DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.

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.

There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.

The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever.

A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.