Christmas Before the War—The Blacks' Changed Condition.

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE POST: While the papers are filled with the praise of the "Children's Christmas Club" and other charitable organizations, having for sole aim and object the happiness of the poor children of the District, I have looked in vain for some mention of those children of a larger growth, the "freedmen," whose fate is sad and hard to bear. Harder at this season of plenty and gladness than at any other time. Who will provide for the future of these poor creatures? Not their children, for they were never taught filial reverence and duty, and even had they a proper sense of what they owe their father and mother, few have the means to help them in this their hour of need; but the slaves, parent and child, were as children to the master, and to him they looked for home and fireside, when age, hard work and exposure had palsied their limbs and rendered them unfit for service

  The master cannot give what he does not possess. The old plantation house went with the cabin, and strangers occupy the halls that white and black, master and slave, called "home," or scorched trucks of trees and gaunt chimneys stand as sentinels over what was once the temple of hospitality.

  The master lies, perchance, on some battle-field; the mistress, widowed and homeless, can no longer minister to the wants of her colored charges. Meeting, they speak of their Christmas, past, present and future.

  How bright a picture of the past, spent in joy and gladness on the old plantation. The autumn work is finished; the husking feast is over; the corn housed; the cattle provided for beneath the shelter of the fodder-house; hogs killed; lard rendered sausage and souse made; great piles of wood stacked for general use. All this must be done, and every man woman and child must have something new for Christmas-day or there will be no luck about the house, and the mistress, her daughters and maid servants are kept busy sewing by day and knitting by night in the glow of bright open fires, the socks and stockings to be hung up for Santa Claus. No idle hands there. All must be done by Christmas—and all was done before the "feast of gladness" was ushered in by the glad shouts of the men and boys as they trooped to the great house from their "quarters" to catch "Marster" and "Mist'ess" Christmas gift, or be caught themselves, for this was the slaves' saturnalia, and their owners indulged them in unusual liberties. Breakfast and drams for men, and sugar plums for the children, and, best of all, no work until after the New Year. An over-drawn picture, do you say? Not at all. Such was the usual observance of the Christmas I spent in the time of slavery on the old plantation. What fun it was to take Aunt Chloe or Uncle Tom their Christmas breakfast and to watch them eat it. There were few plantations without its "Uncle Remus and Miss Sally's little boy," but Uncle Remus is naked, hungry and free this blessed Christmas of 1883. And Miss Sally's little boy has not the means to cloth or feed him.

  Hungry and naked, unsheltered and uncared for the present is bad enough, but the future far worse to the freedman, and gladly would he exchange the public's "sheltering arms" for the cabin and care of the master of his youth, for then he would escape that tyrant of public charity, the poor-master.

  Will not some among these philanthropists who gave millions to liberate the slaves give hundreds to afford them shelter in their old age, or is this crowning act to be left to the impoverished people of the South.

GILBERT IRELAND.

  WASHINGTON, December 21.