Yes,
Virginia,
there is a Santa Claus.
He exists as certainly as love and
generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound
and give to your life its
highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary
would be the world if there
were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no
VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no
poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.
We should have
no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.
The eternal light with which
childhood fills the
world would be extinguished.
-Francis Pharcellus, 1897.
