[Trees-fundraising] He clock strikes twelve, to usher Christmas in,

[Malkasian Almond]

G and self-concentrated gobblers, whose
name men have generally, and, as we think, unjustly, applied to the
silly one amongst
themselves. But it is only the profusion of good things, of cakes,
puddings, spices, oranges, and fruits, from sunny Italy and Spain, from
India and from Asia, from America, North and South, and even from
distant Australia; it is not that amongst us, as long ago with the
_Franklin_ in Chaucer, that at this time-- "It snowes in our house
Of meate and drinke;" it is not that we have huge loads of beef
chines, ribs, sirloins, legs, necks, breasts, and shoulders of mutton,
fillets of veal, whole hogs, and pigs in various
stages, from the tender suckling to the stiff-jointed father of a
family, whose "back hair" makes good clothes-brushes, and whose head is
brought
in at college
feasts; it is not that the air gives up its choicest fowl, and the
waters
yield their best fish: plentiful

as these are with us, they are nothing in profusion to the kindly
greeting and good wishes that fly about in the cold weather, and that
circulate from land's

end to land's
end. The whole coast of England is surrounded by a general "shake
hands."

The coast-guard on their wintry walks do
not greet each other more surely than old friends all over England do:
one clasps another, and another a third, till from Dover to London and
so on to York, from Yarmouth on the east to Bristol on the west, from
John
O'Groat's house at the extreme north to the
Land's
End, the very toe-nail of England on the south--a kindly greeting, we
may be sure, will pass. And a cheerful thing it is, on this day of
universal equality, on this day which-- "To the cottage
and the crown, Brought tidings of salvation down," to think that we can
touch and hold each other with friendly hands all over our
land. We all of us shake hands on Christmas Day. Leigh Hunt had a quaint
fancy that he had, as it were, by lineal descent,
shaken hands with Milton. He would argue thus: he knew a man who had
shaken hands with Dr. Johnson, who had clasped the
hand of him who had shaken Dryden's right hand, who himself had thus
greeted
Andrew Marvell, who knew Master Elwood,
the Quaker friend of Milton, who knew Milton himself; and thus, though
our Sovereign has her hand kissed, not shaken, by her subjects, yet
doubtless she will clasp the hands of her children,
who, shaking those of others, will let the greeting and the good wishes
descend to the lowest on that ladd
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