Excerpt from A Christmas Greeting Hate the very sound of it. It came into use when England was known as Merrie England, an appellation which seems more than singular to us who have to endure the inane dulness and melancholy stupidity of society as it exists in this present gloriously progressive motor-era. Looking round on the tired, worn, nervous, querulous faces in the crowds that fill the streets and shops at Christmas-time, - hearing the endless complaints, the new dis eases, the troubles, real and fancied, of each per son who can manage to detain a friend for five minutes' hurried and morbid conversation, reading the delectable details of suicide, murder, mania and misadventure preciously garnered up as gems of literature for the million by the halfpenny press - one may reasonably wonder. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.