hamilton to members of the fraternal societies
who are stricken down by sickness or accident or death? Without that help there
would be great distress in many homes. Hardly a month passes in the year that
from one to a dozen men die who leave to their families only the life insurance
policy they have carried in some old-time company or in some fraternal society.
The average man, with a family to support, does not earn much more than pays current
expenses. When sickness comes, the wages stop. Here is where the fraternal
society comes to the rescue. Should death ensue, after a long illness, the
family exchequer is exhausted and there is no money left to pay the doctor or
funeral expenses. Here is where the insurance policy does its blessed work. A policy
of life insurance in some fraternal society or old-time company is the best
Christmas gift a man can give his wife.
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The old boys and the old girls of
Hamilton who have rounded up their threescore years and ten, and who, perhaps,
have not spent a year in all that time away from the sound of the clock on the city
hall or the chimes in the Church of the Ascension have seen wonderful changes
in the city of their birth. The winter began earlier half a century ago and
lasted longer, and in the Christmas holidays there was sleigh-riding with the
temperature down below zero, to make the face and ears tingle. Probably the
cold snap of the past few days comes nearer to an old-fashioned winter than
many we have had in years. Ah! those were bright and cheerful days for the young,
and as memory carries us back at these Christmas times, let us lay aside the
cares and anxieties that come with years and responsibilities of daily life and
enter with zest into the pleasures of youth. Do you want an object lesson to
call back your youth? Take a walk in our business streets and see the groups of
children in front of the large plate glass windows and hear their exclamations
at everything on exhibition. There is nothing too small to escape them and each
one has a choice. Santa Claus is a reality to the little tots, and the longer
the illusion can be kept up, the happier will be the dream of youth. You didn’t
have such show windows to look into, my old boy, when you were young, for the
merchants and the toymakers had not advanced that far in catering to the
pleasure of childhood. You were born in a practical generation, and old Santa
Claus had not then left his native Germany to room with the reindeer in the
wilds of Canada. The confectioners’ windows during holiday times are the
delight of the children, especially of that class whose homes are not the most cheerful.
Listen to two or three of them as they look upon the filmy candies, in every
color of the rainbow, and impart to each other just the choice they would make
if some good angel would only let them enter the shop and turn them loose on
the mountains of the chocolates and taffies and the great mouthfuls of sugar and
coconut-coated balls of sweetness. Poor little waifs! They have to gratify
their desires in imagination only, for that plate glass stands between them and
their heaven.
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The candies and cakes in the
confectioners’ windows appeal, not only to the waifs, but there are people of a
larger growth who have not the means to buy such delicacies for the little ones
in their homes. Christmas, after all, is a tantalizing season, and while
mothers may pass by the same windows at every season in the year, they hardly
give them a thought. Good bread, with or without butter, is manna to a hungry
kid, except at Christmas, when he or she wants
currant buns and tarts and fruit cake – anything that will put their
little stomachs in disorder for the next week or two. But what cares childhood
for a sour stomach so long as the eating delights the palate? The old boys and
the old girls of a past century forget all these things, and they only renew
their youth in seeing the children of the present enjoy them as they did in the
long ago. When you are looking around, my old boy, and come across a group of
God’s poor kids in front of shop windows, especially confectioners,’ blow in a
quarter and learn that it is more blessed to give than receive.
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