The Book of Christmas

A Book of Christmas is a text-book of piety, friendship, merriment; a record of the real business of the race, which is not to make money, but to make life full and sweet and satisfying. It is a book to put into the hands of young men eager to start on the race and of young women to whom the future holds out a dazzling vision of a prosperity of pleasure and success; for it translates the word on all lips into its only comprehensible terms.

In the glow of the Christmas fire the man who has made a fortune without making friends is a tragic failure, and the woman who has won the place and power she saw shining with delusive splendor on the far horizon and missed happiness faces one of life's bitterest ironies. It is a book for those who have fallen under the delusion that action is the only form of effective expression, and that to be useful one must rush along the road with the ruthless speed of an automobile; forgetting that action is only a path to being, and that the joy of life is largely found by the way.