United States or Cabo Verde ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


She knew her aunt and her aunt's convictions as to the ethics of present-giving too well. And, if she were tempted to doubt, there were the two sets of presents before her, both of which, even down to the hemp twine and brown paper in one and the red ribbons and white tissue-paper in the other, proclaimed their donor's belief as to the proper distribution of usefulness and beauty.

Waits-by-the-Fire made up her mind to ask for it on the first day of the Feast of the Corn Harvest, which lasts four days, and is a time of present-giving and good-willing. She would have got it, too, if it had been left to the Corn Women to decide.

It ought to have been extraordinarily good fun, this camp under the vast heavens and these wild visitors, but it was not such fun as it ought to have been because both Amanda and Benham were extremely cold, stiff, sleepy, grubby and cross, and when at last they were back in the way to Podgoritza and had parted, after some present-giving from their chance friends, they halted in a sunlit grassy place, rolled themselves up in their blankets and recovered their arrears of sleep.

Clover's wedding presents had furnished part of the rugs and etchings and bits of china which ornamented the room, but Elsie's, who had married into a "present-giving connection," as her sister Johnnie called it, did even more.

And when they thought that he might not, because this would be considered Christmas celebration and would only make the absence of present-giving the more conspicuous, as in the case of the Sunday schools themselves, they faced still another theological quandary: For if it was true that Christ was born, then Christmas was his birthday; and if Christmas was his birthday, wasn't it wicked not to pay any attention?

A jeweller's catalogue provided a few minutes' lighter reading, and its diamond rings and its pearl and diamond necklets and pendants and brooches were so temptingly illustrated, that they awoke the present-giving instinct in the man's heart and he revolved the question whether etiquette would permit him to give Dora and Beatrice a necklet apiece for their pretty necks and Miss Bibby a chaste brooch.

A Christmas card sent by one human being to another human being is more than a piece of coloured stationery sent by one log of wood to another log of wood: it is an inspiring and reassuring message of high value. The mischief is that so many self-styled human beings are just logs of wood, rather stylishly dressed. And then the custom of present-giving!

Of course, a sense of social decency will prevent you from spending more than a small sum, and I shall be spared all exertion beyond signing a cheque. Yours insincerely and loggishly *." So managed, the contrivance of present-giving becomes positively sinister in its working.

"The question is," said Eleanor, "what are his ideas as to present-giving? Some of the wealthiest people have curiously cramped views on that subject. When people grow gradually rich their requirements and standard of living expand in proportion, while their present-giving instincts often remain in the undeveloped condition of their earlier days.

I have introduced you to the right people for present-giving at precisely the right moment previous to your wedding, when they know you neither too little nor too much. By long experience I have learnt to fix it to a day. But I am not going to compete with this undistinguished lavishness.