The Book of Christmas: Descriptive of the Customs, Ceremonies, Traditions, Superstitions, Fun, Feeling, and Festivities of the Christmas Season (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Book of Christmas: Descriptive of the Customs, Ceremonies, Traditions, Superstitions, Fun, Feeling, and Festivities of the Christmas Season

Time, abstractedly considered as what in truth it is, - a portion Of the vast ocean of eternity, a river flowing from the sea and flowing to the sea, a channel leading from deep to deep, through shores on which the races of the world are permitted to build for awhile, until the great waters shall once more cover all, and time, as time, shall be no more, must long have defied the skill of man to map out its surface, and write his memorials upon its impalpable bosom. The thousand keels that sweep over the Visible waters of the world leave on their face traces of their passage more legible and enduring than do the generations of men as they come and go on that viewless and voiceless stream. The ingenuity which has taught man to lay down the plan Of the material ocean, to assign to each spot on its uniform surface its positive whereabout and actual relation, and by a series of imaginary lines and figures to steer his way across its pathless solitudes with a knowledge as certain as that which guides him amidst the substantive and distinctive features of the solid earth, is scarcely more admir able than that which, by a similar device, has en abled him to measure out the expanse Of the silent river, to cover, as it were, its surface with a crowd of imaginary latitudes and longitudes intersecting each other at all points, and to ascertain at any moment, by observation, his relative position on the great stream of time.

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