Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1898 — BELIEF IN SANTA CLAUS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BELIEF IN SANTA CLAUS.

It Will Give Blessings Heaped Up to Pay You for Your Faith.

w* WORLD once I Pscl contained a fathFfTl er and mother J did not beHere in Santa Claus. They were afraid, too, to let their children be- \ lieve in the blessed old myth, fearv t,lnt tho Jnn * & \ ey would make them credulous, C'SHsJjjFp, or that it would V have the effect of teaching them deceit. Facts which could be proved

and verified these excellent people insisted upon, and when town and country were rejoicing, Christmas bells ringing. Christmas tapers twinkling and Christmas carols thrilling, their home was robbed of half its rightful cheer in their strenuous determination not to be imposed upon by Santa Claus or any of his train. But to turn to our original thought. Did the parents who would have none of Santa Claus gain anything by their resolution to be rigidly true to a tangible nnd material order, or, clinging to the husk, did they lose the fruit which was growing within for the healing of the nations? Many things not susceptible of proof by the evidence of the physical senses are really true in that higher realm where the imagination rules. One of these never-dy-ing. never-failing things is Santa Claus, nnd year by year the weeks over which his scepter is extended are weeks of rare beauty and a tithe when good-will everywhere shines in men’s countenances and is the mainspring of their lives. Children see and feel this wonderful festival of love on the earth, but they cannot enter into it fully, and so those who were wiser ■ than we, in good old days fragrant in memory, christened the Christmas season, when the yule-log burns, and the holly gleams, and the world is glad, ns the special gala-tirie of Santa Claus. Believe in him ally >u can and he will give you blessings heaped up and running over to pay you for yonr faith.—Harper’s Bazar.