To all of us from Mark Twain, a Following the Equator clip residing on Barbara's wonderful Twainquotes:
"The approach of Christmas brings harrassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year."
        
Merry Christmas from Carson City, where Twain first signed that name to a newspaper column, a city today being covered with a welcome blanket of snow.
Bob Stewart