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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Some Christmas Stories, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Some Christmas Stories
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 6, 2015  [eBook #1467]
+[This file was first posted in June/July 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME CHRISTMAS STORIES***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1911 Chapman and Hall Christmas Stories edition,
+Volume 1, by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                       SOME SHORT CHRISTMAS STORIES
+                                    by
+                             CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                         PAGE
+A Christmas Tree                            1
+What Christmas is as we Grow Older         23
+The Poor Relation’s Story                  31
+The Child’s Story                          47
+The Schoolboy’s Story                      55
+Nobody’s Story                             69
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS TREE.
+[1850]
+
+
+I HAVE been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children
+assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree.  The tree was
+planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above
+their heads.  It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers;
+and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects.  There were
+rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real
+watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being
+wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished
+tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other
+articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at
+Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some
+fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more
+agreeable in appearance than many real men—and no wonder, for their heads
+took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles
+and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes,
+sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were
+trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and
+jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were
+guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings
+of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were teetotums, humming-tops,
+needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards,
+bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf;
+imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short,
+as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty
+child, her bosom friend, “There was everything, and more.”  This motley
+collection of odd objects, clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and
+flashing back the bright looks directed towards it from every side—some
+of the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table,
+and a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty
+mothers, aunts, and nurses—made a lively realisation of the fancies of
+childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and all the
+things that come into existence on the earth, have their wild adornments
+at that well-remembered time.
+
+Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake,
+my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to
+resist, to my own childhood.  I begin to consider, what do we all
+remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young
+Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.
+
+Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth
+by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises;
+and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top—for I observe in
+this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward towards
+the earth—I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!
+
+All toys at first, I find.  Up yonder, among the green holly and red
+berries, is the Tumbler with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn’t lie
+down, but whenever he was put upon the floor, persisted in rolling his
+fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and brought those lobster
+eyes of his to bear upon me—when I affected to laugh very much, but in my
+heart of hearts was extremely doubtful of him.  Close beside him is that
+infernal snuff-box, out of which there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in
+a black gown, with an obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide
+open, who was not to be endured on any terms, but could not be put away
+either; for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of
+Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected.  Nor is the frog with
+cobbler’s wax on his tail, far off; for there was no knowing where he
+wouldn’t jump; and when he flew over the candle, and came upon one’s hand
+with that spotted back—red on a green ground—he was horrible.  The
+cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was stood up against the
+candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the same branch, was milder, and
+was beautiful; but I can’t say as much for the larger cardboard man, who
+used to be hung against the wall and pulled by a string; there was a
+sinister expression in that nose of his; and when he got his legs round
+his neck (which he very often did), he was ghastly, and not a creature to
+be alone with.
+
+When did that dreadful Mask first look at me?  Who put it on, and why was
+I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life?  It is not a
+hideous visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll, why then were its
+stolid features so intolerable?  Surely not because it hid the wearer’s
+face.  An apron would have done as much; and though I should have
+preferred even the apron away, it would not have been absolutely
+insupportable, like the mask.  Was it the immovability of the mask?  The
+doll’s face was immovable, but I was not afraid of _her_.  Perhaps that
+fixed and set change coming over a real face, infused into my quickened
+heart some remote suggestion and dread of the universal change that is to
+come on every face, and make it still?  Nothing reconciled me to it.  No
+drummers, from whom proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a
+handle; no regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box,
+and fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs;
+no old woman, made of wires and a brown-paper composition, cutting up a
+pie for two small children; could give me a permanent comfort, for a long
+time.  Nor was it any satisfaction to be shown the Mask, and see that it
+was made of paper, or to have it locked up and be assured that no one
+wore it.  The mere recollection of that fixed face, the mere knowledge of
+its existence anywhere, was sufficient to awake me in the night all
+perspiration and horror, with, “O I know it’s coming!  O the mask!”
+
+I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers—there he is!
+was made of, then!  His hide was real to the touch, I recollect.  And the
+great black horse with the round red spots all over him—the horse that I
+could even get upon—I never wondered what had brought him to that strange
+condition, or thought that such a horse was not commonly seen at
+Newmarket.  The four horses of no colour, next to him, that went into the
+waggon of cheeses, and could be taken out and stabled under the piano,
+appear to have bits of fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for
+their manes, and to stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when
+they were brought home for a Christmas present.  They were all right,
+then; neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests,
+as appears to be the case now.  The tinkling works of the music-cart, I
+_did_ find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and I always
+thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up
+one side of a wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on the other,
+rather a weak-minded person—though good-natured; but the Jacob’s Ladder,
+next him, made of little squares of red wood, that went flapping and
+clattering over one another, each developing a different picture, and the
+whole enlivened by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
+
+Ah!  The Doll’s house!—of which I was not proprietor, but where I
+visited.  I don’t admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as that
+stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps, and a real
+balcony—greener than I ever see now, except at watering places; and even
+they afford but a poor imitation.  And though it _did_ open all at once,
+the entire house-front (which was a blow, I admit, as cancelling the
+fiction of a staircase), it was but to shut it up again, and I could
+believe.  Even open, there were three distinct rooms in it: a
+sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly furnished, and best of all, a
+kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plentiful assortment of
+diminutive utensils—oh, the warming-pan!—and a tin man-cook in profile,
+who was always going to fry two fish.  What Barmecide justice have I done
+to the noble feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured, each with
+its own peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and
+garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss!  Could all the
+Temperance Societies of these later days, united, give me such a
+tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little set of blue
+crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran out of the small wooden
+cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and which made tea, nectar.
+And if the two legs of the ineffectual little sugar-tongs did tumble over
+one another, and want purpose, like Punch’s hands, what does it matter?
+And if I did once shriek out, as a poisoned child, and strike the
+fashionable company with consternation, by reason of having drunk a
+little teaspoon, inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the
+worse for it, except by a powder!
+
+Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green roller
+and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to hang.  Thin
+books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and with deliciously
+smooth covers of bright red or green.  What fat black letters to begin
+with!  “A was an archer, and shot at a frog.”  Of course he was.  He was
+an apple-pie also, and there he is!  He was a good many things in his
+time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X, who had so little
+versatility, that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe—like
+Y, who was always confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for
+ever to be a Zebra or a Zany.  But, now, the very tree itself changes,
+and becomes a bean-stalk—the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack climbed
+to the Giant’s house!  And now, those dreadfully interesting,
+double-headed giants, with their clubs over their shoulders, begin to
+stride along the boughs in a perfect throng, dragging knights and ladies
+home for dinner by the hair of their heads.  And Jack—how noble, with his
+sword of sharpness, and his shoes of swiftness!  Again those old
+meditations come upon me as I gaze up at him; and I debate within myself
+whether there was more than one Jack (which I am loth to believe
+possible), or only one genuine original admirable Jack, who achieved all
+the recorded exploits.
+
+Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak, in which—the
+tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her
+basket—Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me
+information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate
+her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then
+ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth.  She was my
+first love.  I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood,
+I should have known perfect bliss.  But, it was not to be; and there was
+nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah’s Ark there, and put
+him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be
+degraded.  O the wonderful Noah’s Ark!  It was not found seaworthy when
+put in a washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and
+needed to have their legs well shaken down before they could be got in,
+even there—and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door,
+which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch—but what was _that_
+against it!  Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the
+elephant: the lady-bird, the butterfly—all triumphs of art!  Consider the
+goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent,
+that he usually tumbled forward, and knocked down all the animal
+creation.  Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers;
+and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of
+the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits
+of string!
+
+Hush!  Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree—not Robin Hood, not
+Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him and all Mother Bunch’s
+wonders, without mention), but an Eastern King with a glittering scimitar
+and turban.  By Allah! two Eastern Kings, for I see another, looking over
+his shoulder!  Down upon the grass, at the tree’s foot, lies the full
+length of a coal-black Giant, stretched asleep, with his head in a lady’s
+lap; and near them is a glass box, fastened with four locks of shining
+steel, in which he keeps the lady prisoner when he is awake.  I see the
+four keys at his girdle now.  The lady makes signs to the two kings in
+the tree, who softly descend.  It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian
+Nights.
+
+Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me.  All lamps
+are wonderful; all rings are talismans.  Common flower-pots are full of
+treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali
+Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw down into the Valley of
+Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by
+the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will
+scare them.  Tarts are made, according to the recipe of the Vizier’s son
+of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers
+at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of
+sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blind-fold.
+
+Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits
+for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will make
+the earth shake.  All the dates imported come from the same tree as that
+unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the
+genie’s invisible son.  All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit,
+concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct
+the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are
+akin to the apple purchased (with two others) from the Sultan’s gardener
+for three sequins, and which the tall black slave stole from the child.
+All dogs are associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who
+jumped upon the baker’s counter, and put his paw on the piece of bad
+money.  All rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who was a ghoule,
+could only peck by grains, because of her nightly feasts in the
+burial-place.  My very rocking-horse,—there he is, with his nostrils
+turned completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!—should have a peg in
+his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden horse did
+with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all his father’s Court.
+
+Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper branches of my
+Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light!  When I wake in bed, at daybreak,
+on the cold, dark, winter mornings, the white snow dimly beheld, outside,
+through the frost on the window-pane, I hear Dinarzade.  “Sister, sister,
+if you are yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the Young King of
+the Black Islands.”  Scheherazade replies, “If my lord the Sultan will
+suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but
+tell you a more wonderful story yet.”  Then, the gracious Sultan goes
+out, giving no orders for the execution, and we all three breathe again.
+
+At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the leaves—it
+may be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie, or of these many
+fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, Philip Quarll
+among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton with Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and
+the Mask—or it may be the result of indigestion, assisted by imagination
+and over-doctoring—a prodigious nightmare.  It is so exceedingly
+indistinct, that I don’t know why it’s frightful—but I know it is.  I can
+only make out that it is an immense array of shapeless things, which
+appear to be planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used
+to bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes, and
+receding to an immeasurable distance.  When it comes closest, it is
+worse.  In connection with it I descry remembrances of winter nights
+incredibly long; of being sent early to bed, as a punishment for some
+small offence, and waking in two hours, with a sensation of having been
+asleep two nights; of the laden hopelessness of morning ever dawning; and
+the oppression of a weight of remorse.
+
+And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of the
+ground, before a vast green curtain.  Now, a bell rings—a magic bell,
+which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells—and music plays,
+amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil.
+Anon, the magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green
+curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins!  The devoted
+dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in the
+Forest of Bondy; and a humorous Peasant with a red nose and a very little
+hat, whom I take from this hour forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he
+was a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed
+since he and I have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is
+indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my
+remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto the
+end of time.  Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane Shore,
+dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down, went starving
+through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle
+that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to
+have been let off.  Comes swift to comfort me, the Pantomime—stupendous
+Phenomenon!—when clowns are shot from loaded mortars into the great
+chandelier, bright constellation that it is; when Harlequins, covered all
+over with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when
+Pantaloon (whom I deem it no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my
+grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries “Here’s
+somebody coming!” or taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, “Now,
+I sawed you do it!” when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease,
+of being changed into Anything; and “Nothing is, but thinking makes it
+so.”  Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary
+sensation—often to return in after-life—of being unable, next day, to get
+back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the
+bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with the
+wand like a celestial Barber’s Pole, and pining for a Fairy immortality
+along with her.  Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as my eye wanders
+down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has never
+yet stayed by me!
+
+Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,—there it is, with its
+familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!—and all its
+attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water colours, in
+the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth, or the Exile of
+Siberia.  In spite of a few besetting accidents and failures
+(particularly an unreasonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, and
+some others, to become faint in the legs, and double up, at exciting
+points of the drama), a teeming world of fancies so suggestive and
+all-embracing, that, far below it on my Christmas Tree, I see dark,
+dirty, real Theatres in the day-time, adorned with these associations as
+with the freshest garlands of the rarest flowers, and charming me yet.
+
+But hark!  The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep!  What
+images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on
+the Christmas Tree?  Known before all the others, keeping far apart from
+all the others, they gather round my little bed.  An angel, speaking to a
+group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted,
+following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple,
+talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face,
+raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back
+the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking
+through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a
+sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the
+water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude;
+again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again,
+restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf,
+health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant;
+again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness
+coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard,
+“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
+
+Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas
+associations cluster thick.  School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil
+silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool impertinent inquiries, long
+disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of huddled
+desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats,
+stumps, and balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and
+the softened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh,
+still gay.  If I no more come home at Christmas-time, there will be boys
+and girls (thank Heaven!) while the World lasts; and they do!  Yonder
+they dance and play upon the branches of my Tree, God bless them,
+merrily, and my heart dances and plays too!
+
+And I do come home at Christmas.  We all do, or we all should.  We all
+come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday—the longer, the
+better—from the great boarding-school, where we are for ever working at
+our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.  As to going a
+visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when
+we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree!
+
+Away into the winter prospect.  There are many such upon the tree!  On,
+by low-lying, misty grounds, through fens and fogs, up long hills,
+winding dark as caverns between thick plantations, almost shutting out
+the sparkling stars; so, out on broad heights, until we stop at last,
+with sudden silence, at an avenue.  The gate-bell has a deep, half-awful
+sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on its hinges; and, as we
+drive up to a great house, the glancing lights grow larger in the
+windows, and the opposing rows of trees seem to fall solemnly back on
+either side, to give us place.  At intervals, all day, a frightened hare
+has shot across this whitened turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of
+deer trampling the hard frost, has, for the minute, crushed the silence
+too.  Their watchful eyes beneath the fern may be shining now, if we
+could see them, like the icy dewdrops on the leaves; but they are still,
+and all is still.  And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees
+falling back before us, and closing up again behind us, as if to forbid
+retreat, we come to the house.
+
+There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable
+things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories—Ghost Stories, or
+more shame for us—round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred,
+except to draw a little nearer to it.  But, no matter for that.  We came
+to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood
+is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of
+them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of
+the walls.  We are a middle-aged nobleman, and we make a generous supper
+with our host and hostess and their guests—it being Christmas-time, and
+the old house full of company—and then we go to bed.  Our room is a very
+old room.  It is hung with tapestry.  We don’t like the portrait of a
+cavalier in green, over the fireplace.  There are great black beams in
+the ceiling, and there is a great black bedstead, supported at the foot
+by two great black figures, who seem to have come off a couple of tombs
+in the old baronial church in the park, for our particular accommodation.
+But, we are not a superstitious nobleman, and we don’t mind.  Well! we
+dismiss our servant, lock the door, and sit before the fire in our
+dressing-gown, musing about a great many things.  At length we go to bed.
+Well! we can’t sleep.  We toss and tumble, and can’t sleep.  The embers
+on the hearth burn fitfully and make the room look ghostly.  We can’t
+help peeping out over the counterpane, at the two black figures and the
+cavalier—that wicked-looking cavalier—in green.  In the flickering light
+they seem to advance and retire: which, though we are not by any means a
+superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable.  Well! we get nervous—more and
+more nervous.  We say “This is very foolish, but we can’t stand this;
+we’ll pretend to be ill, and knock up somebody.”  Well! we are just going
+to do it, when the locked door opens, and there comes in a young woman,
+deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to the fire, and sits
+down in the chair we have left there, wringing her hands.  Then, we
+notice that her clothes are wet.  Our tongue cleaves to the roof of our
+mouth, and we can’t speak; but, we observe her accurately.  Her clothes
+are wet; her long hair is dabbled with moist mud; she is dressed in the
+fashion of two hundred years ago; and she has at her girdle a bunch of
+rusty keys.  Well! there she sits, and we can’t even faint, we are in
+such a state about it.  Presently she gets up, and tries all the locks in
+the room with the rusty keys, which won’t fit one of them; then, she
+fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in green, and says, in a
+low, terrible voice, “The stags know it!”  After that, she wrings her
+hands again, passes the bedside, and goes out at the door.  We hurry on
+our dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always travel with pistols), and
+are following, when we find the door locked.  We turn the key, look out
+into the dark gallery; no one there.  We wander away, and try to find our
+servant.  Can’t be done.  We pace the gallery till daybreak; then return
+to our deserted room, fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant
+(nothing ever haunts him) and the shining sun.  Well! we make a wretched
+breakfast, and all the company say we look queer.  After breakfast, we go
+over the house with our host, and then we take him to the portrait of the
+cavalier in green, and then it all comes out.  He was false to a young
+housekeeper once attached to that family, and famous for her beauty, who
+drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was discovered, after a long
+time, because the stags refused to drink of the water.  Since which, it
+has been whispered that she traverses the house at midnight (but goes
+especially to that room where the cavalier in green was wont to sleep),
+trying the old locks with the rusty keys.  Well! we tell our host of what
+we have seen, and a shade comes over his features, and he begs it may be
+hushed up; and so it is.  But, it’s all true; and we said so, before we
+died (we are dead now) to many responsible people.
+
+There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries, and dismal
+state-bedchambers, and haunted wings shut up for many years, through
+which we may ramble, with an agreeable creeping up our back, and
+encounter any number of ghosts, but (it is worthy of remark perhaps)
+reducible to a very few general types and classes; for, ghosts have
+little originality, and “walk” in a beaten track.  Thus, it comes to
+pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a certain bad
+lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has certain planks in
+the floor from which the blood _will not_ be taken out.  You may scrape
+and scrape, as the present owner has done, or plane and plane, as his
+father did, or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn
+with strong acids, as his great-grandfather did, but, there the blood
+will still be—no redder and no paler—no more and no less—always just the
+same.  Thus, in such another house there is a haunted door, that never
+will keep open; or another door that never will keep shut, or a haunted
+sound of a spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a
+sigh, or a horse’s tramp, or the rattling of a chain.  Or else, there is
+a turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour, strikes thirteen when the
+head of the family is going to die; or a shadowy, immovable black
+carriage which at such a time is always seen by somebody, waiting near
+the great gates in the stable-yard.  Or thus, it came to pass how Lady
+Mary went to pay a visit at a large wild house in the Scottish Highlands,
+and, being fatigued with her long journey, retired to bed early, and
+innocently said, next morning, at the breakfast-table, “How odd, to have
+so late a party last night, in this remote place, and not to tell me of
+it, before I went to bed!”  Then, every one asked Lady Mary what she
+meant?  Then, Lady Mary replied, “Why, all night long, the carriages were
+driving round and round the terrace, underneath my window!”  Then, the
+owner of the house turned pale, and so did his Lady, and Charles
+Macdoodle of Macdoodle signed to Lady Mary to say no more, and every one
+was silent.  After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it
+was a tradition in the family that those rumbling carriages on the
+terrace betokened death.  And so it proved, for, two months afterwards,
+the Lady of the mansion died.  And Lady Mary, who was a Maid of Honour at
+Court, often told this story to the old Queen Charlotte; by this token
+that the old King always said, “Eh, eh?  What, what?  Ghosts, ghosts?  No
+such thing, no such thing!”  And never left off saying so, until he went
+to bed.
+
+Or, a friend of somebody’s whom most of us know, when he was a young man
+at college, had a particular friend, with whom he made the compact that,
+if it were possible for the Spirit to return to this earth after its
+separation from the body, he of the twain who first died, should reappear
+to the other.  In course of time, this compact was forgotten by our
+friend; the two young men having progressed in life, and taken diverging
+paths that were wide asunder.  But, one night, many years afterwards, our
+friend being in the North of England, and staying for the night in an
+inn, on the Yorkshire Moors, happened to look out of bed; and there, in
+the moonlight, leaning on a bureau near the window, steadfastly regarding
+him, saw his old college friend!  The appearance being solemnly
+addressed, replied, in a kind of whisper, but very audibly, “Do not come
+near me.  I am dead.  I am here to redeem my promise.  I come from
+another world, but may not disclose its secrets!”  Then, the whole form
+becoming paler, melted, as it were, into the moonlight, and faded away.
+
+Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of the picturesque
+Elizabethan house, so famous in our neighbourhood.  You have heard about
+her?  No!  Why, _She_ went out one summer evening at twilight, when she
+was a beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age, to gather flowers in
+the garden; and presently came running, terrified, into the hall to her
+father, saying, “Oh, dear father, I have met myself!”  He took her in his
+arms, and told her it was fancy, but she said, “Oh no!  I met myself in
+the broad walk, and I was pale and gathering withered flowers, and I
+turned my head, and held them up!”  And, that night, she died; and a
+picture of her story was begun, though never finished, and they say it is
+somewhere in the house to this day, with its face to the wall.
+
+Or, the uncle of my brother’s wife was riding home on horseback, one
+mellow evening at sunset, when, in a green lane close to his own house,
+he saw a man standing before him, in the very centre of a narrow way.
+“Why does that man in the cloak stand there!” he thought.  “Does he want
+me to ride over him?”  But the figure never moved.  He felt a strange
+sensation at seeing it so still, but slackened his trot and rode forward.
+When he was so close to it, as almost to touch it with his stirrup, his
+horse shied, and the figure glided up the bank, in a curious, unearthly
+manner—backward, and without seeming to use its feet—and was gone.  The
+uncle of my brother’s wife, exclaiming, “Good Heaven!  It’s my cousin
+Harry, from Bombay!” put spurs to his horse, which was suddenly in a
+profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange behaviour, dashed round to
+the front of his house.  There, he saw the same figure, just passing in
+at the long French window of the drawing-room, opening on the ground.  He
+threw his bridle to a servant, and hastened in after it.  His sister was
+sitting there, alone.  “Alice, where’s my cousin Harry?”  “Your cousin
+Harry, John?”  “Yes.  From Bombay.  I met him in the lane just now, and
+saw him enter here, this instant.”  Not a creature had been seen by any
+one; and in that hour and minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin
+died in India.
+
+Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who died at ninety-nine,
+and retained her faculties to the last, who really did see the Orphan
+Boy; a story which has often been incorrectly told, but, of which the
+real truth is this—because it is, in fact, a story belonging to our
+family—and she was a connexion of our family.  When she was about forty
+years of age, and still an uncommonly fine woman (her lover died young,
+which was the reason why she never married, though she had many offers),
+she went to stay at a place in Kent, which her brother, an
+Indian-Merchant, had newly bought.  There was a story that this place had
+once been held in trust by the guardian of a young boy; who was himself
+the next heir, and who killed the young boy by harsh and cruel treatment.
+She knew nothing of that.  It has been said that there was a Cage in her
+bedroom in which the guardian used to put the boy.  There was no such
+thing.  There was only a closet.  She went to bed, made no alarm whatever
+in the night, and in the morning said composedly to her maid when she
+came in, “Who is the pretty forlorn-looking child who has been peeping
+out of that closet all night?”  The maid replied by giving a loud scream,
+and instantly decamping.  She was surprised; but she was a woman of
+remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed herself and went downstairs,
+and closeted herself with her brother.  “Now, Walter,” she said, “I have
+been disturbed all night by a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been
+constantly peeping out of that closet in my room, which I can’t open.
+This is some trick.”  “I am afraid not, Charlotte,” said he, “for it is
+the legend of the house.  It is the Orphan Boy.  What did he do?”  “He
+opened the door softly,” said she, “and peeped out.  Sometimes, he came a
+step or two into the room.  Then, I called to him, to encourage him, and
+he shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the door.”  “The
+closet has no communication, Charlotte,” said her brother, “with any
+other part of the house, and it’s nailed up.”  This was undeniably true,
+and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to get it open, for
+examination.  Then, she was satisfied that she had seen the Orphan Boy.
+But, the wild and terrible part of the story is, that he was also seen by
+three of her brother’s sons, in succession, who all died young.  On the
+occasion of each child being taken ill, he came home in a heat, twelve
+hours before, and said, Oh, Mamma, he had been playing under a particular
+oak-tree, in a certain meadow, with a strange boy—a pretty,
+forlorn-looking boy, who was very timid, and made signs!  From fatal
+experience, the parents came to know that this was the Orphan Boy, and
+that the course of that child whom he chose for his little playmate was
+surely run.
+
+Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit up alone to wait
+for the Spectre—where we are shown into a room, made comparatively
+cheerful for our reception—where we glance round at the shadows, thrown
+on the blank walls by the crackling fire—where we feel very lonely when
+the village innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired, after laying
+down a fresh store of wood upon the hearth, and setting forth on the
+small table such supper-cheer as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes, and a
+flask of old Rhine wine—where the reverberating doors close on their
+retreat, one after another, like so many peals of sullen thunder—and
+where, about the small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of
+divers supernatural mysteries.  Legion is the name of the haunted German
+students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the
+schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off the
+footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally blows
+open.  Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our Christmas Tree; in
+blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all down the boughs!
+
+Among the later toys and fancies hanging there—as idle often and less
+pure—be the images once associated with the sweet old Waits, the softened
+music in the night, ever unalterable!  Encircled by the social thoughts
+of Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood stand
+unchanged!  In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season
+brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof, be the star
+of all the Christian World!  A moment’s pause, O vanishing tree, of which
+the lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look once more!  I
+know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved
+have shone and smiled; from which they are departed.  But, far above, I
+see the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow’s Son; and God is good!
+If Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O
+may I, with a grey head, turn a child’s heart to that figure yet, and a
+child’s trustfulness and confidence!
+
+Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance,
+and cheerfulness.  And they are welcome.  Innocent and welcome be they
+ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no
+gloomy shadow!  But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going
+through the leaves.  “This, in commemoration of the law of love and
+kindness, mercy and compassion.  This, in remembrance of Me!”
+
+
+
+
+WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AS WE GROW OLDER.
+[1851]
+
+
+TIME was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our limited
+world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound
+together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped
+everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little
+picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.
+
+Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts over-leaped that
+narrow boundary; when there was some one (very dear, we thought then,
+very beautiful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to the fulness of our
+happiness; when we were wanting too (or we thought so, which did just as
+well) at the Christmas hearth by which that some one sat; and when we
+intertwined with every wreath and garland of our life that some one’s
+name.
+
+That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have long
+arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in the palest edges of
+the rainbow!  That was the time for the beatified enjoyment of the things
+that were to be, and never were, and yet the things that were so real in
+our resolute hope that it would be hard to say, now, what realities
+achieved since, have been stronger!
+
+What!  Did that Christmas never really come when we and the priceless
+pearl who was our young choice were received, after the happiest of
+totally impossible marriages, by the two united families previously at
+daggers—drawn on our account?  When brothers and sisters-in-law who had
+always been rather cool to us before our relationship was effected,
+perfectly doted on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us with
+unlimited incomes?  Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten, after
+which we arose, and generously and eloquently rendered honour to our late
+rival, present in the company, then and there exchanging friendship and
+forgiveness, and founding an attachment, not to be surpassed in Greek or
+Roman story, which subsisted until death?  Has that same rival long
+ceased to care for that same priceless pearl, and married for money, and
+become usurious?  Above all, do we really know, now, that we should
+probably have been miserable if we had won and worn the pearl, and that
+we are better without her?
+
+That Christmas when we had recently achieved so much fame; when we had
+been carried in triumph somewhere, for doing something great and good;
+when we had won an honoured and ennobled name, and arrived and were
+received at home in a shower of tears of joy; is it possible that _that_
+Christmas has not come yet?
+
+And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as we
+advance at such a noticeable mile-stone in the track as this great
+birthday, we look back on the things that never were, as naturally and
+full as gravely as on the things that have been and are gone, or have
+been and still are?  If it be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to
+the conclusion that life is little better than a dream, and little worth
+the loves and strivings that we crowd into it?
+
+No!  Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear Reader, on Christmas
+Day!  Nearer and closer to our hearts be the Christmas spirit, which is
+the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of
+duty, kindness and forbearance!  It is in the last virtues especially,
+that we are, or should be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions of
+our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our teachers to deal
+gently even with the impalpable nothings of the earth!
+
+Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of
+our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands!
+Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take their places by
+the Christmas hearth.
+
+Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to
+your shelter underneath the holly!  We know you, and have not outlived
+you yet.  Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your
+nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us.  Welcome, all that
+was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real,
+thanks to Heaven!  Do we build no Christmas castles in the clouds now?
+Let our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among these flowers of
+children, bear witness!  Before this boy, there stretches out a Future,
+brighter than we ever looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with
+honour and with truth.  Around this little head on which the sunny curls
+lie heaped, the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there was
+no scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of our
+first-love.  Upon another girl’s face near it—placider but smiling
+bright—a quiet and contented little face, we see Home fairly written.
+Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see how, when our
+graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other hearts than ours
+are moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other happiness blooms,
+ripens, and decays—no, not decays, for other homes and other bands of
+children, not yet in being nor for ages yet to be, arise, and bloom and
+ripen to the end of all!
+
+Welcome, everything!  Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was,
+and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your
+places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-hearted!  In
+yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the blaze, an enemy’s
+face?  By Christmas Day we do forgive him!  If the injury he has done us
+may admit of such companionship, let him come here and take his place.
+If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence, assured that we will never
+injure nor accuse him.
+
+On this day we shut out Nothing!
+
+“Pause,” says a low voice.  “Nothing?  Think!”
+
+“On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing.”
+
+“Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying deep?”
+the voice replies.  “Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe?  Not
+the shadow of the City of the Dead?”
+
+Not even that.  Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces towards
+that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we
+loved, among us.  City of the Dead, in the blessed name wherein we are
+gathered together at this time, and in the Presence that is here among us
+according to the promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people
+who are dear to us!
+
+Yes.  We can look upon these children angels that alight, so solemnly, so
+beautifully among the living children by the fire, and can bear to think
+how they departed from us.  Entertaining angels unawares, as the
+Patriarchs did, the playful children are unconscious of their guests; but
+we can see them—can see a radiant arm around one favourite neck, as if
+there were a tempting of that child away.  Among the celestial figures
+there is one, a poor misshapen boy on earth, of a glorious beauty now, of
+whom his dying mother said it grieved her much to leave him here, alone,
+for so many years as it was likely would elapse before he came to
+her—being such a little child.  But he went quickly, and was laid upon
+her breast, and in her hand she leads him.
+
+There was a gallant boy, who fell, far away, upon a burning sand beneath
+a burning sun, and said, “Tell them at home, with my last love, how much
+I could have wished to kiss them once, but that I died contented and had
+done my duty!”  Or there was another, over whom they read the words,
+“Therefore we commit his body to the deep,” and so consigned him to the
+lonely ocean and sailed on.  Or there was another, who lay down to his
+rest in the dark shadow of great forests, and, on earth, awoke no more.
+O shall they not, from sand and sea and forest, be brought home at such a
+time!
+
+There was a dear girl—almost a woman—never to be one—who made a mourning
+Christmas in a house of joy, and went her trackless way to the silent
+City.  Do we recollect her, worn out, faintly whispering what could not
+be heard, and falling into that last sleep for weariness?  O look upon
+her now!  O look upon her beauty, her serenity, her changeless youth, her
+happiness!  The daughter of Jairus was recalled to life, to die; but she,
+more blest, has heard the same voice, saying unto her, “Arise for ever!”
+
+We had a friend who was our friend from early days, with whom we often
+pictured the changes that were to come upon our lives, and merrily
+imagined how we would speak, and walk, and think, and talk, when we came
+to be old.  His destined habitation in the City of the Dead received him
+in his prime.  Shall he be shut out from our Christmas remembrance?
+Would his love have so excluded us?  Lost friend, lost child, lost
+parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you!  You
+shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our
+Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday
+of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!
+
+The winter sun goes down over town and village; on the sea it makes a
+rosy path, as if the Sacred tread were fresh upon the water.  A few more
+moments, and it sinks, and night comes on, and lights begin to sparkle in
+the prospect.  On the hill-side beyond the shapelessly-diffused town, and
+in the quiet keeping of the trees that gird the village-steeple,
+remembrances are cut in stone, planted in common flowers, growing in
+grass, entwined with lowly brambles around many a mound of earth.  In
+town and village, there are doors and windows closed against the weather,
+there are flaming logs heaped high, there are joyful faces, there is
+healthy music of voices.  Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the
+temples of the Household Gods, but be those remembrances admitted with
+tender encouragement!  They are of the time and all its comforting and
+peaceful reassurances; and of the history that re-united even upon earth
+the living and the dead; and of the broad beneficence and goodness that
+too many men have tried to tear to narrow shreds.
+
+
+
+
+THE POOR RELATION’S STORY.
+[1852]
+
+
+HE was very reluctant to take precedence of so many respected members of
+the family, by beginning the round of stories they were to relate as they
+sat in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire; and he modestly suggested
+that it would be more correct if “John our esteemed host” (whose health
+he begged to drink) would have the kindness to begin.  For as to himself,
+he said, he was so little used to lead the way that really—  But as they
+all cried out here, that he must begin, and agreed with one voice that he
+might, could, would, and should begin, he left off rubbing his hands, and
+took his legs out from under his armchair, and did begin.
+
+I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise the
+assembled members of our family, and particularly John our esteemed host
+to whom we are so much indebted for the great hospitality with which he
+has this day entertained us, by the confession I am going to make.  But,
+if you do me the honour to be surprised at anything that falls from a
+person so unimportant in the family as I am, I can only say that I shall
+be scrupulously accurate in all I relate.
+
+I am not what I am supposed to be.  I am quite another thing.  Perhaps
+before I go further, I had better glance at what I _am_ supposed to be.
+
+It is supposed, unless I mistake—the assembled members of our family will
+correct me if I do, which is very likely (here the poor relation looked
+mildly about him for contradiction); that I am nobody’s enemy but my own.
+That I never met with any particular success in anything.  That I failed
+in business because I was unbusiness-like and credulous—in not being
+prepared for the interested designs of my partner.  That I failed in
+love, because I was ridiculously trustful—in thinking it impossible that
+Christiana could deceive me.  That I failed in my expectations from my
+uncle Chill, on account of not being as sharp as he could have wished in
+worldly matters.  That, through life, I have been rather put upon and
+disappointed in a general way.  That I am at present a bachelor of
+between fifty-nine and sixty years of age, living on a limited income in
+the form of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that John our esteemed
+host wishes me to make no further allusion.
+
+The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to the following
+effect.
+
+I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road—a very clean back room, in a very
+respectable house—where I am expected not to be at home in the day-time,
+unless poorly; and which I usually leave in the morning at nine o’clock,
+on pretence of going to business.  I take my breakfast—my roll and
+butter, and my half-pint of coffee—at the old-established coffee-shop
+near Westminster Bridge; and then I go into the City—I don’t know why—and
+sit in Garraway’s Coffee House, and on ’Change, and walk about, and look
+into a few offices and counting-houses where some of my relations or
+acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire
+if the weather happens to be cold.  I get through the day in this way
+until five o’clock, and then I dine: at a cost, on the average, of one
+and threepence.  Having still a little money to spend on my evening’s
+entertainment, I look into the old-established coffee-shop as I go home,
+and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of toast.  So, as the large
+hand of the clock makes its way round to the morning hour again, I make
+my way round to the Clapham Road again, and go to bed when I get to my
+lodging—fire being expensive, and being objected to by the family on
+account of its giving trouble and making a dirt.
+
+Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so obliging as to ask
+me to dinner.  Those are holiday occasions, and then I generally walk in
+the Park.  I am a solitary man, and seldom walk with anybody.  Not that I
+am avoided because I am shabby; for I am not at all shabby, having always
+a very good suit of black on (or rather Oxford mixture, which has the
+appearance of black and wears much better); but I have got into a habit
+of speaking low, and being rather silent, and my spirits are not high,
+and I am sensible that I am not an attractive companion.
+
+The only exception to this general rule is the child of my first cousin,
+Little Frank.  I have a particular affection for that child, and he takes
+very kindly to me.  He is a diffident boy by nature; and in a crowd he is
+soon run over, as I may say, and forgotten.  He and I, however, get on
+exceedingly well.  I have a fancy that the poor child will in time
+succeed to my peculiar position in the family.  We talk but little;
+still, we understand each other.  We walk about, hand in hand; and
+without much speaking he knows what I mean, and I know what he means.
+When he was very little indeed, I used to take him to the windows of the
+toy-shops, and show him the toys inside.  It is surprising how soon he
+found out that I would have made him a great many presents if I had been
+in circumstances to do it.
+
+Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the Monument—he is very
+fond of the Monument—and at the Bridges, and at all the sights that are
+free.  On two of my birthdays, we have dined on à-la-mode beef, and gone
+at half-price to the play, and been deeply interested.  I was once
+walking with him in Lombard Street, which we often visit on account of my
+having mentioned to him that there are great riches there—he is very fond
+of Lombard Street—when a gentleman said to me as he passed by, “Sir, your
+little son has dropped his glove.”  I assure you, if you will excuse my
+remarking on so trivial a circumstance, this accidental mention of the
+child as mine, quite touched my heart and brought the foolish tears into
+my eyes.
+
+When Little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be very much
+at a loss what to do with myself, but I have the intention of walking
+down there once a month and seeing him on a half holiday.  I am told he
+will then be at play upon the Heath; and if my visits should be objected
+to, as unsettling the child, I can see him from a distance without his
+seeing me, and walk back again.  His mother comes of a highly genteel
+family, and rather disapproves, I am aware, of our being too much
+together.  I know that I am not calculated to improve his retiring
+disposition; but I think he would miss me beyond the feeling of the
+moment if we were wholly separated.
+
+When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave much more in this world
+than I shall take out of it; but, I happen to have a miniature of a
+bright-faced boy, with a curling head, and an open shirt-frill waving
+down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me, but I can’t believe that
+it was ever like), which will be worth nothing to sell, and which I shall
+beg may he given to Frank.  I have written my dear boy a little letter
+with it, in which I have told him that I felt very sorry to part from
+him, though bound to confess that I knew no reason why I should remain
+here.  I have given him some short advice, the best in my power, to take
+warning of the consequences of being nobody’s enemy but his own; and I
+have endeavoured to comfort him for what I fear he will consider a
+bereavement, by pointing out to him, that I was only a superfluous
+something to every one but him; and that having by some means failed to
+find a place in this great assembly, I am better out of it.
+
+Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning to speak
+a little louder) is the general impression about me.  Now, it is a
+remarkable circumstance which forms the aim and purpose of my story, that
+this is all wrong.  This is not my life, and these are not my habits.  I
+do not even live in the Clapham Road.  Comparatively speaking, I am very
+seldom there.  I reside, mostly, in a—I am almost ashamed to say the
+word, it sounds so full of pretension—in a Castle.  I do not mean that it
+is an old baronial habitation, but still it is a building always known to
+every one by the name of a Castle.  In it, I preserve the particulars of
+my history; they run thus:
+
+It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk) into
+partnership, and when I was still a young man of not more than
+five-and-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle Chill, from whom I had
+considerable expectations, that I ventured to propose to Christiana.  I
+had loved Christiana a long time.  She was very beautiful, and very
+winning in all respects.  I rather mistrusted her widowed mother, who I
+feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind; but, I thought as
+well of her as I could, for Christiana’s sake.  I never had loved any one
+but Christiana, and she had been all the world, and O far more than all
+the world, to me, from our childhood!
+
+Christiana accepted me with her mother’s consent, and I was rendered very
+happy indeed.  My life at my uncle Chill’s was of a spare dull kind, and
+my garret chamber was as dull, and bare, and cold, as an upper prison
+room in some stern northern fortress.  But, having Christiana’s love, I
+wanted nothing upon earth.  I would not have changed my lot with any
+human being.
+
+Avarice was, unhappily, my uncle Chill’s master-vice.  Though he was
+rich, he pinched, and scraped, and clutched, and lived miserably.  As
+Christiana had no fortune, I was for some time a little fearful of
+confessing our engagement to him; but, at length I wrote him a letter,
+saying how it all truly was.  I put it into his hand one night, on going
+to bed.
+
+As I came down-stairs next morning, shivering in the cold December air;
+colder in my uncle’s unwarmed house than in the street, where the winter
+sun did sometimes shine, and which was at all events enlivened by
+cheerful faces and voices passing along; I carried a heavy heart towards
+the long, low breakfast-room in which my uncle sat.  It was a large room
+with a small fire, and there was a great bay window in it which the rain
+had marked in the night as if with the tears of houseless people.  It
+stared upon a raw yard, with a cracked stone pavement, and some rusted
+iron railings half uprooted, whence an ugly out-building that had once
+been a dissecting-room (in the time of the great surgeon who had
+mortgaged the house to my uncle), stared at it.
+
+We rose so early always, that at that time of the year we breakfasted by
+candle-light.  When I went into the room, my uncle was so contracted by
+the cold, and so huddled together in his chair behind the one dim candle,
+that I did not see him until I was close to the table.
+
+As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being infirm, he
+always walked about the house with a stick), and made a blow at me, and
+said, “You fool!”
+
+“Uncle,” I returned, “I didn’t expect you to be so angry as this.”  Nor
+had I expected it, though he was a hard and angry old man.
+
+“You didn’t expect!” said he; “when did you ever expect?  When did you
+ever calculate, or look forward, you contemptible dog?”
+
+“These are hard words, uncle!”
+
+“Hard words?  Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as you with,” said he.
+“Here!  Betsy Snap!  Look at him!”
+
+Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old woman—our only
+domestic—always employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing my
+uncle’s legs.  As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his lean
+grip on the crown of her head, she kneeling beside him, and turned her
+face towards me.  An involuntary thought connecting them both with the
+Dissecting Room, as it must often have been in the surgeon’s time, passed
+across my mind in the midst of my anxiety.
+
+“Look at the snivelling milksop!” said my uncle.  “Look at the baby!
+This is the gentleman who, people say, is nobody’s enemy but his own.
+This is the gentleman who can’t say no.  This is the gentleman who was
+making such large profits in his business that he must needs take a
+partner, t’other day.  This is the gentleman who is going to marry a wife
+without a penny, and who falls into the hands of Jezabels who are
+speculating on my death!”
+
+I knew, now, how great my uncle’s rage was; for nothing short of his
+being almost beside himself would have induced him to utter that
+concluding word, which he held in such repugnance that it was never
+spoken or hinted at before him on any account.
+
+“On my death,” he repeated, as if he were defying me by defying his own
+abhorrence of the word.  “On my death—death—Death!  But I’ll spoil the
+speculation.  Eat your last under this roof, you feeble wretch, and may
+it choke you!”
+
+You may suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast to which I
+was bidden in these terms; but, I took my accustomed seat.  I saw that I
+was repudiated henceforth by my uncle; still I could bear that very well,
+possessing Christiana’s heart.
+
+He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he took it on
+his knees with his chair turned away from the table where I sat.  When he
+had done, he carefully snuffed out the candle; and the cold,
+slate-coloured, miserable day looked in upon us.
+
+“Now, Mr. Michael,” said he, “before we part, I should like to have a
+word with these ladies in your presence.”
+
+“As you will, sir,” I returned; “but you deceive yourself, and wrong us,
+cruelly, if you suppose that there is any feeling at stake in this
+contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love.”
+
+To this, he only replied, “You lie!” and not one other word.
+
+We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to the house
+where Christiana and her mother lived.  My uncle knew them very well.
+They were sitting at their breakfast, and were surprised to see us at
+that hour.
+
+“Your servant, ma’am,” said my uncle to the mother.  “You divine the
+purpose of my visit, I dare say, ma’am.  I understand there is a world of
+pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped up here.  I am happy to bring
+it all it wants, to make it complete.  I bring you your son-in-law,
+ma’am—and you, your husband, miss.  The gentleman is a perfect stranger
+to me, but I wish him joy of his wise bargain.”
+
+He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him again.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relation) to suppose that
+my dear Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced by her mother, married
+a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage wheels is often, in these
+changed times, thrown upon me as she rides by.  No, no.  She married me.
+
+The way we came to be married rather sooner than we intended, was this.
+I took a frugal lodging and was saving and planning for her sake, when,
+one day, she spoke to me with great earnestness, and said:
+
+“My dear Michael, I have given you my heart.  I have said that I loved
+you, and I have pledged myself to be your wife.  I am as much yours
+through all changes of good and evil as if we had been married on the day
+when such words passed between us.  I know you well, and know that if we
+should be separated and our union broken off, your whole life would be
+shadowed, and all that might, even now, be stronger in your character for
+the conflict with the world would then be weakened to the shadow of what
+it is!”
+
+“God help me, Christiana!” said I.  “You speak the truth.”
+
+“Michael!” said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maidenly devotion,
+“let us keep apart no longer.  It is but for me to say that I can live
+contented upon such means as you have, and I well know you are happy.  I
+say so from my heart.  Strive no more alone; let us strive together.  My
+dear Michael, it is not right that I should keep secret from you what you
+do not suspect, but what distresses my whole life.  My mother: without
+considering that what you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the
+assurance of my faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit
+upon me, to my misery.  I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be
+untrue to you.  I would rather share your struggles than look on.  I want
+no better home than you can give me.  I know that you will aspire and
+labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so when
+you will!”
+
+I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to me.  We were
+married in a very little while, and I took my wife to our happy home.
+That was the beginning of the residence I have spoken of; the Castle we
+have ever since inhabited together, dates from that time.  All our
+children have been born in it.  Our first child—now married—was a little
+girl, whom we called Christiana.  Her son is so like Little Frank, that I
+hardly know which is which.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The current impression as to my partner’s dealings with me is also quite
+erroneous.  He did not begin to treat me coldly, as a poor simpleton,
+when my uncle and I so fatally quarrelled; nor did he afterwards
+gradually possess himself of our business and edge me out.  On the
+contrary, he behaved to me with the utmost good faith and honour.
+
+Matters between us took this turn:—On the day of my separation from my
+uncle, and even before the arrival at our counting-house of my trunks
+(which he sent after me, _not_ carriage paid), I went down to our room of
+business, on our little wharf, overlooking the river; and there I told
+John Spatter what had happened.  John did not say, in reply, that rich
+old relatives were palpable facts, and that love and sentiment were
+moonshine and fiction.  He addressed me thus:
+
+“Michael,” said John, “we were at school together, and I generally had
+the knack of getting on better than you, and making a higher reputation.”
+
+“You had, John,” I returned.
+
+“Although” said John, “I borrowed your books and lost them; borrowed your
+pocket-money, and never repaid it; got you to buy my damaged knives at a
+higher price than I had given for them new; and to own to the windows
+that I had broken.”
+
+“All not worth mentioning, John Spatter,” said I, “but certainly true.”
+
+“When you were first established in this infant business, which promises
+to thrive so well,” pursued John, “I came to you, in my search for almost
+any employment, and you made me your clerk.”
+
+“Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter,” said I; “still,
+equally true.”
+
+“And finding that I had a good head for business, and that I was really
+useful _to_ the business, you did not like to retain me in that capacity,
+and thought it an act of justice soon to make me your partner.”
+
+“Still less worth mentioning than any of those other little circumstances
+you have recalled, John Spatter,” said I; “for I was, and am, sensible of
+your merits and my deficiencies.”
+
+“Now, my good friend,” said John, drawing my arm through his, as he had
+had a habit of doing at school; while two vessels outside the windows of
+our counting-house—which were shaped like the stern windows of a
+ship—went lightly down the river with the tide, as John and I might then
+be sailing away in company, and in trust and confidence, on our voyage of
+life; “let there, under these friendly circumstances, be a right
+understanding between us.  You are too easy, Michael.  You are nobody’s
+enemy but your own.  If I were to give you that damaging character among
+our connexion, with a shrug, and a shake of the head, and a sigh; and if
+I were further to abuse the trust you place in me—”
+
+“But you never will abuse it at all, John,” I observed.
+
+“Never!” said he; “but I am putting a case—I say, and if I were further
+to abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our common affairs in the
+dark, and this other piece in the light, and again this other piece in
+the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my strength, and weaken your
+weakness, day by day, until at last I found myself on the high road to
+fortune, and you left behind on some bare common, a hopeless number of
+miles out of the way.”
+
+“Exactly so,” said I.
+
+“To prevent this, Michael,” said John Spatter, “or the remotest chance of
+this, there must be perfect openness between us.  Nothing must be
+concealed, and we must have but one interest.”
+
+“My dear John Spatter,” I assured him, “that is precisely what I mean.”
+
+“And when you are too easy,” pursued John, his face glowing with
+friendship, “you must allow me to prevent that imperfection in your
+nature from being taken advantage of, by any one; you must not expect me
+to humour it—”
+
+“My dear John Spatter,” I interrupted, “I _don’t_ expect you to humour
+it.  I want to correct it.”
+
+“And I, too,” said John.
+
+“Exactly so!” cried I.  “We both have the same end in view; and,
+honourably seeking it, and fully trusting one another, and having but one
+interest, ours will be a prosperous and happy partnership.”
+
+“I am sure of it!” returned John Spatter.  And we shook hands most
+affectionately.
+
+I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very happy day.  Our
+partnership throve well.  My friend and partner supplied what I wanted,
+as I had foreseen that he would, and by improving both the business and
+myself, amply acknowledged any little rise in life to which I had helped
+him.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I am not (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as he slowly rubbed
+his hands) very rich, for I never cared to be that; but I have enough,
+and am above all moderate wants and anxieties.  My Castle is not a
+splendid place, but it is very comfortable, and it has a warm and
+cheerful air, and is quite a picture of Home.
+
+Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, married John Spatter’s
+eldest son.  Our two families are closely united in other ties of
+attachment.  It is very pleasant of an evening, when we are all assembled
+together—which frequently happens—and when John and I talk over old
+times, and the one interest there has always been between us.
+
+I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness is.  Some of our
+children or grandchildren are always about it, and the young voices of my
+descendants are delightful—O, how delightful!—to me to hear.  My dearest
+and most devoted wife, ever faithful, ever loving, ever helpful and
+sustaining and consoling, is the priceless blessing of my house; from
+whom all its other blessings spring.  We are rather a musical family, and
+when Christiana sees me, at any time, a little weary or depressed, she
+steals to the piano and sings a gentle air she used to sing when we were
+first betrothed.  So weak a man am I, that I cannot bear to hear it from
+any other source.  They played it once, at the Theatre, when I was there
+with Little Frank; and the child said wondering, “Cousin Michael, whose
+hot tears are these that have fallen on my hand!”
+
+Such is my Castle, and such are the real particulars of my life therein
+preserved.  I often take Little Frank home there.  He is very welcome to
+my grandchildren, and they play together.  At this time of the year—the
+Christmas and New Year time—I am seldom out of my Castle.  For, the
+associations of the season seem to hold me there, and the precepts of the
+season seem to teach me that it is well to be there.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+“And the Castle is—” observed a grave, kind voice among the company.
+
+“Yes.  My Castle,” said the poor relation, shaking his head as he still
+looked at the fire, “is in the Air.  John our esteemed host suggests its
+situation accurately.  My Castle is in the Air!  I have done.  Will you
+be so good as to pass the story?”
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD’S STORY.
+[1852]
+
+
+ONCE upon a time, a good many years ago, there was a traveller, and he
+set out upon a journey.  It was a magic journey, and was to seem very
+long when he began it, and very short when he got half way through.
+
+He travelled along a rather dark path for some little time, without
+meeting anything, until at last he came to a beautiful child.  So he said
+to the child, “What do you do here?”  And the child said, “I am always at
+play.  Come and play with me!”
+
+So, he played with that child, the whole day long, and they were very
+merry.  The sky was so blue, the sun was so bright, the water was so
+sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers were so lovely, and they
+heard such singing-birds and saw so many butteries, that everything was
+beautiful.  This was in fine weather.  When it rained, they loved to
+watch the falling drops, and to smell the fresh scents.  When it blew, it
+was delightful to listen to the wind, and fancy what it said, as it came
+rushing from its home—where was that, they wondered!—whistling and
+howling, driving the clouds before it, bending the trees, rumbling in the
+chimneys, shaking the house, and making the sea roar in fury.  But, when
+it snowed, that was best of all; for, they liked nothing so well as to
+look up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down from the
+breasts of millions of white birds; and to see how smooth and deep the
+drift was; and to listen to the hush upon the paths and roads.
+
+They had plenty of the finest toys in the world, and the most astonishing
+picture-books: all about scimitars and slippers and turbans, and dwarfs
+and giants and genii and fairies, and blue-beards and bean-stalks and
+riches and caverns and forests and Valentines and Orsons: and all new and
+all true.
+
+But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost the child.  He called to
+him over and over again, but got no answer.  So, he went upon his road,
+and went on for a little while without meeting anything, until at last he
+came to a handsome boy.  So, he said to the boy, “What do you do here?”
+And the boy said, “I am always learning.  Come and learn with me.”
+
+So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and Juno, and the Greeks and
+the Romans, and I don’t know what, and learned more than I could tell—or
+he either, for he soon forgot a great deal of it.  But, they were not
+always learning; they had the merriest games that ever were played.  They
+rowed upon the river in summer, and skated on the ice in winter; they
+were active afoot, and active on horseback; at cricket, and all games at
+ball; at prisoner’s base, hare and hounds, follow my leader, and more
+sports than I can think of; nobody could beat them.  They had holidays
+too, and Twelfth cakes, and parties where they danced till midnight, and
+real Theatres where they saw palaces of real gold and silver rise out of
+the real earth, and saw all the wonders of the world at once.  As to
+friends, they had such dear friends and so many of them, that I want the
+time to reckon them up.  They were all young, like the handsome boy, and
+were never to be strange to one another all their lives through.
+
+Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures, the traveller lost
+the boy as he had lost the child, and, after calling to him in vain, went
+on upon his journey.  So he went on for a little while without seeing
+anything, until at last he came to a young man.  So, he said to the young
+man, “What do you do here?”  And the young man said, “I am always in
+love.  Come and love with me.”
+
+So, he went away with that young man, and presently they came to one of
+the prettiest girls that ever was seen—just like Fanny in the corner
+there—and she had eyes like Fanny, and hair like Fanny, and dimples like
+Fanny’s, and she laughed and coloured just as Fanny does while I am
+talking about her.  So, the young man fell in love directly—just as
+Somebody I won’t mention, the first time he came here, did with Fanny.
+Well! he was teased sometimes—just as Somebody used to be by Fanny; and
+they quarrelled sometimes—just as Somebody and Fanny used to quarrel; and
+they made it up, and sat in the dark, and wrote letters every day, and
+never were happy asunder, and were always looking out for one another and
+pretending not to, and were engaged at Christmas-time, and sat close to
+one another by the fire, and were going to be married very soon—all
+exactly like Somebody I won’t mention, and Fanny!
+
+But, the traveller lost them one day, as he had lost the rest of his
+friends, and, after calling to them to come back, which they never did,
+went on upon his journey.  So, he went on for a little while without
+seeing anything, until at last he came to a middle-aged gentleman.  So,
+he said to the gentleman, “What are you doing here?”  And his answer was,
+“I am always busy.  Come and be busy with me!”
+
+So, he began to be very busy with that gentleman, and they went on
+through the wood together.  The whole journey was through a wood, only it
+had been open and green at first, like a wood in spring; and now began to
+be thick and dark, like a wood in summer; some of the little trees that
+had come out earliest, were even turning brown.  The gentleman was not
+alone, but had a lady of about the same age with him, who was his Wife;
+and they had children, who were with them too.  So, they all went on
+together through the wood, cutting down the trees, and making a path
+through the branches and the fallen leaves, and carrying burdens, and
+working hard.
+
+Sometimes, they came to a long green avenue that opened into deeper
+woods.  Then they would hear a very little, distant voice crying,
+“Father, father, I am another child!  Stop for me!”  And presently they
+would see a very little figure, growing larger as it came along, running
+to join them.  When it came up, they all crowded round it, and kissed and
+welcomed it; and then they all went on together.
+
+Sometimes, they came to several avenues at once, and then they all stood
+still, and one of the children said, “Father, I am going to sea,” and
+another said, “Father, I am going to India,” and another, “Father, I am
+going to seek my fortune where I can,” and another, “Father, I am going
+to Heaven!”  So, with many tears at parting, they went, solitary, down
+those avenues, each child upon its way; and the child who went to Heaven,
+rose into the golden air and vanished.
+
+Whenever these partings happened, the traveller looked at the gentleman,
+and saw him glance up at the sky above the trees, where the day was
+beginning to decline, and the sunset to come on.  He saw, too, that his
+hair was turning grey.  But, they never could rest long, for they had
+their journey to perform, and it was necessary for them to be always
+busy.
+
+At last, there had been so many partings that there were no children
+left, and only the traveller, the gentleman, and the lady, went upon
+their way in company.  And now the wood was yellow; and now brown; and
+the leaves, even of the forest trees, began to fall.
+
+So, they came to an avenue that was darker than the rest, and were
+pressing forward on their journey without looking down it when the lady
+stopped.
+
+“My husband,” said the lady.  “I am called.”
+
+They listened, and they heard a voice a long way down the avenue, say,
+“Mother, mother!”
+
+It was the voice of the first child who had said, “I am going to Heaven!”
+and the father said, “I pray not yet.  The sunset is very near.  I pray
+not yet!”
+
+But, the voice cried, “Mother, mother!” without minding him, though his
+hair was now quite white, and tears were on his face.
+
+Then, the mother, who was already drawn into the shade of the dark avenue
+and moving away with her arms still round his neck, kissed him, and said,
+“My dearest, I am summoned, and I go!”  And she was gone.  And the
+traveller and he were left alone together.
+
+And they went on and on together, until they came to very near the end of
+the wood: so near, that they could see the sunset shining red before them
+through the trees.
+
+Yet, once more, while he broke his way among the branches, the traveller
+lost his friend.  He called and called, but there was no reply, and when
+he passed out of the wood, and saw the peaceful sun going down upon a
+wide purple prospect, he came to an old man sitting on a fallen tree.
+So, he said to the old man, “What do you do here?”  And the old man said
+with a calm smile, “I am always remembering.  Come and remember with me!”
+
+So the traveller sat down by the side of that old man, face to face with
+the serene sunset; and all his friends came softly back and stood around
+him.  The beautiful child, the handsome boy, the young man in love, the
+father, mother, and children: every one of them was there, and he had
+lost nothing.  So, he loved them all, and was kind and forbearing with
+them all, and was always pleased to watch them all, and they all honoured
+and loved him.  And I think the traveller must be yourself, dear
+Grandfather, because this what you do to us, and what we do to you.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOLBOY’S STORY.
+[1853]
+
+
+BEING rather young at present—I am getting on in years, but still I am
+rather young—I have no particular adventures of my own to fall back upon.
+It wouldn’t much interest anybody here, I suppose, to know what a screw
+the Reverend is, or what a griffin _she_ is, or how they do stick it into
+parents—particularly hair-cutting, and medical attendance.  One of our
+fellows was charged in his half’s account twelve and sixpence for two
+pills—tolerably profitable at six and threepence a-piece, I should
+think—and he never took them either, but put them up the sleeve of his
+jacket.
+
+        [Picture: Schoolboy with book: illustrated by Fred Walker]
+
+As to the beef, it’s shameful.  It’s _not_ beef.  Regular beef isn’t
+veins.  You can chew regular beef.  Besides which, there’s gravy to
+regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours.  Another of our fellows
+went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he
+couldn’t account for his complaint unless it was the beer.  Of course it
+was the beer, and well it might be!
+
+However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things.  So is beer.
+It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in which our
+fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.
+
+Why, look at the pie-crust alone.  There’s no flakiness in it.  It’s
+solid—like damp lead.  Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bolstered
+for calling out and waking other fellows.  Who can wonder!
+
+Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his
+night-cap, got hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket-bat, and went down
+into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he was
+a Ghost.  Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been
+wholesome.  When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they’ll be
+sorry for it.
+
+Old Cheeseman wasn’t second Latin Master then; he was a fellow himself.
+He was first brought there, very small, in a post-chaise, by a woman who
+was always taking snuff and shaking him—and that was the most he
+remembered about it.  He never went home for the holidays.  His accounts
+(he never learnt any extras) were sent to a Bank, and the Bank paid them;
+and he had a brown suit twice a-year, and went into boots at twelve.
+They were always too big for him, too.
+
+In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows who lived within walking
+distance, used to come back and climb the trees outside the playground
+wall, on purpose to look at Old Cheeseman reading there by himself.  He
+was always as mild as the tea—and _that’s_ pretty mild, I should hope!—so
+when they whistled to him, he looked up and nodded; and when they said,
+“Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what have you had for dinner?” he said, “Boiled
+mutton;” and when they said, “An’t it solitary, Old Cheeseman?” he said,
+“It is a little dull sometimes:” and then they said, “Well good-bye, Old
+Cheeseman!” and climbed down again.  Of course it was imposing on Old
+Cheeseman to give him nothing but boiled mutton through a whole Vacation,
+but that was just like the system.  When they didn’t give him boiled
+mutton, they gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat.  And saved
+the butcher.
+
+So Old Cheeseman went on.  The holidays brought him into other trouble
+besides the loneliness; because when the fellows began to come back, not
+wanting to, he was always glad to see them; which was aggravating when
+they were not at all glad to see him, and so he got his head knocked
+against walls, and that was the way his nose bled.  But he was a
+favourite in general.  Once a subscription was raised for him; and, to
+keep up his spirits, he was presented before the holidays with two white
+mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful puppy.  Old Cheeseman cried
+about it—especially soon afterwards, when they all ate one another.
+
+Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of all sorts of
+cheeses—Double Glo’sterman, Family Cheshireman, Dutchman, North
+Wiltshireman, and all that.  But he never minded it.  And I don’t mean to
+say he was old in point of years—because he wasn’t—only he was called
+from the first, Old Cheeseman.
+
+At last, Old Cheeseman was made second Latin Master.  He was brought in
+one morning at the beginning of a new half, and presented to the school
+in that capacity as “Mr. Cheeseman.”  Then our fellows all agreed that
+Old Cheeseman was a spy, and a deserter, who had gone over to the enemy’s
+camp, and sold himself for gold.  It was no excuse for him that he had
+sold himself for very little gold—two pound ten a quarter and his
+washing, as was reported.  It was decided by a Parliament which sat about
+it, that Old Cheeseman’s mercenary motives could alone be taken into
+account, and that he had “coined our blood for drachmas.”  The Parliament
+took the expression out of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius.
+
+When it was settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman was a
+tremendous traitor, who had wormed himself into our fellows’ secrets on
+purpose to get himself into favour by giving up everything he knew, all
+courageous fellows were invited to come forward and enrol themselves in a
+Society for making a set against him.  The President of the Society was
+First boy, named Bob Tarter.  His father was in the West Indies, and he
+owned, himself, that his father was worth Millions.  He had great power
+among our fellows, and he wrote a parody, beginning—
+
+    “Who made believe to be so meek
+    That we could hardly hear him speak,
+    Yet turned out an Informing Sneak?
+                         Old Cheeseman.”
+
+—and on in that way through more than a dozen verses, which he used to go
+and sing, every morning, close by the new master’s desk.  He trained one
+of the low boys, too, a rosy-cheeked little Brass who didn’t care what he
+did, to go up to him with his Latin Grammar one morning, and say it so:
+_Nominativus pronominum_—Old Cheeseman, _raro exprimitur_—was never
+suspected, _nisi distinctionis_—of being an informer, _aut emphasis
+gratîa_—until he proved one.  _Ut_—for instance, _Vos damnastis_—when he
+sold the boys.  _Quasi_—as though, _dicat_—he should say, _Pretærea
+nemo_—I’m a Judas!  All this produced a great effect on Old Cheeseman.
+He had never had much hair; but what he had, began to get thinner and
+thinner every day.  He grew paler and more worn; and sometimes of an
+evening he was seen sitting at his desk with a precious long snuff to his
+candle, and his hands before his face, crying.  But no member of the
+Society could pity him, even if he felt inclined, because the President
+said it was Old Cheeseman’s conscience.
+
+So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn’t he lead a miserable life!  Of course
+the Reverend turned up his nose at him, and of course _she_ did—because
+both of them always do that at all the masters—but he suffered from the
+fellows most, and he suffered from them constantly.  He never told about
+it, that the Society could find out; but he got no credit for that,
+because the President said it was Old Cheeseman’s cowardice.
+
+He had only one friend in the world, and that one was almost as powerless
+as he was, for it was only Jane.  Jane was a sort of wardrobe woman to
+our fellows, and took care of the boxes.  She had come at first, I
+believe, as a kind of apprentice—some of our fellows say from a Charity,
+but _I_ don’t know—and after her time was out, had stopped at so much a
+year.  So little a year, perhaps I ought to say, for it is far more
+likely.  However, she had put some pounds in the Savings’ Bank, and she
+was a very nice young woman.  She was not quite pretty; but she had a
+very frank, honest, bright face, and all our fellows were fond of her.
+She was uncommonly neat and cheerful, and uncommonly comfortable and
+kind.  And if anything was the matter with a fellow’s mother, he always
+went and showed the letter to Jane.
+
+Jane was Old Cheeseman’s friend.  The more the Society went against him,
+the more Jane stood by him.  She used to give him a good-humoured look
+out of her still-room window, sometimes, that seemed to set him up for
+the day.  She used to pass out of the orchard and the kitchen garden
+(always kept locked, I believe you!) through the playground, when she
+might have gone the other way, only to give a turn of her head, as much
+as to say “Keep up your spirits!” to Old Cheeseman.  His slip of a room
+was so fresh and orderly that it was well known who looked after it while
+he was at his desk; and when our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on
+his plate at dinner, they knew with indignation who had sent it up.
+
+Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a quantity of
+meeting and debating, that Jane should be requested to cut Old Cheeseman
+dead; and that if she refused, she must be sent to Coventry herself.  So
+a deputation, headed by the President, was appointed to wait on Jane, and
+inform her of the vote the Society had been under the painful necessity
+of passing.  She was very much respected for all her good qualities, and
+there was a story about her having once waylaid the Reverend in his own
+study, and got a fellow off from severe punishment, of her own kind
+comfortable heart.  So the deputation didn’t much like the job.  However,
+they went up, and the President told Jane all about it.  Upon which Jane
+turned very red, burst into tears, informed the President and the
+deputation, in a way not at all like her usual way, that they were a
+parcel of malicious young savages, and turned the whole respected body
+out of the room.  Consequently it was entered in the Society’s book (kept
+in astronomical cypher for fear of detection), that all communication
+with Jane was interdicted: and the President addressed the members on
+this convincing instance of Old Cheeseman’s undermining.
+
+But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman was false to our
+fellows—in their opinion, at all events—and steadily continued to be his
+only friend.  It was a great exasperation to the Society, because Jane
+was as much a loss to them as she was a gain to him; and being more
+inveterate against him than ever, they treated him worse than ever.  At
+last, one morning, his desk stood empty, his room was peeped into, and
+found to be vacant, and a whisper went about among the pale faces of our
+fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable to bear it any longer, had got up
+early and drowned himself.
+
+The mysterious looks of the other masters after breakfast, and the
+evident fact that old Cheeseman was not expected, confirmed the Society
+in this opinion.  Some began to discuss whether the President was liable
+to hanging or only transportation for life, and the President’s face
+showed a great anxiety to know which.  However, he said that a jury of
+his country should find him game; and that in his address he should put
+it to them to lay their hands upon their hearts and say whether they as
+Britons approved of informers, and how they thought they would like it
+themselves.  Some of the Society considered that he had better run away
+until he found a forest where he might change clothes with a wood-cutter,
+and stain his face with blackberries; but the majority believed that if
+he stood his ground, his father—belonging as he did to the West Indies,
+and being worth millions—could buy him off.
+
+All our fellows’ hearts beat fast when the Reverend came in, and made a
+sort of a Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself with the ruler; as he
+always did before delivering an address.  But their fears were nothing to
+their astonishment when he came out with the story that Old Cheeseman,
+“so long our respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains
+of knowledge,” he called him—O yes!  I dare say!  Much of that!—was the
+orphan child of a disinherited young lady who had married against her
+father’s wish, and whose young husband had died, and who had died of
+sorrow herself, and whose unfortunate baby (Old Cheeseman) had been
+brought up at the cost of a grandfather who would never consent to see
+it, baby, boy, or man: which grandfather was now dead, and serve him
+right—that’s my putting in—and which grandfather’s large property, there
+being no will, was now, and all of a sudden and for ever, Old
+Cheeseman’s!  Our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the
+pleasant plains of knowledge, the Reverend wound up a lot of bothering
+quotations by saying, would “come among us once more” that day fortnight,
+when he desired to take leave of us himself, in a more particular manner.
+With these words, he stared severely round at our fellows, and went
+solemnly out.
+
+There was precious consternation among the members of the Society, now.
+Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more began to try to make out
+that they had never belonged to it.  However, the President stuck up, and
+said that they must stand or fall together, and that if a breach was made
+it should be over his body—which was meant to encourage the Society: but
+it didn’t.  The President further said, he would consider the position in
+which they stood, and would give them his best opinion and advice in a
+few days.  This was eagerly looked for, as he knew a good deal of the
+world on account of his father’s being in the West Indies.
+
+After days and days of hard thinking, and drawing armies all over his
+slate, the President called our fellows together, and made the matter
+clear.  He said it was plain that when Old Cheeseman came on the
+appointed day, his first revenge would be to impeach the Society, and
+have it flogged all round.  After witnessing with joy the torture of his
+enemies, and gloating over the cries which agony would extort from them,
+the probability was that he would invite the Reverend, on pretence of
+conversation, into a private room—say the parlour into which Parents were
+shown, where the two great globes were which were never used—and would
+there reproach him with the various frauds and oppressions he had endured
+at his hands.  At the close of his observations he would make a signal to
+a Prizefighter concealed in the passage, who would then appear and pitch
+into the Reverend, till he was left insensible.  Old Cheeseman would then
+make Jane a present of from five to ten pounds, and would leave the
+establishment in fiendish triumph.
+
+The President explained that against the parlour part, or the Jane part,
+of these arrangements he had nothing to say; but, on the part of the
+Society, he counselled deadly resistance.  With this view he recommended
+that all available desks should be filled with stones, and that the first
+word of the complaint should be the signal to every fellow to let fly at
+Old Cheeseman.  The bold advice put the Society in better spirits, and
+was unanimously taken.  A post about Old Cheeseman’s size was put up in
+the playground, and all our fellows practised at it till it was dinted
+all over.
+
+When the day came, and Places were called, every fellow sat down in a
+tremble.  There had been much discussing and disputing as to how Old
+Cheeseman would come; but it was the general opinion that he would appear
+in a sort of triumphal car drawn by four horses, with two livery servants
+in front, and the Prizefighter in disguise up behind.  So, all our
+fellows sat listening for the sound of wheels.  But no wheels were heard,
+for Old Cheeseman walked after all, and came into the school without any
+preparation.  Pretty much as he used to be, only dressed in black.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said the Reverend, presenting him, “our so long respected
+friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge, is
+desirous to offer a word or two.  Attention, gentlemen, one and all!”
+
+Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked at the President.
+The President was all ready, and taking aim at old Cheeseman with his
+eyes.
+
+What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his old desk, look round him
+with a queer smile as if there was a tear in his eye, and begin in a
+quavering, mild voice, “My dear companions and old friends!”
+
+Every fellow’s hand came out of his desk, and the President suddenly
+began to cry.
+
+“My dear companions and old friends,” said Old Cheeseman, “you have heard
+of my good fortune.  I have passed so many years under this roof—my
+entire life so far, I may say—that I hope you have been glad to hear of
+it for my sake.  I could never enjoy it without exchanging
+congratulations with you.  If we have ever misunderstood one another at
+all, pray, my dear boys, let us forgive and forget.  I have a great
+tenderness for you, and I am sure you return it.  I want in the fulness
+of a grateful heart to shake hands with you every one.  I have come back
+to do it, if you please, my dear boys.”
+
+Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows had broken
+out here and there: but now, when Old Cheeseman began with him as first
+boy, laid his left hand affectionately on his shoulder and gave him his
+right; and when the President said “Indeed, I don’t deserve it, sir; upon
+my honour I don’t;” there was sobbing and crying all over the school.
+Every other fellow said he didn’t deserve it, much in the same way; but
+Old Cheeseman, not minding that a bit, went cheerfully round to every
+boy, and wound up with every master—finishing off the Reverend last.
+
+Then a snivelling little chap in a corner, who was always under some
+punishment or other, set up a shrill cry of “Success to Old Cheeseman!
+Hooray!”  The Reverend glared upon him, and said, “_Mr._ Cheeseman, sir.”
+But, Old Cheeseman protesting that he liked his old name a great deal
+better than his new one, all our fellows took up the cry; and, for I
+don’t know how many minutes, there was such a thundering of feet and
+hands, and such a roaring of Old Cheeseman, as never was heard.
+
+After that, there was a spread in the dining-room of the most magnificent
+kind.  Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits, confectionaries, jellies,
+neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles, crackers—eat all you can and
+pocket what you like—all at Old Cheeseman’s expense.  After that,
+speeches, whole holiday, double and treble sets of all manners of things
+for all manners of games, donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself,
+dinner for all the masters at the Seven Bells (twenty pounds a-head our
+fellows estimated it at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day
+every year, and another on Old Cheeseman’s birthday—Reverend bound down
+before the fellows to allow it, so that he could never back out—all at
+Old Cheeseman’s expense.
+
+And didn’t our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside the Seven
+Bells?  O no!
+
+But there’s something else besides.  Don’t look at the next story-teller,
+for there’s more yet.  Next day, it was resolved that the Society should
+make it up with Jane, and then be dissolved.  What do you think of Jane
+being gone, though!  “What?  Gone for ever?” said our fellows, with long
+faces.  “Yes, to be sure,” was all the answer they could get.  None of
+the people about the house would say anything more.  At length, the first
+boy took upon himself to ask the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was
+really gone?  The Reverend (he has got a daughter at home—turn-up nose,
+and red) replied severely, “Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is gone.”  The idea of
+calling Jane, Miss Pitt!  Some said she had been sent away in disgrace
+for taking money from Old Cheeseman; others said she had gone into Old
+Cheeseman’s service at a rise of ten pounds a year.  All that our fellows
+knew, was, she was gone.
+
+It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an open
+carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a lady
+and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a long time and stood up to
+see it played.  Nobody thought much about them, until the same little
+snivelling chap came in, against all rules, from the post where he was
+Scout, and said, “It’s Jane!”  Both Elevens forgot the game directly, and
+ran crowding round the carriage.  It _was_ Jane!  In such a bonnet!  And
+if you’ll believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.
+
+It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at it in
+the playground, to see a carriage at the low part of the wall where it
+joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up in it, looking
+over.  The gentleman was always Old Cheeseman, and the lady was always
+Jane.
+
+The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way.  There had been a
+good many changes among our fellows then, and it had turned out that Bob
+Tarter’s father wasn’t worth Millions!  He wasn’t worth anything.  Bob
+had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had purchased his discharge.
+But that’s not the carriage.  The carriage stopped, and all our fellows
+stopped as soon as it was seen.
+
+“So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!” said the lady,
+laughing, as our fellows swarmed up the wall to shake hands with her.
+“Are you never going to do it?”
+
+“Never! never! never!” on all sides.
+
+I didn’t understand what she meant then, but of course I do now.  I was
+very much pleased with her face though, and with her good way, and I
+couldn’t help looking at her—and at him too—with all our fellows
+clustering so joyfully about them.
+
+They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might as well
+swarm up the wall myself, and shake hands with them as the rest did.  I
+was quite as glad to see them as the rest were, and was quite as familiar
+with them in a moment.
+
+“Only a fortnight now,” said Old Cheeseman, “to the holidays.  Who stops?
+Anybody?”
+
+A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices cried “He
+does!”  For it was the year when you were all away; and rather low I was
+about it, I can tell you.
+
+“Oh!” said Old Cheeseman.  “But it’s solitary here in the holiday time.
+He had better come to us.”
+
+So I went to their delightful house, and was as happy as I could possibly
+be.  They understand how to conduct themselves towards boys, _they_ do.
+When they take a boy to the play, for instance, they _do_ take him.  They
+don’t go in after it’s begun, or come out before it’s over.  They know
+how to bring a boy up, too.  Look at their own!  Though he is very little
+as yet, what a capital boy he is!  Why, my next favourite to Mrs.
+Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young Cheeseman.
+
+So, now I have told you all I know about Old Cheeseman.  And it’s not
+much after all, I am afraid.  Is it?
+
+
+
+
+NOBODY’S STORY
+
+
+HE lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, which was always
+silently rolling on to a vast undiscovered ocean.  It had rolled on, ever
+since the world began.  It had changed its course sometimes, and turned
+into new channels, leaving its old ways dry and barren; but it had ever
+been upon the flow, and ever was to flow until Time should be no more.
+Against its strong, unfathomable stream, nothing made head.  No living
+creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate
+existence, ever strayed back from the undiscovered ocean.  The tide of
+the river set resistlessly towards it; and the tide never stopped, any
+more than the earth stops in its circling round the sun.
+
+He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live.  He had no
+hope of ever being rich enough to live a month without hard work, but he
+was quite content, GOD knows, to labour with a cheerful will.  He was one
+of an immense family, all of whose sons and daughters gained their daily
+bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising up betimes until their
+lying down at night.  Beyond this destiny he had no prospect, and he
+sought none.
+
+There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, in the
+neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that.  Such
+clash and uproar came from the Bigwig family, at the unaccountable
+proceedings of which race, he marvelled much.  They set up the strangest
+statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, before his door; and
+darkened his house with the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses.
+He wondered what it all meant, smiled in a rough good-humoured way he
+had, and kept at his hard work.
+
+The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people thereabouts, and
+all the noisiest) had undertaken to save him the trouble of thinking for
+himself, and to manage him and his affairs.  “Why truly,” said he, “I
+have little time upon my hands; and if you will be so good as to take
+care of me, in return for the money I pay over”—for the Bigwig family
+were not above his money—“I shall be relieved and much obliged,
+considering that you know best.”  Hence the drumming, trumpeting, and
+speech-making, and the ugly images of horses which he was expected to
+fall down and worship.
+
+“I don’t understand all this,” said he, rubbing his furrowed brow
+confusedly.  “But it _has_ a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out.”
+
+“It means,” returned the Bigwig family, suspecting something of what he
+said, “honour and glory in the highest, to the highest merit.”
+
+“Oh!” said he.  And he was glad to hear that.
+
+But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze, and brass,
+he failed to find a rather meritorious countryman of his, once the son of
+a Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single countryman whomsoever of that
+kind.  He could find none of the men whose knowledge had rescued him and
+his children from terrific and disfiguring disease, whose boldness had
+raised his forefathers from the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy had
+opened a new and high existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled
+the working man’s world with accumulated wonders.  Whereas, he did find
+others whom he knew no good of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.
+
+“Humph!” said he.  “I don’t quite understand it.”
+
+So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to get it out of his mind.
+
+Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened streets; but
+it was a precious place to him.  The hands of his wife were hardened with
+toil, and she was old before her time; but she was dear to him.  His
+children, stunted in their growth, bore traces of unwholesome nurture;
+but they had beauty in his sight.  Above all other things, it was an
+earnest desire of this man’s soul that his children should be taught.
+“If I am sometimes misled,” said he, “for want of knowledge, at least let
+them know better, and avoid my mistakes.  If it is hard to me to reap the
+harvest of pleasure and instruction that is stored in books, let it be
+easier to them.”
+
+But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels concerning
+what it was lawful to teach to this man’s children.  Some of the family
+insisted on such a thing being primary and indispensable above all other
+things; and others of the family insisted on such another thing being
+primary and indispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig family,
+rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered
+charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another
+in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged
+pummelings, and fell together by the ears in unintelligible animosity.
+Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw
+the demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself.  He saw
+his daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge; he saw his son go
+moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime; he saw
+the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so changing
+into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots.
+
+“I don’t understand this any the better,” said he; “but I think it cannot
+be right.  Nay, by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest against this as
+my wrong!”
+
+Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually short-lived, and
+his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and holidays, and he
+saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and thence how drunkenness
+arose with all its train of ruin.  Then he appealed to the Bigwig family,
+and said, “We are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion
+in me that labouring people of whatever condition were made—by a higher
+intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it—to be in need of
+mental refreshment and recreation.  See what we fall into, when we rest
+without it.  Come!  Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an
+escape!”
+
+But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar absolutely
+deafening.  When some few voices were faintly heard, proposing to show
+him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation, the mighty
+changes of time, the workings of nature and the beauties of art—to show
+him these things, that is to say, at any period of his life when he could
+look upon them—there arose among the Bigwigs such roaring and raving,
+such pulpiting and petitioning, such maundering and memorialising, such
+name-calling and dirt-throwing, such a shrill wind of parliamentary
+questioning and feeble replying—where “I dare not” waited on “I
+would”—that the poor fellow stood aghast, staring wildly around.
+
+“Have I provoked all this,” said he, with his hands to his affrighted
+ears, “by what was meant to be an innocent request, plainly arising out
+of my familiar experience, and the common knowledge of all men who choose
+to open their eyes?  I don’t understand, and I am not understood.  What
+is to come of such a state of things!”
+
+He was bending over his work, often asking himself the question, when the
+news began to spread that a pestilence had appeared among the labourers,
+and was slaying them by thousands.  Going forth to look about him, he
+soon found this to be true.  The dying and the dead were mingled in the
+close and tainted houses among which his life was passed.  New poison was
+distilled into the always murky, always sickening air.  The robust and
+the weak, old age and infancy, the father and the mother, all were
+stricken down alike.
+
+What means of flight had he?  He remained there, where he was, and saw
+those who were dearest to him die.  A kind preacher came to him, and
+would have said some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom, but he
+replied:
+
+“O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to
+residence in this foetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me for my
+delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my numbered days is
+new mire added to the heap under which I lie oppressed!  But, give me my
+first glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its light and air; give me
+pure water; help me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy
+life, in which our spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and
+callous creatures you too often see us; gently and kindly take the bodies
+of those who die among us, out of the small room where we grow to be so
+familiar with the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to us; and,
+Teacher, then I will hear—none know better than you, how willingly—of Him
+whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had compassion for all
+human sorrow!”
+
+He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came and stood
+near to him dressed in black.  He, also, had suffered heavily.  His young
+wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so, too, his only
+child.
+
+“Master, ’tis hard to bear—I know it—but be comforted.  I would give you
+comfort, if I could.”
+
+The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, “O you labouring
+men!  The calamity began among you.  If you had but lived more healthily
+and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft mourner that I am
+this day.”
+
+“Master,” returned the other, shaking his head, “I have begun to
+understand a little that most calamities will come from us, as this one
+did, and that none will stop at our poor doors, until we are united with
+that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things that are right.  We
+cannot live healthily and decently, unless they who undertook to manage
+us provide the means.  We cannot be instructed unless they will teach us;
+we cannot be rationally amused, unless they will amuse us; we cannot but
+have some false gods of our own, while they set up so many of theirs in
+all the public places.  The evil consequences of imperfect instruction,
+the evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of
+unnatural restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will all
+come from us, and none of them will stop with us.  They will spread far
+and wide.  They always do; they always have done—just like the
+pestilence.  I understand so much, I think, at last.”
+
+But the Master said again, “O you labouring men!  How seldom do we ever
+hear of you, except in connection with some trouble!”
+
+“Master,” he replied, “I am Nobody, and little likely to be heard of (nor
+yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is some
+trouble.  But it never begins with me, and it never can end with me.  As
+sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from me.”
+
+There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig family, getting
+wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the late desolation,
+resolved to unite with him to do the things that were right—at all
+events, so far as the said things were associated with the direct
+prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence.  But, as their fear
+wore off, which it soon began to do, they resumed their falling out among
+themselves, and did nothing.  Consequently the scourge appeared again—low
+down as before—and spread avengingly upward as before, and carried off
+vast numbers of the brawlers.  But not a man among them ever admitted, if
+in the least degree he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with
+it.
+
+So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this, in the main,
+is the whole of Nobody’s story.
+
+Had he no name, you ask?  Perhaps it was Legion.  It matters little what
+his name was.  Let us call him Legion.
+
+If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Waterloo, you
+will have seen, in some quiet little church, a monument erected by
+faithful companions in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major B, Captains
+C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I and J, seven
+non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and thirty rank and file, who
+fell in the discharge of their duty on the memorable day.  The story of
+Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the earth.  They bear their
+share of the battle; they have their part in the victory; they fall; they
+leave no name but in the mass.  The march of the proudest of us, leads to
+the dusty way by which they go.  O!  Let us think of them this year at
+the Christmas fire, and not forget them when it is burnt out.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME CHRISTMAS STORIES***
+
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Some Christmas Stories, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Some Christmas Stories
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 6, 2015  [eBook #1467]
+[This file was first posted in June/July 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME CHRISTMAS STORIES***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1911 Chapman and Hall Christmas Stories
+edition, Volume 1, by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1><span class="smcap">Some Short Christmas Stories</span><br />
+by<br />
+<span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span></h1>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>A Christmas Tree</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>What Christmas is as we Grow Older</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page23">23</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Poor Relation&rsquo;s Story</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page31">31</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Child&rsquo;s Story</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page47">47</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Schoolboy&rsquo;s Story</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page55">55</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Nobody&rsquo;s Story</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page69">69</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>A
+CHRISTMAS TREE.<br />
+[1850]</h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">have</span> been looking on, this
+evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that
+pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree.&nbsp; The tree was planted
+in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above
+their heads.&nbsp; It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of
+little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright
+objects.&nbsp; There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the
+green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at
+least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from
+innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs,
+bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other
+articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at
+Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation
+for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little
+men, much more agreeable in appearance than many real
+men&mdash;and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showed
+them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles and drums;
+there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes,
+sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there
+were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up
+gold and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all
+devices; there were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches
+standing in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes;
+there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers,
+smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real
+fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation
+apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as
+a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another
+pretty child, her bosom friend, &ldquo;There was everything, and
+more.&rdquo;&nbsp; This motley collection of odd objects,
+clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the
+bright looks directed towards it from every side&mdash;some of
+the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the
+table, and a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms
+of pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses&mdash;made a lively
+realisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how
+all the trees that grow and all the things that come into
+existence on the earth, have their wild adornments at that
+well-remembered time.</p>
+<p>Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the
+house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I
+do not care to resist, to my own childhood.&nbsp; I begin to
+consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of the
+Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which we
+climbed to real life.</p>
+<p>Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of
+its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a
+shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness
+of its top&mdash;for I observe in this tree the singular property
+that it appears to grow downward towards the earth&mdash;I look
+into my youngest Christmas recollections!</p>
+<p>All toys at first, I find.&nbsp; Up yonder, among the green
+holly and red berries, is the Tumbler with his hands in his
+pockets, who wouldn&rsquo;t lie down, but whenever he was put
+upon the floor, persisted in rolling his fat body about, until he
+rolled himself still, and brought those lobster eyes of his to
+bear upon me&mdash;when I affected to laugh very much, but in my
+heart of hearts was extremely doubtful of him.&nbsp; Close beside
+him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which there sprang a
+demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown, with an obnoxious head of
+hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide open, who was not to be endured
+on any terms, but could not be put away either; for he used
+suddenly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of Mammoth
+Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected.&nbsp; Nor is the frog
+with cobbler&rsquo;s wax on his tail, far off; for there was no
+knowing where he wouldn&rsquo;t jump; and when he flew over the
+candle, and came upon one&rsquo;s hand with that spotted
+back&mdash;red on a green ground&mdash;he was horrible.&nbsp; The
+cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was stood up against the
+candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the same branch, was
+milder, and was beautiful; but I can&rsquo;t say as much for the
+larger cardboard man, who used to be hung against the wall and
+pulled by a string; there was a sinister expression in that nose
+of his; and when he got his legs round his neck (which he very
+often did), he was ghastly, and not a creature to be alone
+with.</p>
+<p>When did that dreadful Mask first look at me?&nbsp; Who put it
+on, and why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in
+my life?&nbsp; It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even
+meant to be droll, why then were its stolid features so
+intolerable?&nbsp; Surely not because it hid the wearer&rsquo;s
+face.&nbsp; An apron would have done as much; and though I should
+have preferred even the apron away, it would not have been
+absolutely insupportable, like the mask.&nbsp; Was it the
+immovability of the mask?&nbsp; The doll&rsquo;s face was
+immovable, but I was not afraid of <i>her</i>.&nbsp; Perhaps that
+fixed and set change coming over a real face, infused into my
+quickened heart some remote suggestion and dread of the universal
+change that is to come on every face, and make it still?&nbsp;
+Nothing reconciled me to it.&nbsp; No drummers, from whom
+proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no
+regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box, and
+fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and lazy little set of
+lazy-tongs; no old woman, made of wires and a brown-paper
+composition, cutting up a pie for two small children; could give
+me a permanent comfort, for a long time.&nbsp; Nor was it any
+satisfaction to be shown the Mask, and see that it was made of
+paper, or to have it locked up and be assured that no one wore
+it.&nbsp; The mere recollection of that fixed face, the mere
+knowledge of its existence anywhere, was sufficient to awake me
+in the night all perspiration and horror, with, &ldquo;O I know
+it&rsquo;s coming!&nbsp; O the mask!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the
+panniers&mdash;there he is! was made of, then!&nbsp; His hide was
+real to the touch, I recollect.&nbsp; And the great black horse
+with the round red spots all over him&mdash;the horse that I
+could even get upon&mdash;I never wondered what had brought him
+to that strange condition, or thought that such a horse was not
+commonly seen at Newmarket.&nbsp; The four horses of no colour,
+next to him, that went into the waggon of cheeses, and could be
+taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of
+fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for their manes, and
+to stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they
+were brought home for a Christmas present.&nbsp; They were all
+right, then; neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed
+into their chests, as appears to be the case now.&nbsp; The
+tinkling works of the music-cart, I <i>did</i> find out, to be
+made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and I always thought that
+little tumbler in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one
+side of a wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on the
+other, rather a weak-minded person&mdash;though good-natured; but
+the Jacob&rsquo;s Ladder, next him, made of little squares of red
+wood, that went flapping and clattering over one another, each
+developing a different picture, and the whole enlivened by small
+bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.</p>
+<p>Ah!&nbsp; The Doll&rsquo;s house!&mdash;of which I was not
+proprietor, but where I visited.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t admire the
+Houses of Parliament half so much as that stone-fronted mansion
+with real glass windows, and door-steps, and a real
+balcony&mdash;greener than I ever see now, except at watering
+places; and even they afford but a poor imitation.&nbsp; And
+though it <i>did</i> open all at once, the entire house-front
+(which was a blow, I admit, as cancelling the fiction of a
+staircase), it was but to shut it up again, and I could
+believe.&nbsp; Even open, there were three distinct rooms in it:
+a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly furnished, and best of
+all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plentiful
+assortment of diminutive utensils&mdash;oh, the
+warming-pan!&mdash;and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always
+going to fry two fish.&nbsp; What Barmecide justice have I done
+to the noble feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured,
+each with its own peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued
+tight on to it, and garnished with something green, which I
+recollect as moss!&nbsp; Could all the Temperance Societies of
+these later days, united, give me such a tea-drinking as I have
+had through the means of yonder little set of blue crockery,
+which really would hold liquid (it ran out of the small wooden
+cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and which made tea,
+nectar.&nbsp; And if the two legs of the ineffectual little
+sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, and want purpose, like
+Punch&rsquo;s hands, what does it matter?&nbsp; And if I did once
+shriek out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable
+company with consternation, by reason of having drunk a little
+teaspoon, inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the
+worse for it, except by a powder!</p>
+<p>Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the
+green roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books
+begin to hang.&nbsp; Thin books, in themselves, at first, but
+many of them, and with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or
+green.&nbsp; What fat black letters to begin with!&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+was an archer, and shot at a frog.&rdquo;&nbsp; Of course he
+was.&nbsp; He was an apple-pie also, and there he is!&nbsp; He
+was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of
+his friends, except X, who had so little versatility, that I
+never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe&mdash;like Y, who
+was always confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for
+ever to be a Zebra or a Zany.&nbsp; But, now, the very tree
+itself changes, and becomes a bean-stalk&mdash;the marvellous
+bean-stalk up which Jack climbed to the Giant&rsquo;s
+house!&nbsp; And now, those dreadfully interesting, double-headed
+giants, with their clubs over their shoulders, begin to stride
+along the boughs in a perfect throng, dragging knights and ladies
+home for dinner by the hair of their heads.&nbsp; And
+Jack&mdash;how noble, with his sword of sharpness, and his shoes
+of swiftness!&nbsp; Again those old meditations come upon me as I
+gaze up at him; and I debate within myself whether there was more
+than one Jack (which I am loth to believe possible), or only one
+genuine original admirable Jack, who achieved all the recorded
+exploits.</p>
+<p>Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak, in
+which&mdash;the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip
+through, with her basket&mdash;Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me
+one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and
+treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother,
+without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her,
+after making that ferocious joke about his teeth.&nbsp; She was
+my first love.&nbsp; I felt that if I could have married Little
+Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.&nbsp; But, it
+was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the
+Wolf in the Noah&rsquo;s Ark there, and put him late in the
+procession on the table, as a monster who was to be
+degraded.&nbsp; O the wonderful Noah&rsquo;s Ark!&nbsp; It was
+not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and the animals
+were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have their legs well
+shaken down before they could be got in, even there&mdash;and
+then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which
+was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch&mdash;but what was
+<i>that</i> against it!&nbsp; Consider the noble fly, a size or
+two smaller than the elephant: the lady-bird, the
+butterfly&mdash;all triumphs of art!&nbsp; Consider the goose,
+whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent,
+that he usually tumbled forward, and knocked down all the animal
+creation.&nbsp; Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic
+tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little
+fingers; and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually
+to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string!</p>
+<p>Hush!&nbsp; Again a forest, and somebody up in a
+tree&mdash;not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf (I
+have passed him and all Mother Bunch&rsquo;s wonders, without
+mention), but an Eastern King with a glittering scimitar and
+turban.&nbsp; By Allah! two Eastern Kings, for I see another,
+looking over his shoulder!&nbsp; Down upon the grass, at the
+tree&rsquo;s foot, lies the full length of a coal-black Giant,
+stretched asleep, with his head in a lady&rsquo;s lap; and near
+them is a glass box, fastened with four locks of shining steel,
+in which he keeps the lady prisoner when he is awake.&nbsp; I see
+the four keys at his girdle now.&nbsp; The lady makes signs to
+the two kings in the tree, who softly descend.&nbsp; It is the
+setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights.</p>
+<p>Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to
+me.&nbsp; All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans.&nbsp;
+Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth
+scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in;
+beef-steaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds, that
+the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the
+eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will
+scare them.&nbsp; Tarts are made, according to the recipe of the
+Vizier&rsquo;s son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook after he
+was set down in his drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are
+all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up people cut into four
+pieces, to whom they are taken blind-fold.</p>
+<p>Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which
+only waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the
+necromancy, that will make the earth shake.&nbsp; All the dates
+imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose
+shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie&rsquo;s
+invisible son.&nbsp; All olives are of the stock of that fresh
+fruit, concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard
+the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive
+merchant; all apples are akin to the apple purchased (with two
+others) from the Sultan&rsquo;s gardener for three sequins, and
+which the tall black slave stole from the child.&nbsp; All dogs
+are associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who jumped
+upon the baker&rsquo;s counter, and put his paw on the piece of
+bad money.&nbsp; All rice recalls the rice which the awful lady,
+who was a ghoule, could only peck by grains, because of her
+nightly feasts in the burial-place.&nbsp; My very
+rocking-horse,&mdash;there he is, with his nostrils turned
+completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!&mdash;should have a
+peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the
+wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all
+his father&rsquo;s Court.</p>
+<p>Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper
+branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light!&nbsp; When
+I wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings,
+the white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on the
+window-pane, I hear Dinarzade.&nbsp; &ldquo;Sister, sister, if
+you are yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the Young
+King of the Black Islands.&rdquo;&nbsp; Scheherazade replies,
+&ldquo;If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day,
+sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more
+wonderful story yet.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, the gracious Sultan goes
+out, giving no orders for the execution, and we all three breathe
+again.</p>
+<p>At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the
+leaves&mdash;it may be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince
+pie, or of these many fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on
+his desert island, Philip Quarll among the monkeys, Sandford and
+Merton with Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the Mask&mdash;or it
+may be the result of indigestion, assisted by imagination and
+over-doctoring&mdash;a prodigious nightmare.&nbsp; It is so
+exceedingly indistinct, that I don&rsquo;t know why it&rsquo;s
+frightful&mdash;but I know it is.&nbsp; I can only make out that
+it is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to be
+planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to
+bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes,
+and receding to an immeasurable distance.&nbsp; When it comes
+closest, it is worse.&nbsp; In connection with it I descry
+remembrances of winter nights incredibly long; of being sent
+early to bed, as a punishment for some small offence, and waking
+in two hours, with a sensation of having been asleep two nights;
+of the laden hopelessness of morning ever dawning; and the
+oppression of a weight of remorse.</p>
+<p>And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly
+out of the ground, before a vast green curtain.&nbsp; Now, a bell
+rings&mdash;a magic bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike
+all other bells&mdash;and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices,
+and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil.&nbsp; Anon, the
+magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green
+curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins!&nbsp;
+The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master,
+foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous Peasant
+with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take from this hour
+forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an
+Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed since he and
+I have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed
+surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my
+remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes,
+unto the end of time.&nbsp; Or now, I learn with bitter tears how
+poor Jane Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair
+hanging down, went starving through the streets; or how George
+Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was
+afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to have been let
+off.&nbsp; Comes swift to comfort me, the
+Pantomime&mdash;stupendous Phenomenon!&mdash;when clowns are shot
+from loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright
+constellation that it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with
+scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when
+Pantaloon (whom I deem it no irreverence to compare in my own
+mind to my grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and
+cries &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s somebody coming!&rdquo; or taxes the
+Clown with petty larceny, by saying, &ldquo;Now, I sawed you do
+it!&rdquo; when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of
+being changed into Anything; and &ldquo;Nothing is, but thinking
+makes it so.&rdquo;&nbsp; Now, too, I perceive my first
+experience of the dreary sensation&mdash;often to return in
+after-life&mdash;of being unable, next day, to get back to the
+dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the bright
+atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with
+the wand like a celestial Barber&rsquo;s Pole, and pining for a
+Fairy immortality along with her.&nbsp; Ah, she comes back, in
+many shapes, as my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas
+Tree, and goes as often, and has never yet stayed by me!</p>
+<p>Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,&mdash;there it
+is, with its familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the
+boxes!&mdash;and all its attendant occupation with paste and
+glue, and gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of The Miller
+and his Men, and Elizabeth, or the Exile of Siberia.&nbsp; In
+spite of a few besetting accidents and failures (particularly an
+unreasonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, and some
+others, to become faint in the legs, and double up, at exciting
+points of the drama), a teeming world of fancies so suggestive
+and all-embracing, that, far below it on my Christmas Tree, I see
+dark, dirty, real Theatres in the day-time, adorned with these
+associations as with the freshest garlands of the rarest flowers,
+and charming me yet.</p>
+<p>But hark!&nbsp; The Waits are playing, and they break my
+childish sleep!&nbsp; What images do I associate with the
+Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas
+Tree?&nbsp; Known before all the others, keeping far apart from
+all the others, they gather round my little bed.&nbsp; An angel,
+speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers,
+with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child
+in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure,
+with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand;
+again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his
+bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof
+of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a
+bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to
+a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again,
+with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again,
+restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the
+deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the
+ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a
+thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only
+one voice heard, &ldquo;Forgive them, for they know not what they
+do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree,
+Christmas associations cluster thick.&nbsp; School-books shut up;
+Ovid and Virgil silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool
+impertinent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and Plautus
+acted no more, in an arena of huddled desks and forms, all
+chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and balls,
+left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and the softened
+noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh,
+still gay.&nbsp; If I no more come home at Christmas-time, there
+will be boys and girls (thank Heaven!) while the World lasts; and
+they do!&nbsp; Yonder they dance and play upon the branches of my
+Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart dances and plays
+too!</p>
+<p>And I do come home at Christmas.&nbsp; We all do, or we all
+should.&nbsp; We all come home, or ought to come home, for a
+short holiday&mdash;the longer, the better&mdash;from the great
+boarding-school, where we are for ever working at our
+arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.&nbsp; As to going
+a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not
+been, when we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas
+Tree!</p>
+<p>Away into the winter prospect.&nbsp; There are many such upon
+the tree!&nbsp; On, by low-lying, misty grounds, through fens and
+fogs, up long hills, winding dark as caverns between thick
+plantations, almost shutting out the sparkling stars; so, out on
+broad heights, until we stop at last, with sudden silence, at an
+avenue.&nbsp; The gate-bell has a deep, half-awful sound in the
+frosty air; the gate swings open on its hinges; and, as we drive
+up to a great house, the glancing lights grow larger in the
+windows, and the opposing rows of trees seem to fall solemnly
+back on either side, to give us place.&nbsp; At intervals, all
+day, a frightened hare has shot across this whitened turf; or the
+distant clatter of a herd of deer trampling the hard frost, has,
+for the minute, crushed the silence too.&nbsp; Their watchful
+eyes beneath the fern may be shining now, if we could see them,
+like the icy dewdrops on the leaves; but they are still, and all
+is still.&nbsp; And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees
+falling back before us, and closing up again behind us, as if to
+forbid retreat, we come to the house.</p>
+<p>There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good
+comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter
+Stories&mdash;Ghost Stories, or more shame for us&mdash;round the
+Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a
+little nearer to it.&nbsp; But, no matter for that.&nbsp; We came
+to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys
+where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim
+portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower
+distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls.&nbsp; We are a
+middle-aged nobleman, and we make a generous supper with our host
+and hostess and their guests&mdash;it being Christmas-time, and
+the old house full of company&mdash;and then we go to bed.&nbsp;
+Our room is a very old room.&nbsp; It is hung with
+tapestry.&nbsp; We don&rsquo;t like the portrait of a cavalier in
+green, over the fireplace.&nbsp; There are great black beams in
+the ceiling, and there is a great black bedstead, supported at
+the foot by two great black figures, who seem to have come off a
+couple of tombs in the old baronial church in the park, for our
+particular accommodation.&nbsp; But, we are not a superstitious
+nobleman, and we don&rsquo;t mind.&nbsp; Well! we dismiss our
+servant, lock the door, and sit before the fire in our
+dressing-gown, musing about a great many things.&nbsp; At length
+we go to bed.&nbsp; Well! we can&rsquo;t sleep.&nbsp; We toss and
+tumble, and can&rsquo;t sleep.&nbsp; The embers on the hearth
+burn fitfully and make the room look ghostly.&nbsp; We
+can&rsquo;t help peeping out over the counterpane, at the two
+black figures and the cavalier&mdash;that wicked-looking
+cavalier&mdash;in green.&nbsp; In the flickering light they seem
+to advance and retire: which, though we are not by any means a
+superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable.&nbsp; Well! we get
+nervous&mdash;more and more nervous.&nbsp; We say &ldquo;This is
+very foolish, but we can&rsquo;t stand this; we&rsquo;ll pretend
+to be ill, and knock up somebody.&rdquo;&nbsp; Well! we are just
+going to do it, when the locked door opens, and there comes in a
+young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to
+the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there, wringing
+her hands.&nbsp; Then, we notice that her clothes are wet.&nbsp;
+Our tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth, and we can&rsquo;t
+speak; but, we observe her accurately.&nbsp; Her clothes are wet;
+her long hair is dabbled with moist mud; she is dressed in the
+fashion of two hundred years ago; and she has at her girdle a
+bunch of rusty keys.&nbsp; Well! there she sits, and we
+can&rsquo;t even faint, we are in such a state about it.&nbsp;
+Presently she gets up, and tries all the locks in the room with
+the rusty keys, which won&rsquo;t fit one of them; then, she
+fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in green, and
+says, in a low, terrible voice, &ldquo;The stags know
+it!&rdquo;&nbsp; After that, she wrings her hands again, passes
+the bedside, and goes out at the door.&nbsp; We hurry on our
+dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always travel with pistols),
+and are following, when we find the door locked.&nbsp; We turn
+the key, look out into the dark gallery; no one there.&nbsp; We
+wander away, and try to find our servant.&nbsp; Can&rsquo;t be
+done.&nbsp; We pace the gallery till daybreak; then return to our
+deserted room, fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant
+(nothing ever haunts him) and the shining sun.&nbsp; Well! we
+make a wretched breakfast, and all the company say we look
+queer.&nbsp; After breakfast, we go over the house with our host,
+and then we take him to the portrait of the cavalier in green,
+and then it all comes out.&nbsp; He was false to a young
+housekeeper once attached to that family, and famous for her
+beauty, who drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was
+discovered, after a long time, because the stags refused to drink
+of the water.&nbsp; Since which, it has been whispered that she
+traverses the house at midnight (but goes especially to that room
+where the cavalier in green was wont to sleep), trying the old
+locks with the rusty keys.&nbsp; Well! we tell our host of what
+we have seen, and a shade comes over his features, and he begs it
+may be hushed up; and so it is.&nbsp; But, it&rsquo;s all true;
+and we said so, before we died (we are dead now) to many
+responsible people.</p>
+<p>There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries,
+and dismal state-bedchambers, and haunted wings shut up for many
+years, through which we may ramble, with an agreeable creeping up
+our back, and encounter any number of ghosts, but (it is worthy
+of remark perhaps) reducible to a very few general types and
+classes; for, ghosts have little originality, and
+&ldquo;walk&rdquo; in a beaten track.&nbsp; Thus, it comes to
+pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a certain
+bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has
+certain planks in the floor from which the blood <i>will not</i>
+be taken out.&nbsp; You may scrape and scrape, as the present
+owner has done, or plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub
+and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong
+acids, as his great-grandfather did, but, there the blood will
+still be&mdash;no redder and no paler&mdash;no more and no
+less&mdash;always just the same.&nbsp; Thus, in such another
+house there is a haunted door, that never will keep open; or
+another door that never will keep shut, or a haunted sound of a
+spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a sigh,
+or a horse&rsquo;s tramp, or the rattling of a chain.&nbsp; Or
+else, there is a turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour,
+strikes thirteen when the head of the family is going to die; or
+a shadowy, immovable black carriage which at such a time is
+always seen by somebody, waiting near the great gates in the
+stable-yard.&nbsp; Or thus, it came to pass how Lady Mary went to
+pay a visit at a large wild house in the Scottish Highlands, and,
+being fatigued with her long journey, retired to bed early, and
+innocently said, next morning, at the breakfast-table, &ldquo;How
+odd, to have so late a party last night, in this remote place,
+and not to tell me of it, before I went to bed!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Then, every one asked Lady Mary what she meant?&nbsp; Then, Lady
+Mary replied, &ldquo;Why, all night long, the carriages were
+driving round and round the terrace, underneath my
+window!&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, the owner of the house turned pale,
+and so did his Lady, and Charles Macdoodle of Macdoodle signed to
+Lady Mary to say no more, and every one was silent.&nbsp; After
+breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it was a
+tradition in the family that those rumbling carriages on the
+terrace betokened death.&nbsp; And so it proved, for, two months
+afterwards, the Lady of the mansion died.&nbsp; And Lady Mary,
+who was a Maid of Honour at Court, often told this story to the
+old Queen Charlotte; by this token that the old King always said,
+&ldquo;Eh, eh?&nbsp; What, what?&nbsp; Ghosts, ghosts?&nbsp; No
+such thing, no such thing!&rdquo;&nbsp; And never left off saying
+so, until he went to bed.</p>
+<p>Or, a friend of somebody&rsquo;s whom most of us know, when he
+was a young man at college, had a particular friend, with whom he
+made the compact that, if it were possible for the Spirit to
+return to this earth after its separation from the body, he of
+the twain who first died, should reappear to the other.&nbsp; In
+course of time, this compact was forgotten by our friend; the two
+young men having progressed in life, and taken diverging paths
+that were wide asunder.&nbsp; But, one night, many years
+afterwards, our friend being in the North of England, and staying
+for the night in an inn, on the Yorkshire Moors, happened to look
+out of bed; and there, in the moonlight, leaning on a bureau near
+the window, steadfastly regarding him, saw his old college
+friend!&nbsp; The appearance being solemnly addressed, replied,
+in a kind of whisper, but very audibly, &ldquo;Do not come near
+me.&nbsp; I am dead.&nbsp; I am here to redeem my promise.&nbsp;
+I come from another world, but may not disclose its
+secrets!&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, the whole form becoming paler,
+melted, as it were, into the moonlight, and faded away.</p>
+<p>Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of the
+picturesque Elizabethan house, so famous in our
+neighbourhood.&nbsp; You have heard about her?&nbsp; No!&nbsp;
+Why, <i>She</i> went out one summer evening at twilight, when she
+was a beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age, to gather
+flowers in the garden; and presently came running, terrified,
+into the hall to her father, saying, &ldquo;Oh, dear father, I
+have met myself!&rdquo;&nbsp; He took her in his arms, and told
+her it was fancy, but she said, &ldquo;Oh no!&nbsp; I met myself
+in the broad walk, and I was pale and gathering withered flowers,
+and I turned my head, and held them up!&rdquo;&nbsp; And, that
+night, she died; and a picture of her story was begun, though
+never finished, and they say it is somewhere in the house to this
+day, with its face to the wall.</p>
+<p>Or, the uncle of my brother&rsquo;s wife was riding home on
+horseback, one mellow evening at sunset, when, in a green lane
+close to his own house, he saw a man standing before him, in the
+very centre of a narrow way.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why does that man in
+the cloak stand there!&rdquo; he thought.&nbsp; &ldquo;Does he
+want me to ride over him?&rdquo;&nbsp; But the figure never
+moved.&nbsp; He felt a strange sensation at seeing it so still,
+but slackened his trot and rode forward.&nbsp; When he was so
+close to it, as almost to touch it with his stirrup, his horse
+shied, and the figure glided up the bank, in a curious, unearthly
+manner&mdash;backward, and without seeming to use its
+feet&mdash;and was gone.&nbsp; The uncle of my brother&rsquo;s
+wife, exclaiming, &ldquo;Good Heaven!&nbsp; It&rsquo;s my cousin
+Harry, from Bombay!&rdquo; put spurs to his horse, which was
+suddenly in a profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange
+behaviour, dashed round to the front of his house.&nbsp; There,
+he saw the same figure, just passing in at the long French window
+of the drawing-room, opening on the ground.&nbsp; He threw his
+bridle to a servant, and hastened in after it.&nbsp; His sister
+was sitting there, alone.&nbsp; &ldquo;Alice, where&rsquo;s my
+cousin Harry?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Your cousin Harry,
+John?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes.&nbsp; From Bombay.&nbsp; I met him
+in the lane just now, and saw him enter here, this
+instant.&rdquo;&nbsp; Not a creature had been seen by any one;
+and in that hour and minute, as it afterwards appeared, this
+cousin died in India.</p>
+<p>Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who died at
+ninety-nine, and retained her faculties to the last, who really
+did see the Orphan Boy; a story which has often been incorrectly
+told, but, of which the real truth is this&mdash;because it is,
+in fact, a story belonging to our family&mdash;and she was a
+connexion of our family.&nbsp; When she was about forty years of
+age, and still an uncommonly fine woman (her lover died young,
+which was the reason why she never married, though she had many
+offers), she went to stay at a place in Kent, which her brother,
+an Indian-Merchant, had newly bought.&nbsp; There was a story
+that this place had once been held in trust by the guardian of a
+young boy; who was himself the next heir, and who killed the
+young boy by harsh and cruel treatment.&nbsp; She knew nothing of
+that.&nbsp; It has been said that there was a Cage in her bedroom
+in which the guardian used to put the boy.&nbsp; There was no
+such thing.&nbsp; There was only a closet.&nbsp; She went to bed,
+made no alarm whatever in the night, and in the morning said
+composedly to her maid when she came in, &ldquo;Who is the pretty
+forlorn-looking child who has been peeping out of that closet all
+night?&rdquo;&nbsp; The maid replied by giving a loud scream, and
+instantly decamping.&nbsp; She was surprised; but she was a woman
+of remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed herself and went
+downstairs, and closeted herself with her brother.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Now, Walter,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have been disturbed
+all night by a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been
+constantly peeping out of that closet in my room, which I
+can&rsquo;t open.&nbsp; This is some trick.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+am afraid not, Charlotte,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for it is the
+legend of the house.&nbsp; It is the Orphan Boy.&nbsp; What did
+he do?&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;He opened the door softly,&rdquo; said
+she, &ldquo;and peeped out.&nbsp; Sometimes, he came a step or
+two into the room.&nbsp; Then, I called to him, to encourage him,
+and he shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the
+door.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;The closet has no communication,
+Charlotte,&rdquo; said her brother, &ldquo;with any other part of
+the house, and it&rsquo;s nailed up.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was
+undeniably true, and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to
+get it open, for examination.&nbsp; Then, she was satisfied that
+she had seen the Orphan Boy.&nbsp; But, the wild and terrible
+part of the story is, that he was also seen by three of her
+brother&rsquo;s sons, in succession, who all died young.&nbsp; On
+the occasion of each child being taken ill, he came home in a
+heat, twelve hours before, and said, Oh, Mamma, he had been
+playing under a particular oak-tree, in a certain meadow, with a
+strange boy&mdash;a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who was very
+timid, and made signs!&nbsp; From fatal experience, the parents
+came to know that this was the Orphan Boy, and that the course of
+that child whom he chose for his little playmate was surely
+run.</p>
+<p>Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit up
+alone to wait for the Spectre&mdash;where we are shown into a
+room, made comparatively cheerful for our reception&mdash;where
+we glance round at the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the
+crackling fire&mdash;where we feel very lonely when the village
+innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired, after laying down
+a fresh store of wood upon the hearth, and setting forth on the
+small table such supper-cheer as a cold roast capon, bread,
+grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine&mdash;where the
+reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after another,
+like so many peals of sullen thunder&mdash;and where, about the
+small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of divers
+supernatural mysteries.&nbsp; Legion is the name of the haunted
+German students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire,
+while the schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round,
+and flies off the footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the
+door accidentally blows open.&nbsp; Vast is the crop of such
+fruit, shining on our Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the
+very top; ripening all down the boughs!</p>
+<p>Among the later toys and fancies hanging there&mdash;as idle
+often and less pure&mdash;be the images once associated with the
+sweet old Waits, the softened music in the night, ever
+unalterable!&nbsp; Encircled by the social thoughts of
+Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood
+stand unchanged!&nbsp; In every cheerful image and suggestion
+that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the
+poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World!&nbsp; A
+moment&rsquo;s pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs
+are dark to me as yet, and let me look once more!&nbsp; I know
+there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have
+loved have shone and smiled; from which they are departed.&nbsp;
+But, far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and the
+Widow&rsquo;s Son; and God is good!&nbsp; If Age be hiding for me
+in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O may I, with a
+grey head, turn a child&rsquo;s heart to that figure yet, and a
+child&rsquo;s trustfulness and confidence!</p>
+<p>Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song,
+and dance, and cheerfulness.&nbsp; And they are welcome.&nbsp;
+Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of
+the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow!&nbsp; But, as it
+sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the
+leaves.&nbsp; &ldquo;This, in commemoration of the law of love
+and kindness, mercy and compassion.&nbsp; This, in remembrance of
+Me!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>WHAT
+CHRISTMAS IS AS WE GROW OLDER.<br />
+[1851]</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Time</span> was, with most of us, when
+Christmas Day encircling all our limited world like a magic ring,
+left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our
+home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and
+every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture
+shining in our bright young eyes, complete.</p>
+<p>Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts over-leaped
+that narrow boundary; when there was some one (very dear, we
+thought then, very beautiful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to
+the fulness of our happiness; when we were wanting too (or we
+thought so, which did just as well) at the Christmas hearth by
+which that some one sat; and when we intertwined with every
+wreath and garland of our life that some one&rsquo;s name.</p>
+<p>That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which
+have long arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in
+the palest edges of the rainbow!&nbsp; That was the time for the
+beatified enjoyment of the things that were to be, and never
+were, and yet the things that were so real in our resolute hope
+that it would be hard to say, now, what realities achieved since,
+have been stronger!</p>
+<p>What!&nbsp; Did that Christmas never really come when we and
+the priceless pearl who was our young choice were received, after
+the happiest of totally impossible marriages, by the two united
+families previously at daggers&mdash;drawn on our account?&nbsp;
+When brothers and sisters-in-law who had always been rather cool
+to us before our relationship was effected, perfectly doted on
+us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited
+incomes?&nbsp; Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten,
+after which we arose, and generously and eloquently rendered
+honour to our late rival, present in the company, then and there
+exchanging friendship and forgiveness, and founding an
+attachment, not to be surpassed in Greek or Roman story, which
+subsisted until death?&nbsp; Has that same rival long ceased to
+care for that same priceless pearl, and married for money, and
+become usurious?&nbsp; Above all, do we really know, now, that we
+should probably have been miserable if we had won and worn the
+pearl, and that we are better without her?</p>
+<p>That Christmas when we had recently achieved so much fame;
+when we had been carried in triumph somewhere, for doing
+something great and good; when we had won an honoured and
+ennobled name, and arrived and were received at home in a shower
+of tears of joy; is it possible that <i>that</i> Christmas has
+not come yet?</p>
+<p>And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that,
+pausing as we advance at such a noticeable mile-stone in the
+track as this great birthday, we look back on the things that
+never were, as naturally and full as gravely as on the things
+that have been and are gone, or have been and still are?&nbsp; If
+it be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to the conclusion
+that life is little better than a dream, and little worth the
+loves and strivings that we crowd into it?</p>
+<p>No!&nbsp; Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear
+Reader, on Christmas Day!&nbsp; Nearer and closer to our hearts
+be the Christmas spirit, which is the spirit of active
+usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness
+and forbearance!&nbsp; It is in the last virtues especially, that
+we are, or should be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions
+of our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our teachers
+to deal gently even with the impalpable nothings of the
+earth!</p>
+<p>Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the
+circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they
+bring, expands!&nbsp; Let us welcome every one of them, and
+summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.</p>
+<p>Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent
+fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly!&nbsp; We know you,
+and have not outlived you yet.&nbsp; Welcome, old projects and
+old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier
+lights that burn around us.&nbsp; Welcome, all that was ever real
+to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks
+to Heaven!&nbsp; Do we build no Christmas castles in the clouds
+now?&nbsp; Let our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among
+these flowers of children, bear witness!&nbsp; Before this boy,
+there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever looked on in
+our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with
+truth.&nbsp; Around this little head on which the sunny curls lie
+heaped, the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there
+was no scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of
+our first-love.&nbsp; Upon another girl&rsquo;s face near
+it&mdash;placider but smiling bright&mdash;a quiet and contented
+little face, we see Home fairly written.&nbsp; Shining from the
+word, as rays shine from a star, we see how, when our graves are
+old, other hopes than ours are young, other hearts than ours are
+moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other happiness blooms,
+ripens, and decays&mdash;no, not decays, for other homes and
+other bands of children, not yet in being nor for ages yet to be,
+arise, and bloom and ripen to the end of all!</p>
+<p>Welcome, everything!&nbsp; Welcome, alike what has been, and
+what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter
+underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire,
+where what is sits open-hearted!&nbsp; In yonder shadow, do we
+see obtruding furtively upon the blaze, an enemy&rsquo;s
+face?&nbsp; By Christmas Day we do forgive him!&nbsp; If the
+injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him
+come here and take his place.&nbsp; If otherwise, unhappily, let
+him go hence, assured that we will never injure nor accuse
+him.</p>
+<p>On this day we shut out Nothing!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pause,&rdquo; says a low voice.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Nothing?&nbsp; Think!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside,
+Nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves
+are lying deep?&rdquo; the voice replies.&nbsp; &ldquo;Not the
+shadow that darkens the whole globe?&nbsp; Not the shadow of the
+City of the Dead?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Not even that.&nbsp; Of all days in the year, we will turn our
+faces towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent
+hosts bring those we loved, among us.&nbsp; City of the Dead, in
+the blessed name wherein we are gathered together at this time,
+and in the Presence that is here among us according to the
+promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are
+dear to us!</p>
+<p>Yes.&nbsp; We can look upon these children angels that alight,
+so solemnly, so beautifully among the living children by the
+fire, and can bear to think how they departed from us.&nbsp;
+Entertaining angels unawares, as the Patriarchs did, the playful
+children are unconscious of their guests; but we can see
+them&mdash;can see a radiant arm around one favourite neck, as if
+there were a tempting of that child away.&nbsp; Among the
+celestial figures there is one, a poor misshapen boy on earth, of
+a glorious beauty now, of whom his dying mother said it grieved
+her much to leave him here, alone, for so many years as it was
+likely would elapse before he came to her&mdash;being such a
+little child.&nbsp; But he went quickly, and was laid upon her
+breast, and in her hand she leads him.</p>
+<p>There was a gallant boy, who fell, far away, upon a burning
+sand beneath a burning sun, and said, &ldquo;Tell them at home,
+with my last love, how much I could have wished to kiss them
+once, but that I died contented and had done my
+duty!&rdquo;&nbsp; Or there was another, over whom they read the
+words, &ldquo;Therefore we commit his body to the deep,&rdquo;
+and so consigned him to the lonely ocean and sailed on.&nbsp; Or
+there was another, who lay down to his rest in the dark shadow of
+great forests, and, on earth, awoke no more.&nbsp; O shall they
+not, from sand and sea and forest, be brought home at such a
+time!</p>
+<p>There was a dear girl&mdash;almost a woman&mdash;never to be
+one&mdash;who made a mourning Christmas in a house of joy, and
+went her trackless way to the silent City.&nbsp; Do we recollect
+her, worn out, faintly whispering what could not be heard, and
+falling into that last sleep for weariness?&nbsp; O look upon her
+now!&nbsp; O look upon her beauty, her serenity, her changeless
+youth, her happiness!&nbsp; The daughter of Jairus was recalled
+to life, to die; but she, more blest, has heard the same voice,
+saying unto her, &ldquo;Arise for ever!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We had a friend who was our friend from early days, with whom
+we often pictured the changes that were to come upon our lives,
+and merrily imagined how we would speak, and walk, and think, and
+talk, when we came to be old.&nbsp; His destined habitation in
+the City of the Dead received him in his prime.&nbsp; Shall he be
+shut out from our Christmas remembrance?&nbsp; Would his love
+have so excluded us?&nbsp; Lost friend, lost child, lost parent,
+sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you!&nbsp;
+You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and
+by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and
+on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!</p>
+<p>The winter sun goes down over town and village; on the sea it
+makes a rosy path, as if the Sacred tread were fresh upon the
+water.&nbsp; A few more moments, and it sinks, and night comes
+on, and lights begin to sparkle in the prospect.&nbsp; On the
+hill-side beyond the shapelessly-diffused town, and in the quiet
+keeping of the trees that gird the village-steeple, remembrances
+are cut in stone, planted in common flowers, growing in grass,
+entwined with lowly brambles around many a mound of earth.&nbsp;
+In town and village, there are doors and windows closed against
+the weather, there are flaming logs heaped high, there are joyful
+faces, there is healthy music of voices.&nbsp; Be all
+ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of the Household
+Gods, but be those remembrances admitted with tender
+encouragement!&nbsp; They are of the time and all its comforting
+and peaceful reassurances; and of the history that re-united even
+upon earth the living and the dead; and of the broad beneficence
+and goodness that too many men have tried to tear to narrow
+shreds.</p>
+<h2><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>THE
+POOR RELATION&rsquo;S STORY.<br />
+[1852]</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">He</span> was very reluctant to take
+precedence of so many respected members of the family, by
+beginning the round of stories they were to relate as they sat in
+a goodly circle by the Christmas fire; and he modestly suggested
+that it would be more correct if &ldquo;John our esteemed
+host&rdquo; (whose health he begged to drink) would have the
+kindness to begin.&nbsp; For as to himself, he said, he was so
+little used to lead the way that really&mdash;&nbsp; But as they
+all cried out here, that he must begin, and agreed with one voice
+that he might, could, would, and should begin, he left off
+rubbing his hands, and took his legs out from under his armchair,
+and did begin.</p>
+<p>I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise
+the assembled members of our family, and particularly John our
+esteemed host to whom we are so much indebted for the great
+hospitality with which he has this day entertained us, by the
+confession I am going to make.&nbsp; But, if you do me the honour
+to be surprised at anything that falls from a person so
+unimportant in the family as I am, I can only say that I shall be
+scrupulously accurate in all I relate.</p>
+<p>I am not what I am supposed to be.&nbsp; I am quite another
+thing.&nbsp; Perhaps before I go further, I had better glance at
+what I <i>am</i> supposed to be.</p>
+<p>It is supposed, unless I mistake&mdash;the assembled members
+of our family will correct me if I do, which is very likely (here
+the poor relation looked mildly about him for contradiction);
+that I am nobody&rsquo;s enemy but my own.&nbsp; That I never met
+with any particular success in anything.&nbsp; That I failed in
+business because I was unbusiness-like and credulous&mdash;in not
+being prepared for the interested designs of my partner.&nbsp;
+That I failed in love, because I was ridiculously
+trustful&mdash;in thinking it impossible that Christiana could
+deceive me.&nbsp; That I failed in my expectations from my uncle
+Chill, on account of not being as sharp as he could have wished
+in worldly matters.&nbsp; That, through life, I have been rather
+put upon and disappointed in a general way.&nbsp; That I am at
+present a bachelor of between fifty-nine and sixty years of age,
+living on a limited income in the form of a quarterly allowance,
+to which I see that John our esteemed host wishes me to make no
+further allusion.</p>
+<p>The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to the
+following effect.</p>
+<p>I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road&mdash;a very clean
+back room, in a very respectable house&mdash;where I am expected
+not to be at home in the day-time, unless poorly; and which I
+usually leave in the morning at nine o&rsquo;clock, on pretence
+of going to business.&nbsp; I take my breakfast&mdash;my roll and
+butter, and my half-pint of coffee&mdash;at the old-established
+coffee-shop near Westminster Bridge; and then I go into the
+City&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know why&mdash;and sit in
+Garraway&rsquo;s Coffee House, and on &rsquo;Change, and walk
+about, and look into a few offices and counting-houses where some
+of my relations or acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me,
+and where I stand by the fire if the weather happens to be
+cold.&nbsp; I get through the day in this way until five
+o&rsquo;clock, and then I dine: at a cost, on the average, of one
+and threepence.&nbsp; Having still a little money to spend on my
+evening&rsquo;s entertainment, I look into the old-established
+coffee-shop as I go home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my
+bit of toast.&nbsp; So, as the large hand of the clock makes its
+way round to the morning hour again, I make my way round to the
+Clapham Road again, and go to bed when I get to my
+lodging&mdash;fire being expensive, and being objected to by the
+family on account of its giving trouble and making a dirt.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so obliging
+as to ask me to dinner.&nbsp; Those are holiday occasions, and
+then I generally walk in the Park.&nbsp; I am a solitary man, and
+seldom walk with anybody.&nbsp; Not that I am avoided because I
+am shabby; for I am not at all shabby, having always a very good
+suit of black on (or rather Oxford mixture, which has the
+appearance of black and wears much better); but I have got into a
+habit of speaking low, and being rather silent, and my spirits
+are not high, and I am sensible that I am not an attractive
+companion.</p>
+<p>The only exception to this general rule is the child of my
+first cousin, Little Frank.&nbsp; I have a particular affection
+for that child, and he takes very kindly to me.&nbsp; He is a
+diffident boy by nature; and in a crowd he is soon run over, as I
+may say, and forgotten.&nbsp; He and I, however, get on
+exceedingly well.&nbsp; I have a fancy that the poor child will
+in time succeed to my peculiar position in the family.&nbsp; We
+talk but little; still, we understand each other.&nbsp; We walk
+about, hand in hand; and without much speaking he knows what I
+mean, and I know what he means.&nbsp; When he was very little
+indeed, I used to take him to the windows of the toy-shops, and
+show him the toys inside.&nbsp; It is surprising how soon he
+found out that I would have made him a great many presents if I
+had been in circumstances to do it.</p>
+<p>Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the
+Monument&mdash;he is very fond of the Monument&mdash;and at the
+Bridges, and at all the sights that are free.&nbsp; On two of my
+birthdays, we have dined on &agrave;-la-mode beef, and gone at
+half-price to the play, and been deeply interested.&nbsp; I was
+once walking with him in Lombard Street, which we often visit on
+account of my having mentioned to him that there are great riches
+there&mdash;he is very fond of Lombard Street&mdash;when a
+gentleman said to me as he passed by, &ldquo;Sir, your little son
+has dropped his glove.&rdquo;&nbsp; I assure you, if you will
+excuse my remarking on so trivial a circumstance, this accidental
+mention of the child as mine, quite touched my heart and brought
+the foolish tears into my eyes.</p>
+<p>When Little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be
+very much at a loss what to do with myself, but I have the
+intention of walking down there once a month and seeing him on a
+half holiday.&nbsp; I am told he will then be at play upon the
+Heath; and if my visits should be objected to, as unsettling the
+child, I can see him from a distance without his seeing me, and
+walk back again.&nbsp; His mother comes of a highly genteel
+family, and rather disapproves, I am aware, of our being too much
+together.&nbsp; I know that I am not calculated to improve his
+retiring disposition; but I think he would miss me beyond the
+feeling of the moment if we were wholly separated.</p>
+<p>When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave much more in
+this world than I shall take out of it; but, I happen to have a
+miniature of a bright-faced boy, with a curling head, and an open
+shirt-frill waving down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me,
+but I can&rsquo;t believe that it was ever like), which will be
+worth nothing to sell, and which I shall beg may he given to
+Frank.&nbsp; I have written my dear boy a little letter with it,
+in which I have told him that I felt very sorry to part from him,
+though bound to confess that I knew no reason why I should remain
+here.&nbsp; I have given him some short advice, the best in my
+power, to take warning of the consequences of being
+nobody&rsquo;s enemy but his own; and I have endeavoured to
+comfort him for what I fear he will consider a bereavement, by
+pointing out to him, that I was only a superfluous something to
+every one but him; and that having by some means failed to find a
+place in this great assembly, I am better out of it.</p>
+<p>Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and
+beginning to speak a little louder) is the general impression
+about me.&nbsp; Now, it is a remarkable circumstance which forms
+the aim and purpose of my story, that this is all wrong.&nbsp;
+This is not my life, and these are not my habits.&nbsp; I do not
+even live in the Clapham Road.&nbsp; Comparatively speaking, I am
+very seldom there.&nbsp; I reside, mostly, in a&mdash;I am almost
+ashamed to say the word, it sounds so full of pretension&mdash;in
+a Castle.&nbsp; I do not mean that it is an old baronial
+habitation, but still it is a building always known to every one
+by the name of a Castle.&nbsp; In it, I preserve the particulars
+of my history; they run thus:</p>
+<p>It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk)
+into partnership, and when I was still a young man of not more
+than five-and-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle Chill,
+from whom I had considerable expectations, that I ventured to
+propose to Christiana.&nbsp; I had loved Christiana a long
+time.&nbsp; She was very beautiful, and very winning in all
+respects.&nbsp; I rather mistrusted her widowed mother, who I
+feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind; but, I
+thought as well of her as I could, for Christiana&rsquo;s
+sake.&nbsp; I never had loved any one but Christiana, and she had
+been all the world, and O far more than all the world, to me,
+from our childhood!</p>
+<p>Christiana accepted me with her mother&rsquo;s consent, and I
+was rendered very happy indeed.&nbsp; My life at my uncle
+Chill&rsquo;s was of a spare dull kind, and my garret chamber was
+as dull, and bare, and cold, as an upper prison room in some
+stern northern fortress.&nbsp; But, having Christiana&rsquo;s
+love, I wanted nothing upon earth.&nbsp; I would not have changed
+my lot with any human being.</p>
+<p>Avarice was, unhappily, my uncle Chill&rsquo;s
+master-vice.&nbsp; Though he was rich, he pinched, and scraped,
+and clutched, and lived miserably.&nbsp; As Christiana had no
+fortune, I was for some time a little fearful of confessing our
+engagement to him; but, at length I wrote him a letter, saying
+how it all truly was.&nbsp; I put it into his hand one night, on
+going to bed.</p>
+<p>As I came down-stairs next morning, shivering in the cold
+December air; colder in my uncle&rsquo;s unwarmed house than in
+the street, where the winter sun did sometimes shine, and which
+was at all events enlivened by cheerful faces and voices passing
+along; I carried a heavy heart towards the long, low
+breakfast-room in which my uncle sat.&nbsp; It was a large room
+with a small fire, and there was a great bay window in it which
+the rain had marked in the night as if with the tears of
+houseless people.&nbsp; It stared upon a raw yard, with a cracked
+stone pavement, and some rusted iron railings half uprooted,
+whence an ugly out-building that had once been a dissecting-room
+(in the time of the great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to
+my uncle), stared at it.</p>
+<p>We rose so early always, that at that time of the year we
+breakfasted by candle-light.&nbsp; When I went into the room, my
+uncle was so contracted by the cold, and so huddled together in
+his chair behind the one dim candle, that I did not see him until
+I was close to the table.</p>
+<p>As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being
+infirm, he always walked about the house with a stick), and made
+a blow at me, and said, &ldquo;You fool!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; I returned, &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t expect
+you to be so angry as this.&rdquo;&nbsp; Nor had I expected it,
+though he was a hard and angry old man.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t expect!&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;when
+did you ever expect?&nbsp; When did you ever calculate, or look
+forward, you contemptible dog?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;These are hard words, uncle!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hard words?&nbsp; Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as
+you with,&rdquo; said he.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here!&nbsp; Betsy
+Snap!&nbsp; Look at him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old
+woman&mdash;our only domestic&mdash;always employed, at this time
+of the morning, in rubbing my uncle&rsquo;s legs.&nbsp; As my
+uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his lean grip on the
+crown of her head, she kneeling beside him, and turned her face
+towards me.&nbsp; An involuntary thought connecting them both
+with the Dissecting Room, as it must often have been in the
+surgeon&rsquo;s time, passed across my mind in the midst of my
+anxiety.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look at the snivelling milksop!&rdquo; said my
+uncle.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look at the baby!&nbsp; This is the gentleman
+who, people say, is nobody&rsquo;s enemy but his own.&nbsp; This
+is the gentleman who can&rsquo;t say no.&nbsp; This is the
+gentleman who was making such large profits in his business that
+he must needs take a partner, t&rsquo;other day.&nbsp; This is
+the gentleman who is going to marry a wife without a penny, and
+who falls into the hands of Jezabels who are speculating on my
+death!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I knew, now, how great my uncle&rsquo;s rage was; for nothing
+short of his being almost beside himself would have induced him
+to utter that concluding word, which he held in such repugnance
+that it was never spoken or hinted at before him on any
+account.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;On my death,&rdquo; he repeated, as if he were defying
+me by defying his own abhorrence of the word.&nbsp; &ldquo;On my
+death&mdash;death&mdash;Death!&nbsp; But I&rsquo;ll spoil the
+speculation.&nbsp; Eat your last under this roof, you feeble
+wretch, and may it choke you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>You may suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast
+to which I was bidden in these terms; but, I took my accustomed
+seat.&nbsp; I saw that I was repudiated henceforth by my uncle;
+still I could bear that very well, possessing Christiana&rsquo;s
+heart.</p>
+<p>He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he
+took it on his knees with his chair turned away from the table
+where I sat.&nbsp; When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the
+candle; and the cold, slate-coloured, miserable day looked in
+upon us.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, Mr. Michael,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;before we
+part, I should like to have a word with these ladies in your
+presence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As you will, sir,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;but you
+deceive yourself, and wrong us, cruelly, if you suppose that
+there is any feeling at stake in this contract but pure,
+disinterested, faithful love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To this, he only replied, &ldquo;You lie!&rdquo; and not one
+other word.</p>
+<p>We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to the
+house where Christiana and her mother lived.&nbsp; My uncle knew
+them very well.&nbsp; They were sitting at their breakfast, and
+were surprised to see us at that hour.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your servant, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said my uncle to the
+mother.&nbsp; &ldquo;You divine the purpose of my visit, I dare
+say, ma&rsquo;am.&nbsp; I understand there is a world of pure,
+disinterested, faithful love cooped up here.&nbsp; I am happy to
+bring it all it wants, to make it complete.&nbsp; I bring you
+your son-in-law, ma&rsquo;am&mdash;and you, your husband,
+miss.&nbsp; The gentleman is a perfect stranger to me, but I wish
+him joy of his wise bargain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him
+again.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relation) to
+suppose that my dear Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced by
+her mother, married a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage
+wheels is often, in these changed times, thrown upon me as she
+rides by.&nbsp; No, no.&nbsp; She married me.</p>
+<p>The way we came to be married rather sooner than we intended,
+was this.&nbsp; I took a frugal lodging and was saving and
+planning for her sake, when, one day, she spoke to me with great
+earnestness, and said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Michael, I have given you my heart.&nbsp; I
+have said that I loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your
+wife.&nbsp; I am as much yours through all changes of good and
+evil as if we had been married on the day when such words passed
+between us.&nbsp; I know you well, and know that if we should be
+separated and our union broken off, your whole life would be
+shadowed, and all that might, even now, be stronger in your
+character for the conflict with the world would then be weakened
+to the shadow of what it is!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;God help me, Christiana!&rdquo; said I.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;You speak the truth.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Michael!&rdquo; said she, putting her hand in mine, in
+all maidenly devotion, &ldquo;let us keep apart no longer.&nbsp;
+It is but for me to say that I can live contented upon such means
+as you have, and I well know you are happy.&nbsp; I say so from
+my heart.&nbsp; Strive no more alone; let us strive
+together.&nbsp; My dear Michael, it is not right that I should
+keep secret from you what you do not suspect, but what distresses
+my whole life.&nbsp; My mother: without considering that what you
+have lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of my
+faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me,
+to my misery.&nbsp; I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be
+untrue to you.&nbsp; I would rather share your struggles than
+look on.&nbsp; I want no better home than you can give me.&nbsp;
+I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I
+am wholly yours, and let it be so when you will!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to
+me.&nbsp; We were married in a very little while, and I took my
+wife to our happy home.&nbsp; That was the beginning of the
+residence I have spoken of; the Castle we have ever since
+inhabited together, dates from that time.&nbsp; All our children
+have been born in it.&nbsp; Our first child&mdash;now
+married&mdash;was a little girl, whom we called Christiana.&nbsp;
+Her son is so like Little Frank, that I hardly know which is
+which.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>The current impression as to my partner&rsquo;s dealings with
+me is also quite erroneous.&nbsp; He did not begin to treat me
+coldly, as a poor simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally
+quarrelled; nor did he afterwards gradually possess himself of
+our business and edge me out.&nbsp; On the contrary, he behaved
+to me with the utmost good faith and honour.</p>
+<p>Matters between us took this turn:&mdash;On the day of my
+separation from my uncle, and even before the arrival at our
+counting-house of my trunks (which he sent after me, <i>not</i>
+carriage paid), I went down to our room of business, on our
+little wharf, overlooking the river; and there I told John
+Spatter what had happened.&nbsp; John did not say, in reply, that
+rich old relatives were palpable facts, and that love and
+sentiment were moonshine and fiction.&nbsp; He addressed me
+thus:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Michael,&rdquo; said John, &ldquo;we were at school
+together, and I generally had the knack of getting on better than
+you, and making a higher reputation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You had, John,&rdquo; I returned.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Although&rdquo; said John, &ldquo;I borrowed your books
+and lost them; borrowed your pocket-money, and never repaid it;
+got you to buy my damaged knives at a higher price than I had
+given for them new; and to own to the windows that I had
+broken.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All not worth mentioning, John Spatter,&rdquo; said I,
+&ldquo;but certainly true.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When you were first established in this infant
+business, which promises to thrive so well,&rdquo; pursued John,
+&ldquo;I came to you, in my search for almost any employment, and
+you made me your clerk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Still not worth mentioning, my dear John
+Spatter,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;still, equally true.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And finding that I had a good head for business, and
+that I was really useful <i>to</i> the business, you did not like
+to retain me in that capacity, and thought it an act of justice
+soon to make me your partner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Still less worth mentioning than any of those other
+little circumstances you have recalled, John Spatter,&rdquo; said
+I; &ldquo;for I was, and am, sensible of your merits and my
+deficiencies.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, my good friend,&rdquo; said John, drawing my arm
+through his, as he had had a habit of doing at school; while two
+vessels outside the windows of our counting-house&mdash;which
+were shaped like the stern windows of a ship&mdash;went lightly
+down the river with the tide, as John and I might then be sailing
+away in company, and in trust and confidence, on our voyage of
+life; &ldquo;let there, under these friendly circumstances, be a
+right understanding between us.&nbsp; You are too easy,
+Michael.&nbsp; You are nobody&rsquo;s enemy but your own.&nbsp;
+If I were to give you that damaging character among our
+connexion, with a shrug, and a shake of the head, and a sigh; and
+if I were further to abuse the trust you place in
+me&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you never will abuse it at all, John,&rdquo; I
+observed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but I am putting a
+case&mdash;I say, and if I were further to abuse that trust by
+keeping this piece of our common affairs in the dark, and this
+other piece in the light, and again this other piece in the
+twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my strength, and weaken
+your weakness, day by day, until at last I found myself on the
+high road to fortune, and you left behind on some bare common, a
+hopeless number of miles out of the way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Exactly so,&rdquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To prevent this, Michael,&rdquo; said John Spatter,
+&ldquo;or the remotest chance of this, there must be perfect
+openness between us.&nbsp; Nothing must be concealed, and we must
+have but one interest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear John Spatter,&rdquo; I assured him, &ldquo;that
+is precisely what I mean.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And when you are too easy,&rdquo; pursued John, his
+face glowing with friendship, &ldquo;you must allow me to prevent
+that imperfection in your nature from being taken advantage of,
+by any one; you must not expect me to humour it&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear John Spatter,&rdquo; I interrupted, &ldquo;I
+<i>don&rsquo;t</i> expect you to humour it.&nbsp; I want to
+correct it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I, too,&rdquo; said John.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Exactly so!&rdquo; cried I.&nbsp; &ldquo;We both have
+the same end in view; and, honourably seeking it, and fully
+trusting one another, and having but one interest, ours will be a
+prosperous and happy partnership.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am sure of it!&rdquo; returned John Spatter.&nbsp;
+And we shook hands most affectionately.</p>
+<p>I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very happy
+day.&nbsp; Our partnership throve well.&nbsp; My friend and
+partner supplied what I wanted, as I had foreseen that he would,
+and by improving both the business and myself, amply acknowledged
+any little rise in life to which I had helped him.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>I am not (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as he
+slowly rubbed his hands) very rich, for I never cared to be that;
+but I have enough, and am above all moderate wants and
+anxieties.&nbsp; My Castle is not a splendid place, but it is
+very comfortable, and it has a warm and cheerful air, and is
+quite a picture of Home.</p>
+<p>Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, married John
+Spatter&rsquo;s eldest son.&nbsp; Our two families are closely
+united in other ties of attachment.&nbsp; It is very pleasant of
+an evening, when we are all assembled together&mdash;which
+frequently happens&mdash;and when John and I talk over old times,
+and the one interest there has always been between us.</p>
+<p>I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness is.&nbsp;
+Some of our children or grandchildren are always about it, and
+the young voices of my descendants are delightful&mdash;O, how
+delightful!&mdash;to me to hear.&nbsp; My dearest and most
+devoted wife, ever faithful, ever loving, ever helpful and
+sustaining and consoling, is the priceless blessing of my house;
+from whom all its other blessings spring.&nbsp; We are rather a
+musical family, and when Christiana sees me, at any time, a
+little weary or depressed, she steals to the piano and sings a
+gentle air she used to sing when we were first betrothed.&nbsp;
+So weak a man am I, that I cannot bear to hear it from any other
+source.&nbsp; They played it once, at the Theatre, when I was
+there with Little Frank; and the child said wondering,
+&ldquo;Cousin Michael, whose hot tears are these that have fallen
+on my hand!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such is my Castle, and such are the real particulars of my
+life therein preserved.&nbsp; I often take Little Frank home
+there.&nbsp; He is very welcome to my grandchildren, and they
+play together.&nbsp; At this time of the year&mdash;the Christmas
+and New Year time&mdash;I am seldom out of my Castle.&nbsp; For,
+the associations of the season seem to hold me there, and the
+precepts of the season seem to teach me that it is well to be
+there.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>&ldquo;And the Castle is&mdash;&rdquo; observed a grave, kind
+voice among the company.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&nbsp; My Castle,&rdquo; said the poor relation,
+shaking his head as he still looked at the fire, &ldquo;is in the
+Air.&nbsp; John our esteemed host suggests its situation
+accurately.&nbsp; My Castle is in the Air!&nbsp; I have
+done.&nbsp; Will you be so good as to pass the story?&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>THE
+CHILD&rsquo;S STORY.<br />
+[1852]</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Once</span> upon a time, a good many years
+ago, there was a traveller, and he set out upon a journey.&nbsp;
+It was a magic journey, and was to seem very long when he began
+it, and very short when he got half way through.</p>
+<p>He travelled along a rather dark path for some little time,
+without meeting anything, until at last he came to a beautiful
+child.&nbsp; So he said to the child, &ldquo;What do you do
+here?&rdquo;&nbsp; And the child said, &ldquo;I am always at
+play.&nbsp; Come and play with me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So, he played with that child, the whole day long, and they
+were very merry.&nbsp; The sky was so blue, the sun was so
+bright, the water was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the
+flowers were so lovely, and they heard such singing-birds and saw
+so many butteries, that everything was beautiful.&nbsp; This was
+in fine weather.&nbsp; When it rained, they loved to watch the
+falling drops, and to smell the fresh scents.&nbsp; When it blew,
+it was delightful to listen to the wind, and fancy what it said,
+as it came rushing from its home&mdash;where was that, they
+wondered!&mdash;whistling and howling, driving the clouds before
+it, bending the trees, rumbling in the chimneys, shaking the
+house, and making the sea roar in fury.&nbsp; But, when it
+snowed, that was best of all; for, they liked nothing so well as
+to look up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down
+from the breasts of millions of white birds; and to see how
+smooth and deep the drift was; and to listen to the hush upon the
+paths and roads.</p>
+<p>They had plenty of the finest toys in the world, and the most
+astonishing picture-books: all about scimitars and slippers and
+turbans, and dwarfs and giants and genii and fairies, and
+blue-beards and bean-stalks and riches and caverns and forests
+and Valentines and Orsons: and all new and all true.</p>
+<p>But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost the child.&nbsp;
+He called to him over and over again, but got no answer.&nbsp;
+So, he went upon his road, and went on for a little while without
+meeting anything, until at last he came to a handsome boy.&nbsp;
+So, he said to the boy, &ldquo;What do you do here?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And the boy said, &ldquo;I am always learning.&nbsp; Come and
+learn with me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and Juno, and the
+Greeks and the Romans, and I don&rsquo;t know what, and learned
+more than I could tell&mdash;or he either, for he soon forgot a
+great deal of it.&nbsp; But, they were not always learning; they
+had the merriest games that ever were played.&nbsp; They rowed
+upon the river in summer, and skated on the ice in winter; they
+were active afoot, and active on horseback; at cricket, and all
+games at ball; at prisoner&rsquo;s base, hare and hounds, follow
+my leader, and more sports than I can think of; nobody could beat
+them.&nbsp; They had holidays too, and Twelfth cakes, and parties
+where they danced till midnight, and real Theatres where they saw
+palaces of real gold and silver rise out of the real earth, and
+saw all the wonders of the world at once.&nbsp; As to friends,
+they had such dear friends and so many of them, that I want the
+time to reckon them up.&nbsp; They were all young, like the
+handsome boy, and were never to be strange to one another all
+their lives through.</p>
+<p>Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures, the
+traveller lost the boy as he had lost the child, and, after
+calling to him in vain, went on upon his journey.&nbsp; So he
+went on for a little while without seeing anything, until at last
+he came to a young man.&nbsp; So, he said to the young man,
+&ldquo;What do you do here?&rdquo;&nbsp; And the young man said,
+&ldquo;I am always in love.&nbsp; Come and love with
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So, he went away with that young man, and presently they came
+to one of the prettiest girls that ever was seen&mdash;just like
+Fanny in the corner there&mdash;and she had eyes like Fanny, and
+hair like Fanny, and dimples like Fanny&rsquo;s, and she laughed
+and coloured just as Fanny does while I am talking about
+her.&nbsp; So, the young man fell in love directly&mdash;just as
+Somebody I won&rsquo;t mention, the first time he came here, did
+with Fanny.&nbsp; Well! he was teased sometimes&mdash;just as
+Somebody used to be by Fanny; and they quarrelled
+sometimes&mdash;just as Somebody and Fanny used to quarrel; and
+they made it up, and sat in the dark, and wrote letters every
+day, and never were happy asunder, and were always looking out
+for one another and pretending not to, and were engaged at
+Christmas-time, and sat close to one another by the fire, and
+were going to be married very soon&mdash;all exactly like
+Somebody I won&rsquo;t mention, and Fanny!</p>
+<p>But, the traveller lost them one day, as he had lost the rest
+of his friends, and, after calling to them to come back, which
+they never did, went on upon his journey.&nbsp; So, he went on
+for a little while without seeing anything, until at last he came
+to a middle-aged gentleman.&nbsp; So, he said to the gentleman,
+&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo;&nbsp; And his answer was,
+&ldquo;I am always busy.&nbsp; Come and be busy with
+me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So, he began to be very busy with that gentleman, and they
+went on through the wood together.&nbsp; The whole journey was
+through a wood, only it had been open and green at first, like a
+wood in spring; and now began to be thick and dark, like a wood
+in summer; some of the little trees that had come out earliest,
+were even turning brown.&nbsp; The gentleman was not alone, but
+had a lady of about the same age with him, who was his Wife; and
+they had children, who were with them too.&nbsp; So, they all
+went on together through the wood, cutting down the trees, and
+making a path through the branches and the fallen leaves, and
+carrying burdens, and working hard.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, they came to a long green avenue that opened into
+deeper woods.&nbsp; Then they would hear a very little, distant
+voice crying, &ldquo;Father, father, I am another child!&nbsp;
+Stop for me!&rdquo;&nbsp; And presently they would see a very
+little figure, growing larger as it came along, running to join
+them.&nbsp; When it came up, they all crowded round it, and
+kissed and welcomed it; and then they all went on together.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, they came to several avenues at once, and then they
+all stood still, and one of the children said, &ldquo;Father, I
+am going to sea,&rdquo; and another said, &ldquo;Father, I am
+going to India,&rdquo; and another, &ldquo;Father, I am going to
+seek my fortune where I can,&rdquo; and another, &ldquo;Father, I
+am going to Heaven!&rdquo;&nbsp; So, with many tears at parting,
+they went, solitary, down those avenues, each child upon its way;
+and the child who went to Heaven, rose into the golden air and
+vanished.</p>
+<p>Whenever these partings happened, the traveller looked at the
+gentleman, and saw him glance up at the sky above the trees,
+where the day was beginning to decline, and the sunset to come
+on.&nbsp; He saw, too, that his hair was turning grey.&nbsp; But,
+they never could rest long, for they had their journey to
+perform, and it was necessary for them to be always busy.</p>
+<p>At last, there had been so many partings that there were no
+children left, and only the traveller, the gentleman, and the
+lady, went upon their way in company.&nbsp; And now the wood was
+yellow; and now brown; and the leaves, even of the forest trees,
+began to fall.</p>
+<p>So, they came to an avenue that was darker than the rest, and
+were pressing forward on their journey without looking down it
+when the lady stopped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My husband,&rdquo; said the lady.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am
+called.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>They listened, and they heard a voice a long way down the
+avenue, say, &ldquo;Mother, mother!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was the voice of the first child who had said, &ldquo;I am
+going to Heaven!&rdquo; and the father said, &ldquo;I pray not
+yet.&nbsp; The sunset is very near.&nbsp; I pray not
+yet!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But, the voice cried, &ldquo;Mother, mother!&rdquo; without
+minding him, though his hair was now quite white, and tears were
+on his face.</p>
+<p>Then, the mother, who was already drawn into the shade of the
+dark avenue and moving away with her arms still round his neck,
+kissed him, and said, &ldquo;My dearest, I am summoned, and I
+go!&rdquo;&nbsp; And she was gone.&nbsp; And the traveller and he
+were left alone together.</p>
+<p>And they went on and on together, until they came to very near
+the end of the wood: so near, that they could see the sunset
+shining red before them through the trees.</p>
+<p>Yet, once more, while he broke his way among the branches, the
+traveller lost his friend.&nbsp; He called and called, but there
+was no reply, and when he passed out of the wood, and saw the
+peaceful sun going down upon a wide purple prospect, he came to
+an old man sitting on a fallen tree.&nbsp; So, he said to the old
+man, &ldquo;What do you do here?&rdquo;&nbsp; And the old man
+said with a calm smile, &ldquo;I am always remembering.&nbsp;
+Come and remember with me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So the traveller sat down by the side of that old man, face to
+face with the serene sunset; and all his friends came softly back
+and stood around him.&nbsp; The beautiful child, the handsome
+boy, the young man in love, the father, mother, and children:
+every one of them was there, and he had lost nothing.&nbsp; So,
+he loved them all, and was kind and forbearing with them all, and
+was always pleased to watch them all, and they all honoured and
+loved him.&nbsp; And I think the traveller must be yourself, dear
+Grandfather, because this what you do to us, and what we do to
+you.</p>
+<h2><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>THE
+SCHOOLBOY&rsquo;S STORY.<br />
+[1853]</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Being</span> rather young at
+present&mdash;I am getting on in years, but still I am rather
+young&mdash;I have no particular adventures of my own to fall
+back upon.&nbsp; It wouldn&rsquo;t much interest anybody here, I
+suppose, to know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin
+<i>she</i> is, or how they do stick it into
+parents&mdash;particularly hair-cutting, and medical
+attendance.&nbsp; One of our fellows was charged in his
+half&rsquo;s account twelve and sixpence for two
+pills&mdash;tolerably profitable at six and threepence a-piece, I
+should think&mdash;and he never took them either, but put them up
+the sleeve of his jacket.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Schoolboy with book: illustrated by Fred Walker"
+title=
+"Schoolboy with book: illustrated by Fred Walker"
+ src="images/fps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>As to the beef, it&rsquo;s shameful.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s
+<i>not</i> beef.&nbsp; Regular beef isn&rsquo;t veins.&nbsp; You
+can chew regular beef.&nbsp; Besides which, there&rsquo;s gravy
+to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours.&nbsp; Another
+of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell
+his father that he couldn&rsquo;t account for his complaint
+unless it was the beer.&nbsp; Of course it was the beer, and well
+it might be!</p>
+<p>However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different
+things.&nbsp; So is beer.&nbsp; It was Old Cheeseman I meant to
+tell about; not the manner in which our fellows get their
+constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.</p>
+<p>Why, look at the pie-crust alone.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s no
+flakiness in it.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s solid&mdash;like damp
+lead.&nbsp; Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bolstered
+for calling out and waking other fellows.&nbsp; Who can
+wonder!</p>
+<p>Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on
+over his night-cap, got hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket-bat,
+and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from
+his appearance he was a Ghost.&nbsp; Why, he never would have
+done that if his meals had been wholesome.&nbsp; When we all
+begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they&rsquo;ll be sorry for
+it.</p>
+<p>Old Cheeseman wasn&rsquo;t second Latin Master then; he was a
+fellow himself.&nbsp; He was first brought there, very small, in
+a post-chaise, by a woman who was always taking snuff and shaking
+him&mdash;and that was the most he remembered about it.&nbsp; He
+never went home for the holidays.&nbsp; His accounts (he never
+learnt any extras) were sent to a Bank, and the Bank paid them;
+and he had a brown suit twice a-year, and went into boots at
+twelve.&nbsp; They were always too big for him, too.</p>
+<p>In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows who lived
+within walking distance, used to come back and climb the trees
+outside the playground wall, on purpose to look at Old Cheeseman
+reading there by himself.&nbsp; He was always as mild as the
+tea&mdash;and <i>that&rsquo;s</i> pretty mild, I should
+hope!&mdash;so when they whistled to him, he looked up and
+nodded; and when they said, &ldquo;Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what
+have you had for dinner?&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Boiled
+mutton;&rdquo; and when they said, &ldquo;An&rsquo;t it solitary,
+Old Cheeseman?&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;It is a little dull
+sometimes:&rdquo; and then they said, &ldquo;Well good-bye, Old
+Cheeseman!&rdquo; and climbed down again.&nbsp; Of course it was
+imposing on Old Cheeseman to give him nothing but boiled mutton
+through a whole Vacation, but that was just like the
+system.&nbsp; When they didn&rsquo;t give him boiled mutton, they
+gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat.&nbsp; And saved
+the butcher.</p>
+<p>So Old Cheeseman went on.&nbsp; The holidays brought him into
+other trouble besides the loneliness; because when the fellows
+began to come back, not wanting to, he was always glad to see
+them; which was aggravating when they were not at all glad to see
+him, and so he got his head knocked against walls, and that was
+the way his nose bled.&nbsp; But he was a favourite in
+general.&nbsp; Once a subscription was raised for him; and, to
+keep up his spirits, he was presented before the holidays with
+two white mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful puppy.&nbsp;
+Old Cheeseman cried about it&mdash;especially soon afterwards,
+when they all ate one another.</p>
+<p>Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of all
+sorts of cheeses&mdash;Double Glo&rsquo;sterman, Family
+Cheshireman, Dutchman, North Wiltshireman, and all that.&nbsp;
+But he never minded it.&nbsp; And I don&rsquo;t mean to say he
+was old in point of years&mdash;because he
+wasn&rsquo;t&mdash;only he was called from the first, Old
+Cheeseman.</p>
+<p>At last, Old Cheeseman was made second Latin Master.&nbsp; He
+was brought in one morning at the beginning of a new half, and
+presented to the school in that capacity as &ldquo;Mr.
+Cheeseman.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then our fellows all agreed that Old
+Cheeseman was a spy, and a deserter, who had gone over to the
+enemy&rsquo;s camp, and sold himself for gold.&nbsp; It was no
+excuse for him that he had sold himself for very little
+gold&mdash;two pound ten a quarter and his washing, as was
+reported.&nbsp; It was decided by a Parliament which sat about
+it, that Old Cheeseman&rsquo;s mercenary motives could alone be
+taken into account, and that he had &ldquo;coined our blood for
+drachmas.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Parliament took the expression out of
+the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius.</p>
+<p>When it was settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman was
+a tremendous traitor, who had wormed himself into our
+fellows&rsquo; secrets on purpose to get himself into favour by
+giving up everything he knew, all courageous fellows were invited
+to come forward and enrol themselves in a Society for making a
+set against him.&nbsp; The President of the Society was First
+boy, named Bob Tarter.&nbsp; His father was in the West Indies,
+and he owned, himself, that his father was worth Millions.&nbsp;
+He had great power among our fellows, and he wrote a parody,
+beginning&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Who made believe to be so meek<br />
+That we could hardly hear him speak,<br />
+Yet turned out an Informing Sneak?<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Old Cheeseman.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&mdash;and on in that way through more than a dozen verses,
+which he used to go and sing, every morning, close by the new
+master&rsquo;s desk.&nbsp; He trained one of the low boys, too, a
+rosy-cheeked little Brass who didn&rsquo;t care what he did, to
+go up to him with his Latin Grammar one morning, and say it so:
+<i>Nominativus pronominum</i>&mdash;Old Cheeseman, <i>raro
+exprimitur</i>&mdash;was never suspected, <i>nisi
+distinctionis</i>&mdash;of being an informer, <i>aut emphasis
+grat&icirc;a</i>&mdash;until he proved one.&nbsp;
+<i>Ut</i>&mdash;for instance, <i>Vos damnastis</i>&mdash;when he
+sold the boys.&nbsp; <i>Quasi</i>&mdash;as though,
+<i>dicat</i>&mdash;he should say, <i>Pret&aelig;rea
+nemo</i>&mdash;I&rsquo;m a Judas!&nbsp; All this produced a great
+effect on Old Cheeseman.&nbsp; He had never had much hair; but
+what he had, began to get thinner and thinner every day.&nbsp; He
+grew paler and more worn; and sometimes of an evening he was seen
+sitting at his desk with a precious long snuff to his candle, and
+his hands before his face, crying.&nbsp; But no member of the
+Society could pity him, even if he felt inclined, because the
+President said it was Old Cheeseman&rsquo;s conscience.</p>
+<p>So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn&rsquo;t he lead a miserable
+life!&nbsp; Of course the Reverend turned up his nose at him, and
+of course <i>she</i> did&mdash;because both of them always do
+that at all the masters&mdash;but he suffered from the fellows
+most, and he suffered from them constantly.&nbsp; He never told
+about it, that the Society could find out; but he got no credit
+for that, because the President said it was Old Cheeseman&rsquo;s
+cowardice.</p>
+<p>He had only one friend in the world, and that one was almost
+as powerless as he was, for it was only Jane.&nbsp; Jane was a
+sort of wardrobe woman to our fellows, and took care of the
+boxes.&nbsp; She had come at first, I believe, as a kind of
+apprentice&mdash;some of our fellows say from a Charity, but
+<i>I</i> don&rsquo;t know&mdash;and after her time was out, had
+stopped at so much a year.&nbsp; So little a year, perhaps I
+ought to say, for it is far more likely.&nbsp; However, she had
+put some pounds in the Savings&rsquo; Bank, and she was a very
+nice young woman.&nbsp; She was not quite pretty; but she had a
+very frank, honest, bright face, and all our fellows were fond of
+her.&nbsp; She was uncommonly neat and cheerful, and uncommonly
+comfortable and kind.&nbsp; And if anything was the matter with a
+fellow&rsquo;s mother, he always went and showed the letter to
+Jane.</p>
+<p>Jane was Old Cheeseman&rsquo;s friend.&nbsp; The more the
+Society went against him, the more Jane stood by him.&nbsp; She
+used to give him a good-humoured look out of her still-room
+window, sometimes, that seemed to set him up for the day.&nbsp;
+She used to pass out of the orchard and the kitchen garden
+(always kept locked, I believe you!) through the playground, when
+she might have gone the other way, only to give a turn of her
+head, as much as to say &ldquo;Keep up your spirits!&rdquo; to
+Old Cheeseman.&nbsp; His slip of a room was so fresh and orderly
+that it was well known who looked after it while he was at his
+desk; and when our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on his
+plate at dinner, they knew with indignation who had sent it
+up.</p>
+<p>Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a
+quantity of meeting and debating, that Jane should be requested
+to cut Old Cheeseman dead; and that if she refused, she must be
+sent to Coventry herself.&nbsp; So a deputation, headed by the
+President, was appointed to wait on Jane, and inform her of the
+vote the Society had been under the painful necessity of
+passing.&nbsp; She was very much respected for all her good
+qualities, and there was a story about her having once waylaid
+the Reverend in his own study, and got a fellow off from severe
+punishment, of her own kind comfortable heart.&nbsp; So the
+deputation didn&rsquo;t much like the job.&nbsp; However, they
+went up, and the President told Jane all about it.&nbsp; Upon
+which Jane turned very red, burst into tears, informed the
+President and the deputation, in a way not at all like her usual
+way, that they were a parcel of malicious young savages, and
+turned the whole respected body out of the room.&nbsp;
+Consequently it was entered in the Society&rsquo;s book (kept in
+astronomical cypher for fear of detection), that all
+communication with Jane was interdicted: and the President
+addressed the members on this convincing instance of Old
+Cheeseman&rsquo;s undermining.</p>
+<p>But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman was
+false to our fellows&mdash;in their opinion, at all
+events&mdash;and steadily continued to be his only friend.&nbsp;
+It was a great exasperation to the Society, because Jane was as
+much a loss to them as she was a gain to him; and being more
+inveterate against him than ever, they treated him worse than
+ever.&nbsp; At last, one morning, his desk stood empty, his room
+was peeped into, and found to be vacant, and a whisper went about
+among the pale faces of our fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable to
+bear it any longer, had got up early and drowned himself.</p>
+<p>The mysterious looks of the other masters after breakfast, and
+the evident fact that old Cheeseman was not expected, confirmed
+the Society in this opinion.&nbsp; Some began to discuss whether
+the President was liable to hanging or only transportation for
+life, and the President&rsquo;s face showed a great anxiety to
+know which.&nbsp; However, he said that a jury of his country
+should find him game; and that in his address he should put it to
+them to lay their hands upon their hearts and say whether they as
+Britons approved of informers, and how they thought they would
+like it themselves.&nbsp; Some of the Society considered that he
+had better run away until he found a forest where he might change
+clothes with a wood-cutter, and stain his face with blackberries;
+but the majority believed that if he stood his ground, his
+father&mdash;belonging as he did to the West Indies, and being
+worth millions&mdash;could buy him off.</p>
+<p>All our fellows&rsquo; hearts beat fast when the Reverend came
+in, and made a sort of a Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself
+with the ruler; as he always did before delivering an
+address.&nbsp; But their fears were nothing to their astonishment
+when he came out with the story that Old Cheeseman, &ldquo;so
+long our respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant
+plains of knowledge,&rdquo; he called him&mdash;O yes!&nbsp; I
+dare say!&nbsp; Much of that!&mdash;was the orphan child of a
+disinherited young lady who had married against her
+father&rsquo;s wish, and whose young husband had died, and who
+had died of sorrow herself, and whose unfortunate baby (Old
+Cheeseman) had been brought up at the cost of a grandfather who
+would never consent to see it, baby, boy, or man: which
+grandfather was now dead, and serve him right&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+my putting in&mdash;and which grandfather&rsquo;s large property,
+there being no will, was now, and all of a sudden and for ever,
+Old Cheeseman&rsquo;s!&nbsp; Our so long respected friend and
+fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge, the Reverend
+wound up a lot of bothering quotations by saying, would
+&ldquo;come among us once more&rdquo; that day fortnight, when he
+desired to take leave of us himself, in a more particular
+manner.&nbsp; With these words, he stared severely round at our
+fellows, and went solemnly out.</p>
+<p>There was precious consternation among the members of the
+Society, now.&nbsp; Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more
+began to try to make out that they had never belonged to
+it.&nbsp; However, the President stuck up, and said that they
+must stand or fall together, and that if a breach was made it
+should be over his body&mdash;which was meant to encourage the
+Society: but it didn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; The President further said,
+he would consider the position in which they stood, and would
+give them his best opinion and advice in a few days.&nbsp; This
+was eagerly looked for, as he knew a good deal of the world on
+account of his father&rsquo;s being in the West Indies.</p>
+<p>After days and days of hard thinking, and drawing armies all
+over his slate, the President called our fellows together, and
+made the matter clear.&nbsp; He said it was plain that when Old
+Cheeseman came on the appointed day, his first revenge would be
+to impeach the Society, and have it flogged all round.&nbsp;
+After witnessing with joy the torture of his enemies, and
+gloating over the cries which agony would extort from them, the
+probability was that he would invite the Reverend, on pretence of
+conversation, into a private room&mdash;say the parlour into
+which Parents were shown, where the two great globes were which
+were never used&mdash;and would there reproach him with the
+various frauds and oppressions he had endured at his hands.&nbsp;
+At the close of his observations he would make a signal to a
+Prizefighter concealed in the passage, who would then appear and
+pitch into the Reverend, till he was left insensible.&nbsp; Old
+Cheeseman would then make Jane a present of from five to ten
+pounds, and would leave the establishment in fiendish
+triumph.</p>
+<p>The President explained that against the parlour part, or the
+Jane part, of these arrangements he had nothing to say; but, on
+the part of the Society, he counselled deadly resistance.&nbsp;
+With this view he recommended that all available desks should be
+filled with stones, and that the first word of the complaint
+should be the signal to every fellow to let fly at Old
+Cheeseman.&nbsp; The bold advice put the Society in better
+spirits, and was unanimously taken.&nbsp; A post about Old
+Cheeseman&rsquo;s size was put up in the playground, and all our
+fellows practised at it till it was dinted all over.</p>
+<p>When the day came, and Places were called, every fellow sat
+down in a tremble.&nbsp; There had been much discussing and
+disputing as to how Old Cheeseman would come; but it was the
+general opinion that he would appear in a sort of triumphal car
+drawn by four horses, with two livery servants in front, and the
+Prizefighter in disguise up behind.&nbsp; So, all our fellows sat
+listening for the sound of wheels.&nbsp; But no wheels were
+heard, for Old Cheeseman walked after all, and came into the
+school without any preparation.&nbsp; Pretty much as he used to
+be, only dressed in black.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; said the Reverend, presenting him,
+&ldquo;our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the
+pleasant plains of knowledge, is desirous to offer a word or
+two.&nbsp; Attention, gentlemen, one and all!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked at the
+President.&nbsp; The President was all ready, and taking aim at
+old Cheeseman with his eyes.</p>
+<p>What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his old desk, look
+round him with a queer smile as if there was a tear in his eye,
+and begin in a quavering, mild voice, &ldquo;My dear companions
+and old friends!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Every fellow&rsquo;s hand came out of his desk, and the
+President suddenly began to cry.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear companions and old friends,&rdquo; said Old
+Cheeseman, &ldquo;you have heard of my good fortune.&nbsp; I have
+passed so many years under this roof&mdash;my entire life so far,
+I may say&mdash;that I hope you have been glad to hear of it for
+my sake.&nbsp; I could never enjoy it without exchanging
+congratulations with you.&nbsp; If we have ever misunderstood one
+another at all, pray, my dear boys, let us forgive and
+forget.&nbsp; I have a great tenderness for you, and I am sure
+you return it.&nbsp; I want in the fulness of a grateful heart to
+shake hands with you every one.&nbsp; I have come back to do it,
+if you please, my dear boys.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows
+had broken out here and there: but now, when Old Cheeseman began
+with him as first boy, laid his left hand affectionately on his
+shoulder and gave him his right; and when the President said
+&ldquo;Indeed, I don&rsquo;t deserve it, sir; upon my honour I
+don&rsquo;t;&rdquo; there was sobbing and crying all over the
+school.&nbsp; Every other fellow said he didn&rsquo;t deserve it,
+much in the same way; but Old Cheeseman, not minding that a bit,
+went cheerfully round to every boy, and wound up with every
+master&mdash;finishing off the Reverend last.</p>
+<p>Then a snivelling little chap in a corner, who was always
+under some punishment or other, set up a shrill cry of
+&ldquo;Success to Old Cheeseman!&nbsp; Hooray!&rdquo;&nbsp; The
+Reverend glared upon him, and said, &ldquo;<i>Mr.</i> Cheeseman,
+sir.&rdquo;&nbsp; But, Old Cheeseman protesting that he liked his
+old name a great deal better than his new one, all our fellows
+took up the cry; and, for I don&rsquo;t know how many minutes,
+there was such a thundering of feet and hands, and such a roaring
+of Old Cheeseman, as never was heard.</p>
+<p>After that, there was a spread in the dining-room of the most
+magnificent kind.&nbsp; Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits,
+confectionaries, jellies, neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles,
+crackers&mdash;eat all you can and pocket what you like&mdash;all
+at Old Cheeseman&rsquo;s expense.&nbsp; After that, speeches,
+whole holiday, double and treble sets of all manners of things
+for all manners of games, donkeys, pony-chaises and drive
+yourself, dinner for all the masters at the Seven Bells (twenty
+pounds a-head our fellows estimated it at), an annual holiday and
+feast fixed for that day every year, and another on Old
+Cheeseman&rsquo;s birthday&mdash;Reverend bound down before the
+fellows to allow it, so that he could never back out&mdash;all at
+Old Cheeseman&rsquo;s expense.</p>
+<p>And didn&rsquo;t our fellows go down in a body and cheer
+outside the Seven Bells?&nbsp; O no!</p>
+<p>But there&rsquo;s something else besides.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t
+look at the next story-teller, for there&rsquo;s more yet.&nbsp;
+Next day, it was resolved that the Society should make it up with
+Jane, and then be dissolved.&nbsp; What do you think of Jane
+being gone, though!&nbsp; &ldquo;What?&nbsp; Gone for
+ever?&rdquo; said our fellows, with long faces.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes,
+to be sure,&rdquo; was all the answer they could get.&nbsp; None
+of the people about the house would say anything more.&nbsp; At
+length, the first boy took upon himself to ask the Reverend
+whether our old friend Jane was really gone?&nbsp; The Reverend
+(he has got a daughter at home&mdash;turn-up nose, and red)
+replied severely, &ldquo;Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is
+gone.&rdquo;&nbsp; The idea of calling Jane, Miss Pitt!&nbsp;
+Some said she had been sent away in disgrace for taking money
+from Old Cheeseman; others said she had gone into Old
+Cheeseman&rsquo;s service at a rise of ten pounds a year.&nbsp;
+All that our fellows knew, was, she was gone.</p>
+<p>It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an
+open carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds,
+with a lady and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a long
+time and stood up to see it played.&nbsp; Nobody thought much
+about them, until the same little snivelling chap came in,
+against all rules, from the post where he was Scout, and said,
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Jane!&rdquo;&nbsp; Both Elevens forgot the game
+directly, and ran crowding round the carriage.&nbsp; It
+<i>was</i> Jane!&nbsp; In such a bonnet!&nbsp; And if
+you&rsquo;ll believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.</p>
+<p>It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were
+hard at it in the playground, to see a carriage at the low part
+of the wall where it joins the high part, and a lady and
+gentleman standing up in it, looking over.&nbsp; The gentleman
+was always Old Cheeseman, and the lady was always Jane.</p>
+<p>The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way.&nbsp;
+There had been a good many changes among our fellows then, and it
+had turned out that Bob Tarter&rsquo;s father wasn&rsquo;t worth
+Millions!&nbsp; He wasn&rsquo;t worth anything.&nbsp; Bob had
+gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had purchased his
+discharge.&nbsp; But that&rsquo;s not the carriage.&nbsp; The
+carriage stopped, and all our fellows stopped as soon as it was
+seen.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!&rdquo;
+said the lady, laughing, as our fellows swarmed up the wall to
+shake hands with her.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are you never going to do
+it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never! never! never!&rdquo; on all sides.</p>
+<p>I didn&rsquo;t understand what she meant then, but of course I
+do now.&nbsp; I was very much pleased with her face though, and
+with her good way, and I couldn&rsquo;t help looking at
+her&mdash;and at him too&mdash;with all our fellows clustering so
+joyfully about them.</p>
+<p>They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might
+as well swarm up the wall myself, and shake hands with them as
+the rest did.&nbsp; I was quite as glad to see them as the rest
+were, and was quite as familiar with them in a moment.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only a fortnight now,&rdquo; said Old Cheeseman,
+&ldquo;to the holidays.&nbsp; Who stops?&nbsp;
+Anybody?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices
+cried &ldquo;He does!&rdquo;&nbsp; For it was the year when you
+were all away; and rather low I was about it, I can tell you.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Old Cheeseman.&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+it&rsquo;s solitary here in the holiday time.&nbsp; He had better
+come to us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So I went to their delightful house, and was as happy as I
+could possibly be.&nbsp; They understand how to conduct
+themselves towards boys, <i>they</i> do.&nbsp; When they take a
+boy to the play, for instance, they <i>do</i> take him.&nbsp;
+They don&rsquo;t go in after it&rsquo;s begun, or come out before
+it&rsquo;s over.&nbsp; They know how to bring a boy up,
+too.&nbsp; Look at their own!&nbsp; Though he is very little as
+yet, what a capital boy he is!&nbsp; Why, my next favourite to
+Mrs. Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young Cheeseman.</p>
+<p>So, now I have told you all I know about Old Cheeseman.&nbsp;
+And it&rsquo;s not much after all, I am afraid.&nbsp; Is it?</p>
+<h2><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+69</span>NOBODY&rsquo;S STORY</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">He</span> lived on the bank of a mighty
+river, broad and deep, which was always silently rolling on to a
+vast undiscovered ocean.&nbsp; It had rolled on, ever since the
+world began.&nbsp; It had changed its course sometimes, and
+turned into new channels, leaving its old ways dry and barren;
+but it had ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow until
+Time should be no more.&nbsp; Against its strong, unfathomable
+stream, nothing made head.&nbsp; No living creature, no flower,
+no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate existence, ever
+strayed back from the undiscovered ocean.&nbsp; The tide of the
+river set resistlessly towards it; and the tide never stopped,
+any more than the earth stops in its circling round the sun.</p>
+<p>He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to
+live.&nbsp; He had no hope of ever being rich enough to live a
+month without hard work, but he was quite content, GOD knows, to
+labour with a cheerful will.&nbsp; He was one of an immense
+family, all of whose sons and daughters gained their daily bread
+by daily work, prolonged from their rising up betimes until their
+lying down at night.&nbsp; Beyond this destiny he had no
+prospect, and he sought none.</p>
+<p>There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making,
+in the neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do
+with that.&nbsp; Such clash and uproar came from the Bigwig
+family, at the unaccountable proceedings of which race, he
+marvelled much.&nbsp; They set up the strangest statues, in iron,
+marble, bronze, and brass, before his door; and darkened his
+house with the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses.&nbsp;
+He wondered what it all meant, smiled in a rough good-humoured
+way he had, and kept at his hard work.</p>
+<p>The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people
+thereabouts, and all the noisiest) had undertaken to save him the
+trouble of thinking for himself, and to manage him and his
+affairs.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why truly,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I have
+little time upon my hands; and if you will be so good as to take
+care of me, in return for the money I pay over&rdquo;&mdash;for
+the Bigwig family were not above his money&mdash;&ldquo;I shall
+be relieved and much obliged, considering that you know
+best.&rdquo;&nbsp; Hence the drumming, trumpeting, and
+speech-making, and the ugly images of horses which he was
+expected to fall down and worship.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand all this,&rdquo; said he,
+rubbing his furrowed brow confusedly.&nbsp; &ldquo;But it
+<i>has</i> a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It means,&rdquo; returned the Bigwig family, suspecting
+something of what he said, &ldquo;honour and glory in the
+highest, to the highest merit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said he.&nbsp; And he was glad to hear
+that.</p>
+<p>But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze,
+and brass, he failed to find a rather meritorious countryman of
+his, once the son of a Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single
+countryman whomsoever of that kind.&nbsp; He could find none of
+the men whose knowledge had rescued him and his children from
+terrific and disfiguring disease, whose boldness had raised his
+forefathers from the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy had
+opened a new and high existence to the humblest, whose skill had
+filled the working man&rsquo;s world with accumulated
+wonders.&nbsp; Whereas, he did find others whom he knew no good
+of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Humph!&rdquo; said he.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite
+understand it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to get it out
+of his mind.</p>
+<p>Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened
+streets; but it was a precious place to him.&nbsp; The hands of
+his wife were hardened with toil, and she was old before her
+time; but she was dear to him.&nbsp; His children, stunted in
+their growth, bore traces of unwholesome nurture; but they had
+beauty in his sight.&nbsp; Above all other things, it was an
+earnest desire of this man&rsquo;s soul that his children should
+be taught.&nbsp; &ldquo;If I am sometimes misled,&rdquo; said he,
+&ldquo;for want of knowledge, at least let them know better, and
+avoid my mistakes.&nbsp; If it is hard to me to reap the harvest
+of pleasure and instruction that is stored in books, let it be
+easier to them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels
+concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man&rsquo;s
+children.&nbsp; Some of the family insisted on such a thing being
+primary and indispensable above all other things; and others of
+the family insisted on such another thing being primary and
+indispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent
+into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered
+charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one
+another in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt,
+exchanged pummelings, and fell together by the ears in
+unintelligible animosity.&nbsp; Meanwhile, this man, in his short
+evening snatches at his fireside, saw the demon Ignorance arise
+there, and take his children to itself.&nbsp; He saw his daughter
+perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge; he saw his son go
+moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime;
+he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his
+babies so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have
+rather wished them idiots.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand this any the better,&rdquo;
+said he; &ldquo;but I think it cannot be right.&nbsp; Nay, by the
+clouded Heaven above me, I protest against this as my
+wrong!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually
+short-lived, and his nature kind), he looked about him on his
+Sundays and holidays, and he saw how much monotony and weariness
+there was, and thence how drunkenness arose with all its train of
+ruin.&nbsp; Then he appealed to the Bigwig family, and said,
+&ldquo;We are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering
+suspicion in me that labouring people of whatever condition were
+made&mdash;by a higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly
+understand it&mdash;to be in need of mental refreshment and
+recreation.&nbsp; See what we fall into, when we rest without
+it.&nbsp; Come!&nbsp; Amuse me harmlessly, show me something,
+give me an escape!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar
+absolutely deafening.&nbsp; When some few voices were faintly
+heard, proposing to show him the wonders of the world, the
+greatness of creation, the mighty changes of time, the workings
+of nature and the beauties of art&mdash;to show him these things,
+that is to say, at any period of his life when he could look upon
+them&mdash;there arose among the Bigwigs such roaring and raving,
+such pulpiting and petitioning, such maundering and
+memorialising, such name-calling and dirt-throwing, such a shrill
+wind of parliamentary questioning and feeble replying&mdash;where
+&ldquo;I dare not&rdquo; waited on &ldquo;I
+would&rdquo;&mdash;that the poor fellow stood aghast, staring
+wildly around.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have I provoked all this,&rdquo; said he, with his
+hands to his affrighted ears, &ldquo;by what was meant to be an
+innocent request, plainly arising out of my familiar experience,
+and the common knowledge of all men who choose to open their
+eyes?&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t understand, and I am not
+understood.&nbsp; What is to come of such a state of
+things!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was bending over his work, often asking himself the
+question, when the news began to spread that a pestilence had
+appeared among the labourers, and was slaying them by
+thousands.&nbsp; Going forth to look about him, he soon found
+this to be true.&nbsp; The dying and the dead were mingled in the
+close and tainted houses among which his life was passed.&nbsp;
+New poison was distilled into the always murky, always sickening
+air.&nbsp; The robust and the weak, old age and infancy, the
+father and the mother, all were stricken down alike.</p>
+<p>What means of flight had he?&nbsp; He remained there, where he
+was, and saw those who were dearest to him die.&nbsp; A kind
+preacher came to him, and would have said some prayers to soften
+his heart in his gloom, but he replied:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man
+condemned to residence in this foetid place, where every sense
+bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment, and where
+every minute of my numbered days is new mire added to the heap
+under which I lie oppressed!&nbsp; But, give me my first glimpse
+of Heaven, through a little of its light and air; give me pure
+water; help me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and
+heavy life, in which our spirits sink, and we become the
+indifferent and callous creatures you too often see us; gently
+and kindly take the bodies of those who die among us, out of the
+small room where we grow to be so familiar with the awful change
+that even its sanctity is lost to us; and, Teacher, then I will
+hear&mdash;none know better than you, how willingly&mdash;of Him
+whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had compassion
+for all human sorrow!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came
+and stood near to him dressed in black.&nbsp; He, also, had
+suffered heavily.&nbsp; His young wife, his beautiful and good
+young wife, was dead; so, too, his only child.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Master, &rsquo;tis hard to bear&mdash;I know
+it&mdash;but be comforted.&nbsp; I would give you comfort, if I
+could.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, &ldquo;O
+you labouring men!&nbsp; The calamity began among you.&nbsp; If
+you had but lived more healthily and decently, I should not be
+the widowed and bereft mourner that I am this day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Master,&rdquo; returned the other, shaking his head,
+&ldquo;I have begun to understand a little that most calamities
+will come from us, as this one did, and that none will stop at
+our poor doors, until we are united with that great squabbling
+family yonder, to do the things that are right.&nbsp; We cannot
+live healthily and decently, unless they who undertook to manage
+us provide the means.&nbsp; We cannot be instructed unless they
+will teach us; we cannot be rationally amused, unless they will
+amuse us; we cannot but have some false gods of our own, while
+they set up so many of theirs in all the public places.&nbsp; The
+evil consequences of imperfect instruction, the evil consequences
+of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of unnatural
+restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will all come
+from us, and none of them will stop with us.&nbsp; They will
+spread far and wide.&nbsp; They always do; they always have
+done&mdash;just like the pestilence.&nbsp; I understand so much,
+I think, at last.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the Master said again, &ldquo;O you labouring men!&nbsp;
+How seldom do we ever hear of you, except in connection with some
+trouble!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Master,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I am Nobody, and
+little likely to be heard of (nor yet much wanted to be heard of,
+perhaps), except when there is some trouble.&nbsp; But it never
+begins with me, and it never can end with me.&nbsp; As sure as
+Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig
+family, getting wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the
+late desolation, resolved to unite with him to do the things that
+were right&mdash;at all events, so far as the said things were
+associated with the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of
+another pestilence.&nbsp; But, as their fear wore off, which it
+soon began to do, they resumed their falling out among
+themselves, and did nothing.&nbsp; Consequently the scourge
+appeared again&mdash;low down as before&mdash;and spread
+avengingly upward as before, and carried off vast numbers of the
+brawlers.&nbsp; But not a man among them ever admitted, if in the
+least degree he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with
+it.</p>
+<p>So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this,
+in the main, is the whole of Nobody&rsquo;s story.</p>
+<p>Had he no name, you ask?&nbsp; Perhaps it was Legion.&nbsp; It
+matters little what his name was.&nbsp; Let us call him
+Legion.</p>
+<p>If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of
+Waterloo, you will have seen, in some quiet little church, a
+monument erected by faithful companions in arms to the memory of
+Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G,
+Ensigns H, I and J, seven non-commissioned officers, and one
+hundred and thirty rank and file, who fell in the discharge of
+their duty on the memorable day.&nbsp; The story of Nobody is the
+story of the rank and file of the earth.&nbsp; They bear their
+share of the battle; they have their part in the victory; they
+fall; they leave no name but in the mass.&nbsp; The march of the
+proudest of us, leads to the dusty way by which they go.&nbsp;
+O!&nbsp; Let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire,
+and not forget them when it is burnt out.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME CHRISTMAS STORIES***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
+***** This file should be named 1467-h.htm or 1467-h.zip******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/6/1467
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
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+
+
+
+This etext was prepared from the 1911 Chapman and Hall Christmas
+Stories (Volume 1) edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+Some Short Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+A Christmas Tree
+What Christmas is as we Grow Older
+The Poor Relation's Story
+The Child's Story
+The Schoolboy's Story
+Nobody's Story
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS TREE
+
+
+
+I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children
+assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree.  The tree
+was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high
+above their heads.  It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of
+little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright
+objects.  There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green
+leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least,
+and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable
+twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads,
+wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic
+furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched
+among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping;
+there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in
+appearance than many real men--and no wonder, for their heads took
+off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles
+and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes,
+sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were
+trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold
+and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there
+were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in
+enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were
+teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles,
+conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially
+dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts,
+crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me,
+delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend,
+"There was everything, and more."  This motley collection of odd
+objects, clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back
+the bright looks directed towards it from every side--some of the
+diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and
+a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty
+mothers, aunts, and nurses--made a lively realisation of the fancies
+of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and
+all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their
+wild adornments at that well-remembered time.
+
+Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house
+awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not
+care to resist, to my own childhood.  I begin to consider, what do
+we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our
+own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.
+
+Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its
+growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy
+tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top--
+for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to
+grow downward towards the earth--I look into my youngest Christmas
+recollections!
+
+All toys at first, I find.  Up yonder, among the green holly and red
+berries, is the Tumbler with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't
+lie down, but whenever he was put upon the floor, persisted in
+rolling his fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and
+brought those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me--when I affected
+to laugh very much, but in my heart of hearts was extremely doubtful
+of him.  Close beside him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which
+there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown, with an
+obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide open, who was
+not to be endured on any terms, but could not be put away either;
+for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of
+Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected.  Nor is the frog
+with cobbler's wax on his tail, far off; for there was no knowing
+where he wouldn't jump; and when he flew over the candle, and came
+upon one's hand with that spotted back--red on a green ground--he
+was horrible.  The cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was
+stood up against the candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the
+same branch, was milder, and was beautiful; but I can't say as much
+for the larger cardboard man, who used to be hung against the wall
+and pulled by a string; there was a sinister expression in that nose
+of his; and when he got his legs round his neck (which he very often
+did), he was ghastly, and not a creature to be alone with.
+
+When did that dreadful Mask first look at me?  Who put it on, and
+why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life?
+It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll,
+why then were its stolid features so intolerable?  Surely not
+because it hid the wearer's face.  An apron would have done as much;
+and though I should have preferred even the apron away, it would not
+have been absolutely insupportable, like the mask.  Was it the
+immovability of the mask?  The doll's face was immovable, but I was
+not afraid of HER.  Perhaps that fixed and set change coming over a
+real face, infused into my quickened heart some remote suggestion
+and dread of the universal change that is to come on every face, and
+make it still?  Nothing reconciled me to it.  No drummers, from whom
+proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no
+regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box, and
+fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs;
+no old woman, made of wires and a brown-paper composition, cutting
+up a pie for two small children; could give me a permanent comfort,
+for a long time.  Nor was it any satisfaction to be shown the Mask,
+and see that it was made of paper, or to have it locked up and be
+assured that no one wore it.  The mere recollection of that fixed
+face, the mere knowledge of its existence anywhere, was sufficient
+to awake me in the night all perspiration and horror, with, "O I
+know it's coming!  O the mask!"
+
+I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers--there
+he is! was made of, then!  His hide was real to the touch, I
+recollect.  And the great black horse with the round red spots all
+over him--the horse that I could even get upon--I never wondered
+what had brought him to that strange condition, or thought that such
+a horse was not commonly seen at Newmarket.  The four horses of no
+colour, next to him, that went into the waggon of cheeses, and could
+be taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of
+fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for their manes, and to
+stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they were
+brought home for a Christmas present.  They were all right, then;
+neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests,
+as appears to be the case now.  The tinkling works of the music-
+cart, I DID find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and
+I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves,
+perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down,
+head foremost, on the other, rather a weak-minded person--though
+good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, next him, made of little
+squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one
+another, each developing a different picture, and the whole
+enlivened by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
+
+Ah!  The Doll's house!--of which I was not proprietor, but where I
+visited.  I don't admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as
+that stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps,
+and a real balcony--greener than I ever see now, except at watering
+places; and even they afford but a poor imitation.  And though it
+DID open all at once, the entire house-front (which was a blow, I
+admit, as cancelling the fiction of a staircase), it was but to shut
+it up again, and I could believe.  Even open, there were three
+distinct rooms in it:  a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly
+furnished, and best of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-
+irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils--oh, the
+warming-pan!--and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to
+fry two fish.  What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble
+feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured, each with its own
+peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and
+garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss!  Could
+all the Temperance Societies of these later days, united, give me
+such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little
+set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran out of
+the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and
+which made tea, nectar.  And if the two legs of the ineffectual
+little sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, and want purpose,
+like Punch's hands, what does it matter?  And if I did once shriek
+out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable company with
+consternation, by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon,
+inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the worse for
+it, except by a powder!
+
+Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green
+roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to
+hang.  Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and
+with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green.  What fat
+black letters to begin with!  "A was an archer, and shot at a frog."
+Of course he was.  He was an apple-pie also, and there he is!  He
+was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his
+friends, except X, who had so little versatility, that I never knew
+him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe--like Y, who was always
+confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a
+Zebra or a Zany.  But, now, the very tree itself changes, and
+becomes a bean-stalk--the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack
+climbed to the Giant's house!  And now, those dreadfully
+interesting, double-headed giants, with their clubs over their
+shoulders, begin to stride along the boughs in a perfect throng,
+dragging knights and ladies home for dinner by the hair of their
+heads.  And Jack--how noble, with his sword of sharpness, and his
+shoes of swiftness!  Again those old meditations come upon me as I
+gaze up at him; and I debate within myself whether there was more
+than one Jack (which I am loth to believe possible), or only one
+genuine original admirable Jack, who achieved all the recorded
+exploits.
+
+Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak, in which--
+the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her
+basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give
+me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf
+who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his
+appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about
+his teeth.  She was my first love.  I felt that if I could have
+married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.
+But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out
+the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession
+on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.  O the wonderful
+Noah's Ark!  It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub,
+and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have
+their legs well shaken down before they could be got in, even there--
+and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door,
+which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch--but what was
+THAT against it!  Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than
+the elephant:  the lady-bird, the butterfly--all triumphs of art!
+Consider the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was
+so indifferent, that he usually tumbled forward, and knocked down
+all the animal creation.  Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic
+tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers;
+and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve
+themselves into frayed bits of string!
+
+Hush!  Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree--not Robin Hood,
+not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him and all
+Mother Bunch's wonders, without mention), but an Eastern King with a
+glittering scimitar and turban.  By Allah! two Eastern Kings, for I
+see another, looking over his shoulder!  Down upon the grass, at the
+tree's foot, lies the full length of a coal-black Giant, stretched
+asleep, with his head in a lady's lap; and near them is a glass box,
+fastened with four locks of shining steel, in which he keeps the
+lady prisoner when he is awake.  I see the four keys at his girdle
+now.  The lady makes signs to the two kings in the tree, who softly
+descend.  It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights.
+
+Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me.  All
+lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans.  Common flower-pots
+are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top;
+trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw down
+into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to
+them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the
+traders, with loud cries, will scare them.  Tarts are made,
+according to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned
+pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers at the gate of
+Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up
+people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blind-fold.
+
+Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only
+waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy,
+that will make the earth shake.  All the dates imported come from
+the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant
+knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son.  All olives are of
+the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which the Commander of the
+Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the
+fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the apple
+purchased (with two others) from the Sultan's gardener for three
+sequins, and which the tall black slave stole from the child.  All
+dogs are associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who
+jumped upon the baker's counter, and put his paw on the piece of bad
+money.  All rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who was a
+ghoule, could only peck by grains, because of her nightly feasts in
+the burial-place.  My very rocking-horse,--there he is, with his
+nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!--should
+have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as
+the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all
+his father's Court.
+
+Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper branches of
+my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light!  When I wake in bed, at
+daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings, the white snow dimly
+beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I hear
+Dinarzade.  "Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you finish
+the history of the Young King of the Black Islands."  Scheherazade
+replies, "If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day,
+sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful
+story yet."  Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders
+for the execution, and we all three breathe again.
+
+At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the leaves--
+it may be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie, or of these
+many fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on his desert island,
+Philip Quarll among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton with Mr.
+Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the Mask--or it may be the result of
+indigestion, assisted by imagination and over-doctoring--a
+prodigious nightmare.  It is so exceedingly indistinct, that I don't
+know why it's frightful--but I know it is.  I can only make out that
+it is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to be
+planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear
+the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes, and
+receding to an immeasurable distance.  When it comes closest, it is
+worse.  In connection with it I descry remembrances of winter nights
+incredibly long; of being sent early to bed, as a punishment for
+some small offence, and waking in two hours, with a sensation of
+having been asleep two nights; of the laden hopelessness of morning
+ever dawning; and the oppression of a weight of remorse.
+
+And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of
+the ground, before a vast green curtain.  Now, a bell rings--a magic
+bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells--and
+music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of
+orange-peel and oil.  Anon, the magic bell commands the music to
+cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself up majestically, and
+The Play begins!  The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of
+his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous
+Peasant with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take from this
+hour forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an
+Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed since he and I
+have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed
+surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my
+remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto
+the end of time.  Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane
+Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down,
+went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the
+worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for
+it that he ought to have been let off.  Comes swift to comfort me,
+the Pantomime--stupendous Phenomenon!--when clowns are shot from
+loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright constellation that
+it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with scales of pure gold,
+twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it
+no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather) puts
+red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!" or
+taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I sawed you do
+it!" when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being
+changed into Anything; and "Nothing is, but thinking makes it so."
+Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation--
+often to return in after-life--of being unable, next day, to get
+back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the
+bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy,
+with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy
+immortality along with her.  Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as
+my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as
+often, and has never yet stayed by me!
+
+Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,--there it is, with its
+familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!--and all
+its attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water
+colours, in the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth,
+or the Exile of Siberia.  In spite of a few besetting accidents and
+failures (particularly an unreasonable disposition in the
+respectable Kelmar, and some others, to become faint in the legs,
+and double up, at exciting points of the drama), a teeming world of
+fancies so suggestive and all-embracing, that, far below it on my
+Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real Theatres in the day-time,
+adorned with these associations as with the freshest garlands of the
+rarest flowers, and charming me yet.
+
+But hark!  The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep!
+What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them
+set forth on the Christmas Tree?  Known before all the others,
+keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little
+bed.  An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some
+travellers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a
+manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a
+solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl
+by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a
+widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the
+opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick
+person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the
+water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude;
+again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again,
+restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the
+deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the
+ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a
+thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one
+voice heard, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
+
+Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas
+associations cluster thick.  School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil
+silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool impertinent inquiries,
+long disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of
+huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked;
+cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher up, with the smell of
+trodden grass and the softened noise of shouts in the evening air;
+the tree is still fresh, still gay.  If I no more come home at
+Christmas-time, there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven!) while
+the World lasts; and they do!  Yonder they dance and play upon the
+branches of my Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart dances
+and plays too!
+
+And I do come home at Christmas.  We all do, or we all should.  We
+all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday--the
+longer, the better--from the great boarding-school, where we are for
+ever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.
+As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have
+we not been, when we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas
+Tree!
+
+Away into the winter prospect.  There are many such upon the tree!
+On, by low-lying, misty grounds, through fens and fogs, up long
+hills, winding dark as caverns between thick plantations, almost
+shutting out the sparkling stars; so, out on broad heights, until we
+stop at last, with sudden silence, at an avenue.  The gate-bell has
+a deep, half-awful sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on
+its hinges; and, as we drive up to a great house, the glancing
+lights grow larger in the windows, and the opposing rows of trees
+seem to fall solemnly back on either side, to give us place.  At
+intervals, all day, a frightened hare has shot across this whitened
+turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of deer trampling the hard
+frost, has, for the minute, crushed the silence too.  Their watchful
+eyes beneath the fern may be shining now, if we could see them, like
+the icy dewdrops on the leaves; but they are still, and all is
+still.  And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees falling
+back before us, and closing up again behind us, as if to forbid
+retreat, we come to the house.
+
+There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good
+comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories--
+Ghost Stories, or more shame for us--round the Christmas fire; and
+we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.  But,
+no matter for that.  We came to the house, and it is an old house,
+full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the
+hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too)
+lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls.  We are a
+middle-aged nobleman, and we make a generous supper with our host
+and hostess and their guests--it being Christmas-time, and the old
+house full of company--and then we go to bed.  Our room is a very
+old room.  It is hung with tapestry.  We don't like the portrait of
+a cavalier in green, over the fireplace.  There are great black
+beams in the ceiling, and there is a great black bedstead, supported
+at the foot by two great black figures, who seem to have come off a
+couple of tombs in the old baronial church in the park, for our
+particular accommodation.  But, we are not a superstitious nobleman,
+and we don't mind.  Well! we dismiss our servant, lock the door, and
+sit before the fire in our dressing-gown, musing about a great many
+things.  At length we go to bed.  Well! we can't sleep.  We toss and
+tumble, and can't sleep.  The embers on the hearth burn fitfully and
+make the room look ghostly.  We can't help peeping out over the
+counterpane, at the two black figures and the cavalier--that wicked-
+looking cavalier--in green.  In the flickering light they seem to
+advance and retire:  which, though we are not by any means a
+superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable.  Well! we get nervous--
+more and more nervous.  We say "This is very foolish, but we can't
+stand this; we'll pretend to be ill, and knock up somebody."  Well!
+we are just going to do it, when the locked door opens, and there
+comes in a young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who
+glides to the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there,
+wringing her hands.  Then, we notice that her clothes are wet.  Our
+tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth, and we can't speak; but, we
+observe her accurately.  Her clothes are wet; her long hair is
+dabbled with moist mud; she is dressed in the fashion of two hundred
+years ago; and she has at her girdle a bunch of rusty keys.  Well!
+there she sits, and we can't even faint, we are in such a state
+about it.  Presently she gets up, and tries all the locks in the
+room with the rusty keys, which won't fit one of them; then, she
+fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in green, and says,
+in a low, terrible voice, "The stags know it!"  After that, she
+wrings her hands again, passes the bedside, and goes out at the
+door.  We hurry on our dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always
+travel with pistols), and are following, when we find the door
+locked.  We turn the key, look out into the dark gallery; no one
+there.  We wander away, and try to find our servant.  Can't be done.
+We pace the gallery till daybreak; then return to our deserted room,
+fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant (nothing ever haunts
+him) and the shining sun.  Well! we make a wretched breakfast, and
+all the company say we look queer.  After breakfast, we go over the
+house with our host, and then we take him to the portrait of the
+cavalier in green, and then it all comes out.  He was false to a
+young housekeeper once attached to that family, and famous for her
+beauty, who drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was
+discovered, after a long time, because the stags refused to drink of
+the water.  Since which, it has been whispered that she traverses
+the house at midnight (but goes especially to that room where the
+cavalier in green was wont to sleep), trying the old locks with the
+rusty keys.  Well! we tell our host of what we have seen, and a
+shade comes over his features, and he begs it may be hushed up; and
+so it is.  But, it's all true; and we said so, before we died (we
+are dead now) to many responsible people.
+
+There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries, and
+dismal state-bedchambers, and haunted wings shut up for many years,
+through which we may ramble, with an agreeable creeping up our back,
+and encounter any number of ghosts, but (it is worthy of remark
+perhaps) reducible to a very few general types and classes; for,
+ghosts have little originality, and "walk" in a beaten track.  Thus,
+it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a
+certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has
+certain planks in the floor from which the blood WILL NOT be taken
+out.  You may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or
+plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub and scrub, as his
+grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his great-
+grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be--no redder and
+no paler--no more and no less--always just the same.  Thus, in such
+another house there is a haunted door, that never will keep open; or
+another door that never will keep shut, or a haunted sound of a
+spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a sigh, or
+a horse's tramp, or the rattling of a chain.  Or else, there is a
+turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour, strikes thirteen when the
+head of the family is going to die; or a shadowy, immovable black
+carriage which at such a time is always seen by somebody, waiting
+near the great gates in the stable-yard.  Or thus, it came to pass
+how Lady Mary went to pay a visit at a large wild house in the
+Scottish Highlands, and, being fatigued with her long journey,
+retired to bed early, and innocently said, next morning, at the
+breakfast-table, "How odd, to have so late a party last night, in
+this remote place, and not to tell me of it, before I went to bed!"
+Then, every one asked Lady Mary what she meant?  Then, Lady Mary
+replied, "Why, all night long, the carriages were driving round and
+round the terrace, underneath my window!"  Then, the owner of the
+house turned pale, and so did his Lady, and Charles Macdoodle of
+Macdoodle signed to Lady Mary to say no more, and every one was
+silent.  After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it
+was a tradition in the family that those rumbling carriages on the
+terrace betokened death.  And so it proved, for, two months
+afterwards, the Lady of the mansion died.  And Lady Mary, who was a
+Maid of Honour at Court, often told this story to the old Queen
+Charlotte; by this token that the old King always said, "Eh, eh?
+What, what?  Ghosts, ghosts?  No such thing, no such thing!"  And
+never left off saying so, until he went to bed.
+
+Or, a friend of somebody's whom most of us know, when he was a young
+man at college, had a particular friend, with whom he made the
+compact that, if it were possible for the Spirit to return to this
+earth after its separation from the body, he of the twain who first
+died, should reappear to the other.  In course of time, this compact
+was forgotten by our friend; the two young men having progressed in
+life, and taken diverging paths that were wide asunder.  But, one
+night, many years afterwards, our friend being in the North of
+England, and staying for the night in an inn, on the Yorkshire
+Moors, happened to look out of bed; and there, in the moonlight,
+leaning on a bureau near the window, steadfastly regarding him, saw
+his old college friend!  The appearance being solemnly addressed,
+replied, in a kind of whisper, but very audibly, "Do not come near
+me.  I am dead.  I am here to redeem my promise.  I come from
+another world, but may not disclose its secrets!"  Then, the whole
+form becoming paler, melted, as it were, into the moonlight, and
+faded away.
+
+Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of the picturesque
+Elizabethan house, so famous in our neighbourhood.  You have heard
+about her?  No!  Why, SHE went out one summer evening at twilight,
+when she was a beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age, to
+gather flowers in the garden; and presently came running, terrified,
+into the hall to her father, saying, "Oh, dear father, I have met
+myself!"  He took her in his arms, and told her it was fancy, but
+she said, "Oh no!  I met myself in the broad walk, and I was pale
+and gathering withered flowers, and I turned my head, and held them
+up!"  And, that night, she died; and a picture of her story was
+begun, though never finished, and they say it is somewhere in the
+house to this day, with its face to the wall.
+
+Or, the uncle of my brother's wife was riding home on horseback, one
+mellow evening at sunset, when, in a green lane close to his own
+house, he saw a man standing before him, in the very centre of a
+narrow way.  "Why does that man in the cloak stand there!" he
+thought.  "Does he want me to ride over him?"  But the figure never
+moved.  He felt a strange sensation at seeing it so still, but
+slackened his trot and rode forward.  When he was so close to it, as
+almost to touch it with his stirrup, his horse shied, and the figure
+glided up the bank, in a curious, unearthly manner--backward, and
+without seeming to use its feet--and was gone.  The uncle of my
+brother's wife, exclaiming, "Good Heaven!  It's my cousin Harry,
+from Bombay!" put spurs to his horse, which was suddenly in a
+profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange behaviour, dashed
+round to the front of his house.  There, he saw the same figure,
+just passing in at the long French window of the drawing-room,
+opening on the ground.  He threw his bridle to a servant, and
+hastened in after it.  His sister was sitting there, alone.  "Alice,
+where's my cousin Harry?"  "Your cousin Harry, John?"  "Yes.  From
+Bombay.  I met him in the lane just now, and saw him enter here,
+this instant."  Not a creature had been seen by any one; and in that
+hour and minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin died in
+India.
+
+Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who died at ninety-
+nine, and retained her faculties to the last, who really did see the
+Orphan Boy; a story which has often been incorrectly told, but, of
+which the real truth is this--because it is, in fact, a story
+belonging to our family--and she was a connexion of our family.
+When she was about forty years of age, and still an uncommonly fine
+woman (her lover died young, which was the reason why she never
+married, though she had many offers), she went to stay at a place in
+Kent, which her brother, an Indian-Merchant, had newly bought.
+There was a story that this place had once been held in trust by the
+guardian of a young boy; who was himself the next heir, and who
+killed the young boy by harsh and cruel treatment.  She knew nothing
+of that.  It has been said that there was a Cage in her bedroom in
+which the guardian used to put the boy.  There was no such thing.
+There was only a closet.  She went to bed, made no alarm whatever in
+the night, and in the morning said composedly to her maid when she
+came in, "Who is the pretty forlorn-looking child who has been
+peeping out of that closet all night?"  The maid replied by giving a
+loud scream, and instantly decamping.  She was surprised; but she
+was a woman of remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed herself
+and went downstairs, and closeted herself with her brother.  "Now,
+Walter," she said, "I have been disturbed all night by a pretty,
+forlorn-looking boy, who has been constantly peeping out of that
+closet in my room, which I can't open.  This is some trick."  "I am
+afraid not, Charlotte," said he, "for it is the legend of the house.
+It is the Orphan Boy.  What did he do?"  "He opened the door
+softly," said she, "and peeped out.  Sometimes, he came a step or
+two into the room.  Then, I called to him, to encourage him, and he
+shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the door."  "The
+closet has no communication, Charlotte," said her brother, "with any
+other part of the house, and it's nailed up."  This was undeniably
+true, and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to get it open,
+for examination.  Then, she was satisfied that she had seen the
+Orphan Boy.  But, the wild and terrible part of the story is, that
+he was also seen by three of her brother's sons, in succession, who
+all died young.  On the occasion of each child being taken ill, he
+came home in a heat, twelve hours before, and said, Oh, Mamma, he
+had been playing under a particular oak-tree, in a certain meadow,
+with a strange boy--a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who was very
+timid, and made signs!  From fatal experience, the parents came to
+know that this was the Orphan Boy, and that the course of that child
+whom he chose for his little playmate was surely run.
+
+Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit up alone to
+wait for the Spectre--where we are shown into a room, made
+comparatively cheerful for our reception--where we glance round at
+the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire--where
+we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty
+daughter have retired, after laying down a fresh store of wood upon
+the hearth, and setting forth on the small table such supper-cheer
+as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine--
+where the reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after
+another, like so many peals of sullen thunder--and where, about the
+small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of divers
+supernatural mysteries.  Legion is the name of the haunted German
+students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the
+schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off
+the footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally
+blows open.  Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our
+Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all
+down the boughs!
+
+Among the later toys and fancies hanging there--as idle often and
+less pure--be the images once associated with the sweet old Waits,
+the softened music in the night, ever unalterable!  Encircled by the
+social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of
+my childhood stand unchanged!  In every cheerful image and
+suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested
+above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World!  A
+moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark
+to me as yet, and let me look once more!  I know there are blank
+spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and
+smiled; from which they are departed.  But, far above, I see the
+raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow's Son; and God is good!  If
+Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O
+may I, with a grey head, turn a child's heart to that figure yet,
+and a child's trustfulness and confidence!
+
+Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and
+dance, and cheerfulness.  And they are welcome.  Innocent and
+welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas
+Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow!  But, as it sinks into the
+ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves.  "This, in
+commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion.
+This, in remembrance of Me!"
+
+
+
+WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AS WE GROW OLDER
+
+
+
+Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our
+limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or
+seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes;
+grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made
+the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.
+
+Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts over-leaped that
+narrow boundary; when there was some one (very dear, we thought
+then, very beautiful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to the fulness
+of our happiness; when we were wanting too (or we thought so, which
+did just as well) at the Christmas hearth by which that some one
+sat; and when we intertwined with every wreath and garland of our
+life that some one's name.
+
+That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have
+long arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in the
+palest edges of the rainbow!  That was the time for the beatified
+enjoyment of the things that were to be, and never were, and yet the
+things that were so real in our resolute hope that it would be hard
+to say, now, what realities achieved since, have been stronger!
+
+What!  Did that Christmas never really come when we and the
+priceless pearl who was our young choice were received, after the
+happiest of totally impossible marriages, by the two united families
+previously at daggers--drawn on our account?  When brothers and
+sisters-in-law who had always been rather cool to us before our
+relationship was effected, perfectly doted on us, and when fathers
+and mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited incomes?  Was that
+Christmas dinner never really eaten, after which we arose, and
+generously and eloquently rendered honour to our late rival, present
+in the company, then and there exchanging friendship and
+forgiveness, and founding an attachment, not to be surpassed in
+Greek or Roman story, which subsisted until death?  Has that same
+rival long ceased to care for that same priceless pearl, and married
+for money, and become usurious?  Above all, do we really know, now,
+that we should probably have been miserable if we had won and worn
+the pearl, and that we are better without her?
+
+That Christmas when we had recently achieved so much fame; when we
+had been carried in triumph somewhere, for doing something great and
+good; when we had won an honoured and ennobled name, and arrived and
+were received at home in a shower of tears of joy; is it possible
+that THAT Christmas has not come yet?
+
+And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as
+we advance at such a noticeable mile-stone in the track as this
+great birthday, we look back on the things that never were, as
+naturally and full as gravely as on the things that have been and
+are gone, or have been and still are?  If it be so, and so it seems
+to be, must we come to the conclusion that life is little better
+than a dream, and little worth the loves and strivings that we crowd
+into it?
+
+No!  Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear Reader, on
+Christmas Day!  Nearer and closer to our hearts be the Christmas
+spirit, which is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance,
+cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance!  It is in the
+last virtues especially, that we are, or should be, strengthened by
+the unaccomplished visions of our youth; for, who shall say that
+they are not our teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable
+nothings of the earth!
+
+Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle
+of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring,
+expands!  Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take
+their places by the Christmas hearth.
+
+Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy,
+to your shelter underneath the holly!  We know you, and have not
+outlived you yet.  Welcome, old projects and old loves, however
+fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around
+us.  Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the
+earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven!  Do we build no
+Christmas castles in the clouds now?  Let our thoughts, fluttering
+like butterflies among these flowers of children, bear witness!
+Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever
+looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with
+truth.  Around this little head on which the sunny curls lie heaped,
+the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there was no
+scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of our
+first-love.  Upon another girl's face near it--placider but smiling
+bright--a quiet and contented little face, we see Home fairly
+written.  Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see
+how, when our graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other
+hearts than ours are moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other
+happiness blooms, ripens, and decays--no, not decays, for other
+homes and other bands of children, not yet in being nor for ages yet
+to be, arise, and bloom and ripen to the end of all!
+
+Welcome, everything!  Welcome, alike what has been, and what never
+was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly,
+to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-
+hearted!  In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the
+blaze, an enemy's face?  By Christmas Day we do forgive him!  If the
+injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come
+here and take his place.  If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence,
+assured that we will never injure nor accuse him.
+
+On this day we shut out Nothing!
+
+"Pause," says a low voice.  "Nothing?  Think!"
+
+"On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing."
+
+"Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying
+deep?" the voice replies.  "Not the shadow that darkens the whole
+globe?  Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?"
+
+Not even that.  Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces
+towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts
+bring those we loved, among us.  City of the Dead, in the blessed
+name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the
+Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will
+receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are dear to us!
+
+Yes.  We can look upon these children angels that alight, so
+solemnly, so beautifully among the living children by the fire, and
+can bear to think how they departed from us.  Entertaining angels
+unawares, as the Patriarchs did, the playful children are
+unconscious of their guests; but we can see them--can see a radiant
+arm around one favourite neck, as if there were a tempting of that
+child away.  Among the celestial figures there is one, a poor
+misshapen boy on earth, of a glorious beauty now, of whom his dying
+mother said it grieved her much to leave him here, alone, for so
+many years as it was likely would elapse before he came to her--
+being such a little child.  But he went quickly, and was laid upon
+her breast, and in her hand she leads him.
+
+There was a gallant boy, who fell, far away, upon a burning sand
+beneath a burning sun, and said, "Tell them at home, with my last
+love, how much I could have wished to kiss them once, but that I
+died contented and had done my duty!"  Or there was another, over
+whom they read the words, "Therefore we commit his body to the
+deep," and so consigned him to the lonely ocean and sailed on.  Or
+there was another, who lay down to his rest in the dark shadow of
+great forests, and, on earth, awoke no more.  O shall they not, from
+sand and sea and forest, be brought home at such a time!
+
+There was a dear girl--almost a woman--never to be one--who made a
+mourning Christmas in a house of joy, and went her trackless way to
+the silent City.  Do we recollect her, worn out, faintly whispering
+what could not be heard, and falling into that last sleep for
+weariness?  O look upon her now!  O look upon her beauty, her
+serenity, her changeless youth, her happiness!  The daughter of
+Jairus was recalled to life, to die; but she, more blest, has heard
+the same voice, saying unto her, "Arise for ever!"
+
+We had a friend who was our friend from early days, with whom we
+often pictured the changes that were to come upon our lives, and
+merrily imagined how we would speak, and walk, and think, and talk,
+when we came to be old.  His destined habitation in the City of the
+Dead received him in his prime.  Shall he be shut out from our
+Christmas remembrance?  Would his love have so excluded us?  Lost
+friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we
+will not so discard you!  You shall hold your cherished places in
+our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season
+of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will
+shut out Nothing!
+
+The winter sun goes down over town and village; on the sea it makes
+a rosy path, as if the Sacred tread were fresh upon the water.  A
+few more moments, and it sinks, and night comes on, and lights begin
+to sparkle in the prospect.  On the hill-side beyond the
+shapelessly-diffused town, and in the quiet keeping of the trees
+that gird the village-steeple, remembrances are cut in stone,
+planted in common flowers, growing in grass, entwined with lowly
+brambles around many a mound of earth.  In town and village, there
+are doors and windows closed against the weather, there are flaming
+logs heaped high, there are joyful faces, there is healthy music of
+voices.  Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of
+the Household Gods, but be those remembrances admitted with tender
+encouragement!  They are of the time and all its comforting and
+peaceful reassurances; and of the history that re-united even upon
+earth the living and the dead; and of the broad beneficence and
+goodness that too many men have tried to tear to narrow shreds.
+
+
+
+THE POOR RELATION'S STORY
+
+
+
+He was very reluctant to take precedence of so many respected
+members of the family, by beginning the round of stories they were
+to relate as they sat in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire; and
+he modestly suggested that it would be more correct if "John our
+esteemed host" (whose health he begged to drink) would have the
+kindness to begin.  For as to himself, he said, he was so little
+used to lead the way that really-- But as they all cried out here,
+that he must begin, and agreed with one voice that he might, could,
+would, and should begin, he left off rubbing his hands, and took his
+legs out from under his armchair, and did begin.
+
+I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise the
+assembled members of our family, and particularly John our esteemed
+host to whom we are so much indebted for the great hospitality with
+which he has this day entertained us, by the confession I am going
+to make.  But, if you do me the honour to be surprised at anything
+that falls from a person so unimportant in the family as I am, I can
+only say that I shall be scrupulously accurate in all I relate.
+
+I am not what I am supposed to be.  I am quite another thing.
+Perhaps before I go further, I had better glance at what I AM
+supposed to be.
+
+It is supposed, unless I mistake--the assembled members of our
+family will correct me if I do, which is very likely (here the poor
+relation looked mildly about him for contradiction); that I am
+nobody's enemy but my own.  That I never met with any particular
+success in anything.  That I failed in business because I was
+unbusiness-like and credulous--in not being prepared for the
+interested designs of my partner.  That I failed in love, because I
+was ridiculously trustful--in thinking it impossible that Christiana
+could deceive me.  That I failed in my expectations from my uncle
+Chill, on account of not being as sharp as he could have wished in
+worldly matters.  That, through life, I have been rather put upon
+and disappointed in a general way.  That I am at present a bachelor
+of between fifty-nine and sixty years of age, living on a limited
+income in the form of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that
+John our esteemed host wishes me to make no further allusion.
+
+The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to the
+following effect.
+
+I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road--a very clean back room, in
+a very respectable house--where I am expected not to be at home in
+the day-time, unless poorly; and which I usually leave in the
+morning at nine o'clock, on pretence of going to business.  I take
+my breakfast--my roll and butter, and my half-pint of coffee--at the
+old-established coffee-shop near Westminster Bridge; and then I go
+into the City--I don't know why--and sit in Garraway's Coffee House,
+and on 'Change, and walk about, and look into a few offices and
+counting-houses where some of my relations or acquaintance are so
+good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire if the weather
+happens to be cold.  I get through the day in this way until five
+o'clock, and then I dine:  at a cost, on the average, of one and
+threepence.  Having still a little money to spend on my evening's
+entertainment, I look into the old-established coffee-shop as I go
+home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of toast.  So, as
+the large hand of the clock makes its way round to the morning hour
+again, I make my way round to the Clapham Road again, and go to bed
+when I get to my lodging--fire being expensive, and being objected
+to by the family on account of its giving trouble and making a dirt.
+
+Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so obliging as to
+ask me to dinner.  Those are holiday occasions, and then I generally
+walk in the Park.  I am a solitary man, and seldom walk with
+anybody.  Not that I am avoided because I am shabby; for I am not at
+all shabby, having always a very good suit of black on (or rather
+Oxford mixture, which has the appearance of black and wears much
+better); but I have got into a habit of speaking low, and being
+rather silent, and my spirits are not high, and I am sensible that I
+am not an attractive companion.
+
+The only exception to this general rule is the child of my first
+cousin, Little Frank.  I have a particular affection for that child,
+and he takes very kindly to me.  He is a diffident boy by nature;
+and in a crowd he is soon run over, as I may say, and forgotten.  He
+and I, however, get on exceedingly well.  I have a fancy that the
+poor child will in time succeed to my peculiar position in the
+family.  We talk but little; still, we understand each other.  We
+walk about, hand in hand; and without much speaking he knows what I
+mean, and I know what he means.  When he was very little indeed, I
+used to take him to the windows of the toy-shops, and show him the
+toys inside.  It is surprising how soon he found out that I would
+have made him a great many presents if I had been in circumstances
+to do it.
+
+Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the Monument--he is
+very fond of the Monument--and at the Bridges, and at all the sights
+that are free.  On two of my birthdays, we have dined on e-la-mode
+beef, and gone at half-price to the play, and been deeply
+interested.  I was once walking with him in Lombard Street, which we
+often visit on account of my having mentioned to him that there are
+great riches there--he is very fond of Lombard Street--when a
+gentleman said to me as he passed by, "Sir, your little son has
+dropped his glove."  I assure you, if you will excuse my remarking
+on so trivial a circumstance, this accidental mention of the child
+as mine, quite touched my heart and brought the foolish tears into
+my eyes.
+
+When Little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be very
+much at a loss what to do with myself, but I have the intention of
+walking down there once a month and seeing him on a half holiday.  I
+am told he will then be at play upon the Heath; and if my visits
+should be objected to, as unsettling the child, I can see him from a
+distance without his seeing me, and walk back again.  His mother
+comes of a highly genteel family, and rather disapproves, I am
+aware, of our being too much together.  I know that I am not
+calculated to improve his retiring disposition; but I think he would
+miss me beyond the feeling of the moment if we were wholly
+separated.
+
+When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave much more in this
+world than I shall take out of it; but, I happen to have a miniature
+of a bright-faced boy, with a curling head, and an open shirt-frill
+waving down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me, but I can't
+believe that it was ever like), which will be worth nothing to sell,
+and which I shall beg may he given to Frank.  I have written my dear
+boy a little letter with it, in which I have told him that I felt
+very sorry to part from him, though bound to confess that I knew no
+reason why I should remain here.  I have given him some short
+advice, the best in my power, to take warning of the consequences of
+being nobody's enemy but his own; and I have endeavoured to comfort
+him for what I fear he will consider a bereavement, by pointing out
+to him, that I was only a superfluous something to every one but
+him; and that having by some means failed to find a place in this
+great assembly, I am better out of it.
+
+Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning to
+speak a little louder) is the general impression about me.  Now, it
+is a remarkable circumstance which forms the aim and purpose of my
+story, that this is all wrong.  This is not my life, and these are
+not my habits.  I do not even live in the Clapham Road.
+Comparatively speaking, I am very seldom there.  I reside, mostly,
+in a--I am almost ashamed to say the word, it sounds so full of
+pretension--in a Castle.  I do not mean that it is an old baronial
+habitation, but still it is a building always known to every one by
+the name of a Castle.  In it, I preserve the particulars of my
+history; they run thus:
+
+It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk) into
+partnership, and when I was still a young man of not more than five-
+and-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle Chill, from whom I had
+considerable expectations, that I ventured to propose to Christiana.
+I had loved Christiana a long time.  She was very beautiful, and
+very winning in all respects.  I rather mistrusted her widowed
+mother, who I feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind;
+but, I thought as well of her as I could, for Christiana's sake.  I
+never had loved any one but Christiana, and she had been all the
+world, and O far more than all the world, to me, from our childhood!
+
+Christiana accepted me with her mother's consent, and I was rendered
+very happy indeed.  My life at my uncle Chill's was of a spare dull
+kind, and my garret chamber was as dull, and bare, and cold, as an
+upper prison room in some stern northern fortress.  But, having
+Christiana's love, I wanted nothing upon earth.  I would not have
+changed my lot with any human being.
+
+Avarice was, unhappily, my uncle Chill's master-vice.  Though he was
+rich, he pinched, and scraped, and clutched, and lived miserably.
+As Christiana had no fortune, I was for some time a little fearful
+of confessing our engagement to him; but, at length I wrote him a
+letter, saying how it all truly was.  I put it into his hand one
+night, on going to bed.
+
+As I came down-stairs next morning, shivering in the cold December
+air; colder in my uncle's unwarmed house than in the street, where
+the winter sun did sometimes shine, and which was at all events
+enlivened by cheerful faces and voices passing along; I carried a
+heavy heart towards the long, low breakfast-room in which my uncle
+sat.  It was a large room with a small fire, and there was a great
+bay window in it which the rain had marked in the night as if with
+the tears of houseless people.  It stared upon a raw yard, with a
+cracked stone pavement, and some rusted iron railings half uprooted,
+whence an ugly out-building that had once been a dissecting-room (in
+the time of the great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to my
+uncle), stared at it.
+
+We rose so early always, that at that time of the year we
+breakfasted by candle-light.  When I went into the room, my uncle
+was so contracted by the cold, and so huddled together in his chair
+behind the one dim candle, that I did not see him until I was close
+to the table.
+
+As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being infirm,
+he always walked about the house with a stick), and made a blow at
+me, and said, "You fool!"
+
+"Uncle," I returned, "I didn't expect you to be so angry as this."
+Nor had I expected it, though he was a hard and angry old man.
+
+"You didn't expect!" said he; "when did you ever expect?  When did
+you ever calculate, or look forward, you contemptible dog?"
+
+"These are hard words, uncle!"
+
+"Hard words?  Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as you with," said he.
+"Here!  Betsy Snap!  Look at him!"
+
+Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old woman--our only
+domestic--always employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing
+my uncle's legs.  As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his
+lean grip on the crown of her head, she kneeling beside him, and
+turned her face towards me.  An involuntary thought connecting them
+both with the Dissecting Room, as it must often have been in the
+surgeon's time, passed across my mind in the midst of my anxiety.
+
+"Look at the snivelling milksop!" said my uncle.  "Look at the baby!
+This is the gentleman who, people say, is nobody's enemy but his
+own.  This is the gentleman who can't say no.  This is the gentleman
+who was making such large profits in his business that he must needs
+take a partner, t'other day.  This is the gentleman who is going to
+marry a wife without a penny, and who falls into the hands of
+Jezabels who are speculating on my death!"
+
+I knew, now, how great my uncle's rage was; for nothing short of his
+being almost beside himself would have induced him to utter that
+concluding word, which he held in such repugnance that it was never
+spoken or hinted at before him on any account.
+
+"On my death," he repeated, as if he were defying me by defying his
+own abhorrence of the word.  "On my death--death--Death!  But I'll
+spoil the speculation.  Eat your last under this roof, you feeble
+wretch, and may it choke you!"
+
+You may suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast to
+which I was bidden in these terms; but, I took my accustomed seat.
+I saw that I was repudiated henceforth by my uncle; still I could
+bear that very well, possessing Christiana's heart.
+
+He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he took
+it on his knees with his chair turned away from the table where I
+sat.  When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the candle; and the
+cold, slate-coloured, miserable day looked in upon us.
+
+"Now, Mr. Michael," said he, "before we part, I should like to have
+a word with these ladies in your presence."
+
+"As you will, sir," I returned; "but you deceive yourself, and wrong
+us, cruelly, if you suppose that there is any feeling at stake in
+this contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love."
+
+To this, he only replied, "You lie!" and not one other word.
+
+We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to the house
+where Christiana and her mother lived.  My uncle knew them very
+well.  They were sitting at their breakfast, and were surprised to
+see us at that hour.
+
+"Your servant, ma'am," said my uncle to the mother.  "You divine the
+purpose of my visit, I dare say, ma'am.  I understand there is a
+world of pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped up here.  I am
+happy to bring it all it wants, to make it complete.  I bring you
+your son-in-law, ma'am--and you, your husband, miss.  The gentleman
+is a perfect stranger to me, but I wish him joy of his wise
+bargain."
+
+He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him again.
+
+
+It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relation) to suppose
+that my dear Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced by her
+mother, married a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage wheels is
+often, in these changed times, thrown upon me as she rides by.  No,
+no.  She married me.
+
+The way we came to be married rather sooner than we intended, was
+this.  I took a frugal lodging and was saving and planning for her
+sake, when, one day, she spoke to me with great earnestness, and
+said:
+
+"My dear Michael, I have given you my heart.  I have said that I
+loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your wife.  I am as much
+yours through all changes of good and evil as if we had been married
+on the day when such words passed between us.  I know you well, and
+know that if we should be separated and our union broken off, your
+whole life would be shadowed, and all that might, even now, be
+stronger in your character for the conflict with the world would
+then be weakened to the shadow of what it is!"
+
+"God help me, Christiana!" said I.  "You speak the truth."
+
+"Michael!" said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maidenly
+devotion, "let us keep apart no longer.  It is but for me to say
+that I can live contented upon such means as you have, and I well
+know you are happy.  I say so from my heart.  Strive no more alone;
+let us strive together.  My dear Michael, it is not right that I
+should keep secret from you what you do not suspect, but what
+distresses my whole life.  My mother:  without considering that what
+you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of my
+faith:  sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to
+my misery.  I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to
+you.  I would rather share your struggles than look on.  I want no
+better home than you can give me.  I know that you will aspire and
+labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so
+when you will!"
+
+I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to me.  We were
+married in a very little while, and I took my wife to our happy
+home.  That was the beginning of the residence I have spoken of; the
+Castle we have ever since inhabited together, dates from that time.
+All our children have been born in it.  Our first child--now
+married--was a little girl, whom we called Christiana.  Her son is
+so like Little Frank, that I hardly know which is which.
+
+
+The current impression as to my partner's dealings with me is also
+quite erroneous.  He did not begin to treat me coldly, as a poor
+simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally quarrelled; nor did he
+afterwards gradually possess himself of our business and edge me
+out.  On the contrary, he behaved to me with the utmost good faith
+and honour.
+
+Matters between us took this turn:- On the day of my separation from
+my uncle, and even before the arrival at our counting-house of my
+trunks (which he sent after me, NOT carriage paid), I went down to
+our room of business, on our little wharf, overlooking the river;
+and there I told John Spatter what had happened.  John did not say,
+in reply, that rich old relatives were palpable facts, and that love
+and sentiment were moonshine and fiction.  He addressed me thus:
+
+"Michael," said John, "we were at school together, and I generally
+had the knack of getting on better than you, and making a higher
+reputation."
+
+"You had, John," I returned.
+
+"Although" said John, "I borrowed your books and lost them; borrowed
+your pocket-money, and never repaid it; got you to buy my damaged
+knives at a higher price than I had given for them new; and to own
+to the windows that I had broken."
+
+"All not worth mentioning, John Spatter," said I, "but certainly
+true."
+
+"When you were first established in this infant business, which
+promises to thrive so well," pursued John, "I came to you, in my
+search for almost any employment, and you made me your clerk."
+
+"Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter," said I; "still,
+equally true."
+
+"And finding that I had a good head for business, and that I was
+really useful TO the business, you did not like to retain me in that
+capacity, and thought it an act of justice soon to make me your
+partner."
+
+"Still less worth mentioning than any of those other little
+circumstances you have recalled, John Spatter," said I; "for I was,
+and am, sensible of your merits and my deficiencies."
+
+"Now, my good friend," said John, drawing my arm through his, as he
+had had a habit of doing at school; while two vessels outside the
+windows of our counting-house--which were shaped like the stern
+windows of a ship--went lightly down the river with the tide, as
+John and I might then be sailing away in company, and in trust and
+confidence, on our voyage of life; "let there, under these friendly
+circumstances, be a right understanding between us.  You are too
+easy, Michael.  You are nobody's enemy but your own.  If I were to
+give you that damaging character among our connexion, with a shrug,
+and a shake of the head, and a sigh; and if I were further to abuse
+the trust you place in me--"
+
+"But you never will abuse it at all, John," I observed.
+
+"Never!" said he; "but I am putting a case--I say, and if I were
+further to abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our common
+affairs in the dark, and this other piece in the light, and again
+this other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my
+strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last I
+found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on
+some bare common, a hopeless number of miles out of the way."
+
+"Exactly so," said I.
+
+"To prevent this, Michael," said John Spatter, "or the remotest
+chance of this, there must be perfect openness between us.  Nothing
+must be concealed, and we must have but one interest."
+
+"My dear John Spatter," I assured him, "that is precisely what I
+mean."
+
+"And when you are too easy," pursued John, his face glowing with
+friendship, "you must allow me to prevent that imperfection in your
+nature from being taken advantage of, by any one; you must not
+expect me to humour it--"
+
+"My dear John Spatter," I interrupted, "I DON'T expect you to humour
+it.  I want to correct it."
+
+"And I, too," said John.
+
+"Exactly so!" cried I.  "We both have the same end in view; and,
+honourably seeking it, and fully trusting one another, and having
+but one interest, ours will be a prosperous and happy partnership."
+
+"I am sure of it!" returned John Spatter.  And we shook hands most
+affectionately.
+
+I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very happy day.  Our
+partnership throve well.  My friend and partner supplied what I
+wanted, as I had foreseen that he would, and by improving both the
+business and myself, amply acknowledged any little rise in life to
+which I had helped him.
+
+
+I am not (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as he slowly
+rubbed his hands) very rich, for I never cared to be that; but I
+have enough, and am above all moderate wants and anxieties.  My
+Castle is not a splendid place, but it is very comfortable, and it
+has a warm and cheerful air, and is quite a picture of Home.
+
+Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, married John Spatter's
+eldest son.  Our two families are closely united in other ties of
+attachment.  It is very pleasant of an evening, when we are all
+assembled together--which frequently happens--and when John and I
+talk over old times, and the one interest there has always been
+between us.
+
+I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness is.  Some of our
+children or grandchildren are always about it, and the young voices
+of my descendants are delightful--O, how delightful!--to me to hear.
+My dearest and most devoted wife, ever faithful, ever loving, ever
+helpful and sustaining and consoling, is the priceless blessing of
+my house; from whom all its other blessings spring.  We are rather a
+musical family, and when Christiana sees me, at any time, a little
+weary or depressed, she steals to the piano and sings a gentle air
+she used to sing when we were first betrothed.  So weak a man am I,
+that I cannot bear to hear it from any other source.  They played it
+once, at the Theatre, when I was there with Little Frank; and the
+child said wondering, "Cousin Michael, whose hot tears are these
+that have fallen on my hand!"
+
+Such is my Castle, and such are the real particulars of my life
+therein preserved.  I often take Little Frank home there.  He is
+very welcome to my grandchildren, and they play together.  At this
+time of the year--the Christmas and New Year time--I am seldom out
+of my Castle.  For, the associations of the season seem to hold me
+there, and the precepts of the season seem to teach me that it is
+well to be there.
+
+
+"And the Castle is--" observed a grave, kind voice among the
+company.
+
+"Yes.  My Castle," said the poor relation, shaking his head as he
+still looked at the fire, "is in the Air.  John our esteemed host
+suggests its situation accurately.  My Castle is in the Air!  I have
+done.  Will you be so good as to pass the story?"
+
+
+
+THE CHILD'S STORY
+
+
+
+Once upon a time, a good many years ago, there was a traveller, and
+he set out upon a journey.  It was a magic journey, and was to seem
+very long when he began it, and very short when he got half way
+through.
+
+He travelled along a rather dark path for some little time, without
+meeting anything, until at last he came to a beautiful child.  So he
+said to the child, "What do you do here?"  And the child said, "I am
+always at play.  Come and play with me!"
+
+So, he played with that child, the whole day long, and they were
+very merry.  The sky was so blue, the sun was so bright, the water
+was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers were so
+lovely, and they heard such singing-birds and saw so many butteries,
+that everything was beautiful.  This was in fine weather.  When it
+rained, they loved to watch the falling drops, and to smell the
+fresh scents.  When it blew, it was delightful to listen to the
+wind, and fancy what it said, as it came rushing from its home--
+where was that, they wondered!--whistling and howling, driving the
+clouds before it, bending the trees, rumbling in the chimneys,
+shaking the house, and making the sea roar in fury.  But, when it
+snowed, that was best of all; for, they liked nothing so well as to
+look up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down from
+the breasts of millions of white birds; and to see how smooth and
+deep the drift was; and to listen to the hush upon the paths and
+roads.
+
+They had plenty of the finest toys in the world, and the most
+astonishing picture-books:  all about scimitars and slippers and
+turbans, and dwarfs and giants and genii and fairies, and blue-
+beards and bean-stalks and riches and caverns and forests and
+Valentines and Orsons:  and all new and all true.
+
+But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost the child.  He called
+to him over and over again, but got no answer.  So, he went upon his
+road, and went on for a little while without meeting anything, until
+at last he came to a handsome boy.  So, he said to the boy, "What do
+you do here?"  And the boy said, "I am always learning.  Come and
+learn with me."
+
+So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and Juno, and the Greeks
+and the Romans, and I don't know what, and learned more than I could
+tell--or he either, for he soon forgot a great deal of it.  But,
+they were not always learning; they had the merriest games that ever
+were played.  They rowed upon the river in summer, and skated on the
+ice in winter; they were active afoot, and active on horseback; at
+cricket, and all games at ball; at prisoner's base, hare and hounds,
+follow my leader, and more sports than I can think of; nobody could
+beat them.  They had holidays too, and Twelfth cakes, and parties
+where they danced till midnight, and real Theatres where they saw
+palaces of real gold and silver rise out of the real earth, and saw
+all the wonders of the world at once.  As to friends, they had such
+dear friends and so many of them, that I want the time to reckon
+them up.  They were all young, like the handsome boy, and were never
+to be strange to one another all their lives through.
+
+Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures, the traveller
+lost the boy as he had lost the child, and, after calling to him in
+vain, went on upon his journey.  So he went on for a little while
+without seeing anything, until at last he came to a young man.  So,
+he said to the young man, "What do you do here?"  And the young man
+said, "I am always in love.  Come and love with me."
+
+So, he went away with that young man, and presently they came to one
+of the prettiest girls that ever was seen--just like Fanny in the
+corner there--and she had eyes like Fanny, and hair like Fanny, and
+dimples like Fanny's, and she laughed and coloured just as Fanny
+does while I am talking about her.  So, the young man fell in love
+directly--just as Somebody I won't mention, the first time he came
+here, did with Fanny.  Well! he was teased sometimes--just as
+Somebody used to be by Fanny; and they quarrelled sometimes--just as
+Somebody and Fanny used to quarrel; and they made it up, and sat in
+the dark, and wrote letters every day, and never were happy asunder,
+and were always looking out for one another and pretending not to,
+and were engaged at Christmas-time, and sat close to one another by
+the fire, and were going to be married very soon--all exactly like
+Somebody I won't mention, and Fanny!
+
+But, the traveller lost them one day, as he had lost the rest of his
+friends, and, after calling to them to come back, which they never
+did, went on upon his journey.  So, he went on for a little while
+without seeing anything, until at last he came to a middle-aged
+gentleman.  So, he said to the gentleman, "What are you doing here?"
+And his answer was, "I am always busy.  Come and be busy with me!"
+
+So, he began to be very busy with that gentleman, and they went on
+through the wood together.  The whole journey was through a wood,
+only it had been open and green at first, like a wood in spring; and
+now began to be thick and dark, like a wood in summer; some of the
+little trees that had come out earliest, were even turning brown.
+The gentleman was not alone, but had a lady of about the same age
+with him, who was his Wife; and they had children, who were with
+them too.  So, they all went on together through the wood, cutting
+down the trees, and making a path through the branches and the
+fallen leaves, and carrying burdens, and working hard.
+
+Sometimes, they came to a long green avenue that opened into deeper
+woods.  Then they would hear a very little, distant voice crying,
+"Father, father, I am another child!  Stop for me!"  And presently
+they would see a very little figure, growing larger as it came
+along, running to join them.  When it came up, they all crowded
+round it, and kissed and welcomed it; and then they all went on
+together.
+
+Sometimes, they came to several avenues at once, and then they all
+stood still, and one of the children said, "Father, I am going to
+sea," and another said, "Father, I am going to India," and another,
+"Father, I am going to seek my fortune where I can," and another,
+"Father, I am going to Heaven!"  So, with many tears at parting,
+they went, solitary, down those avenues, each child upon its way;
+and the child who went to Heaven, rose into the golden air and
+vanished.
+
+Whenever these partings happened, the traveller looked at the
+gentleman, and saw him glance up at the sky above the trees, where
+the day was beginning to decline, and the sunset to come on.  He
+saw, too, that his hair was turning grey.  But, they never could
+rest long, for they had their journey to perform, and it was
+necessary for them to be always busy.
+
+At last, there had been so many partings that there were no children
+left, and only the traveller, the gentleman, and the lady, went upon
+their way in company.  And now the wood was yellow; and now brown;
+and the leaves, even of the forest trees, began to fall.
+
+So, they came to an avenue that was darker than the rest, and were
+pressing forward on their journey without looking down it when the
+lady stopped.
+
+"My husband," said the lady.  "I am called."
+
+They listened, and they heard a voice a long way down the avenue,
+say, "Mother, mother!"
+
+It was the voice of the first child who had said, "I am going to
+Heaven!" and the father said, "I pray not yet.  The sunset is very
+near.  I pray not yet!"
+
+But, the voice cried, "Mother, mother!" without minding him, though
+his hair was now quite white, and tears were on his face.
+
+Then, the mother, who was already drawn into the shade of the dark
+avenue and moving away with her arms still round his neck, kissed
+him, and said, "My dearest, I am summoned, and I go!"  And she was
+gone.  And the traveller and he were left alone together.
+
+And they went on and on together, until they came to very near the
+end of the wood:  so near, that they could see the sunset shining
+red before them through the trees.
+
+Yet, once more, while he broke his way among the branches, the
+traveller lost his friend.  He called and called, but there was no
+reply, and when he passed out of the wood, and saw the peaceful sun
+going down upon a wide purple prospect, he came to an old man
+sitting on a fallen tree.  So, he said to the old man, "What do you
+do here?"  And the old man said with a calm smile, "I am always
+remembering.  Come and remember with me!"
+
+So the traveller sat down by the side of that old man, face to face
+with the serene sunset; and all his friends came softly back and
+stood around him.  The beautiful child, the handsome boy, the young
+man in love, the father, mother, and children:  every one of them
+was there, and he had lost nothing.  So, he loved them all, and was
+kind and forbearing with them all, and was always pleased to watch
+them all, and they all honoured and loved him.  And I think the
+traveller must be yourself, dear Grandfather, because this what you
+do to us, and what we do to you.
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOLBOY'S STORY
+
+
+
+Being rather young at present--I am getting on in years, but still I
+am rather young--I have no particular adventures of my own to fall
+back upon.  It wouldn't much interest anybody here, I suppose, to
+know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin SHE is, or how
+they do stick it into parents--particularly hair-cutting, and
+medical attendance.  One of our fellows was charged in his half's
+account twelve and sixpence for two pills--tolerably profitable at
+six and threepence a-piece, I should think--and he never took them
+either, but put them up the sleeve of his jacket.
+
+As to the beef, it's shameful.  It's NOT beef.  Regular beef isn't
+veins.  You can chew regular beef.  Besides which, there's gravy to
+regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours.  Another of our
+fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father
+that he couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer.
+Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!
+
+However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things.  So is
+beer.  It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in
+which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of
+profit.
+
+Why, look at the pie-crust alone.  There's no flakiness in it.  It's
+solid--like damp lead.  Then our fellows get nightmares, and are
+bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows.  Who can wonder!
+
+Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his
+night-cap, got hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket-bat, and went
+down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his
+appearance he was a Ghost.  Why, he never would have done that if
+his meals had been wholesome.  When we all begin to walk in our
+sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry for it.
+
+Old Cheeseman wasn't second Latin Master then; he was a fellow
+himself.  He was first brought there, very small, in a post-chaise,
+by a woman who was always taking snuff and shaking him--and that was
+the most he remembered about it.  He never went home for the
+holidays.  His accounts (he never learnt any extras) were sent to a
+Bank, and the Bank paid them; and he had a brown suit twice a-year,
+and went into boots at twelve.  They were always too big for him,
+too.
+
+In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows who lived within
+walking distance, used to come back and climb the trees outside the
+playground wall, on purpose to look at Old Cheeseman reading there
+by himself.  He was always as mild as the tea--and THAT'S pretty
+mild, I should hope!--so when they whistled to him, he looked up and
+nodded; and when they said, "Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what have you
+had for dinner?" he said, "Boiled mutton;" and when they said, "An't
+it solitary, Old Cheeseman?" he said, "It is a little dull
+sometimes:" and then they said, "Well good-bye, Old Cheeseman!" and
+climbed down again.  Of course it was imposing on Old Cheeseman to
+give him nothing but boiled mutton through a whole Vacation, but
+that was just like the system.  When they didn't give him boiled
+mutton, they gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat.  And
+saved the butcher.
+
+So Old Cheeseman went on.  The holidays brought him into other
+trouble besides the loneliness; because when the fellows began to
+come back, not wanting to, he was always glad to see them; which was
+aggravating when they were not at all glad to see him, and so he got
+his head knocked against walls, and that was the way his nose bled.
+But he was a favourite in general.  Once a subscription was raised
+for him; and, to keep up his spirits, he was presented before the
+holidays with two white mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful
+puppy.  Old Cheeseman cried about it--especially soon afterwards,
+when they all ate one another.
+
+Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of all sorts
+of cheeses--Double Glo'sterman, Family Cheshireman, Dutchman, North
+Wiltshireman, and all that.  But he never minded it.  And I don't
+mean to say he was old in point of years--because he wasn't--only he
+was called from the first, Old Cheeseman.
+
+At last, Old Cheeseman was made second Latin Master.  He was brought
+in one morning at the beginning of a new half, and presented to the
+school in that capacity as "Mr. Cheeseman."  Then our fellows all
+agreed that Old Cheeseman was a spy, and a deserter, who had gone
+over to the enemy's camp, and sold himself for gold.  It was no
+excuse for him that he had sold himself for very little gold--two
+pound ten a quarter and his washing, as was reported.  It was
+decided by a Parliament which sat about it, that Old Cheeseman's
+mercenary motives could alone be taken into account, and that he had
+"coined our blood for drachmas."  The Parliament took the expression
+out of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius.
+
+When it was settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman was a
+tremendous traitor, who had wormed himself into our fellows' secrets
+on purpose to get himself into favour by giving up everything he
+knew, all courageous fellows were invited to come forward and enrol
+themselves in a Society for making a set against him.  The President
+of the Society was First boy, named Bob Tarter.  His father was in
+the West Indies, and he owned, himself, that his father was worth
+Millions.  He had great power among our fellows, and he wrote a
+parody, beginning -
+
+
+  "Who made believe to be so meek
+  That we could hardly hear him speak,
+  Yet turned out an Informing Sneak?
+  Old Cheeseman."
+
+
+- and on in that way through more than a dozen verses, which he used
+to go and sing, every morning, close by the new master's desk.  He
+trained one of the low boys, too, a rosy-cheeked little Brass who
+didn't care what he did, to go up to him with his Latin Grammar one
+morning, and say it so:  NOMINATIVUS PRONOMINUM--Old Cheeseman, RARO
+EXPRIMITUR--was never suspected, NISI DISTINCTIONIS--of being an
+informer, AUT EMPHASIS GRATIA--until he proved one.  UT--for
+instance, VOS DAMNASTIS--when he sold the boys.  QUASI--as though,
+DICAT--he should say, PRETAEREA NEMO--I'm a Judas!  All this
+produced a great effect on Old Cheeseman.  He had never had much
+hair; but what he had, began to get thinner and thinner every day.
+He grew paler and more worn; and sometimes of an evening he was seen
+sitting at his desk with a precious long snuff to his candle, and
+his hands before his face, crying.  But no member of the Society
+could pity him, even if he felt inclined, because the President said
+it was Old Cheeseman's conscience.
+
+So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn't he lead a miserable life!  Of
+course the Reverend turned up his nose at him, and of course SHE
+did--because both of them always do that at all the masters--but he
+suffered from the fellows most, and he suffered from them
+constantly.  He never told about it, that the Society could find
+out; but he got no credit for that, because the President said it
+was Old Cheeseman's cowardice.
+
+He had only one friend in the world, and that one was almost as
+powerless as he was, for it was only Jane.  Jane was a sort of
+wardrobe woman to our fellows, and took care of the boxes.  She had
+come at first, I believe, as a kind of apprentice--some of our
+fellows say from a Charity, but I don't know--and after her time was
+out, had stopped at so much a year.  So little a year, perhaps I
+ought to say, for it is far more likely.  However, she had put some
+pounds in the Savings' Bank, and she was a very nice young woman.
+She was not quite pretty; but she had a very frank, honest, bright
+face, and all our fellows were fond of her.  She was uncommonly neat
+and cheerful, and uncommonly comfortable and kind.  And if anything
+was the matter with a fellow's mother, he always went and showed the
+letter to Jane.
+
+Jane was Old Cheeseman's friend.  The more the Society went against
+him, the more Jane stood by him.  She used to give him a good-
+humoured look out of her still-room window, sometimes, that seemed
+to set him up for the day.  She used to pass out of the orchard and
+the kitchen garden (always kept locked, I believe you!) through the
+playground, when she might have gone the other way, only to give a
+turn of her head, as much as to say "Keep up your spirits!" to Old
+Cheeseman.  His slip of a room was so fresh and orderly that it was
+well known who looked after it while he was at his desk; and when
+our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on his plate at dinner, they
+knew with indignation who had sent it up.
+
+Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a quantity of
+meeting and debating, that Jane should be requested to cut Old
+Cheeseman dead; and that if she refused, she must be sent to
+Coventry herself.  So a deputation, headed by the President, was
+appointed to wait on Jane, and inform her of the vote the Society
+had been under the painful necessity of passing.  She was very much
+respected for all her good qualities, and there was a story about
+her having once waylaid the Reverend in his own study, and got a
+fellow off from severe punishment, of her own kind comfortable
+heart.  So the deputation didn't much like the job.  However, they
+went up, and the President told Jane all about it.  Upon which Jane
+turned very red, burst into tears, informed the President and the
+deputation, in a way not at all like her usual way, that they were a
+parcel of malicious young savages, and turned the whole respected
+body out of the room.  Consequently it was entered in the Society's
+book (kept in astronomical cypher for fear of detection), that all
+communication with Jane was interdicted:  and the President
+addressed the members on this convincing instance of Old Cheeseman's
+undermining.
+
+But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman was false to
+our fellows--in their opinion, at all events--and steadily continued
+to be his only friend.  It was a great exasperation to the Society,
+because Jane was as much a loss to them as she was a gain to him;
+and being more inveterate against him than ever, they treated him
+worse than ever.  At last, one morning, his desk stood empty, his
+room was peeped into, and found to be vacant, and a whisper went
+about among the pale faces of our fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable
+to bear it any longer, had got up early and drowned himself.
+
+The mysterious looks of the other masters after breakfast, and the
+evident fact that old Cheeseman was not expected, confirmed the
+Society in this opinion.  Some began to discuss whether the
+President was liable to hanging or only transportation for life, and
+the President's face showed a great anxiety to know which.  However,
+he said that a jury of his country should find him game; and that in
+his address he should put it to them to lay their hands upon their
+hearts and say whether they as Britons approved of informers, and
+how they thought they would like it themselves.  Some of the Society
+considered that he had better run away until he found a forest where
+he might change clothes with a wood-cutter, and stain his face with
+blackberries; but the majority believed that if he stood his ground,
+his father--belonging as he did to the West Indies, and being worth
+millions--could buy him off.
+
+All our fellows' hearts beat fast when the Reverend came in, and
+made a sort of a Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself with the
+ruler; as he always did before delivering an address.  But their
+fears were nothing to their astonishment when he came out with the
+story that Old Cheeseman, "so long our respected friend and fellow-
+pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge," he called him--O yes!
+I dare say!  Much of that!--was the orphan child of a disinherited
+young lady who had married against her father's wish, and whose
+young husband had died, and who had died of sorrow herself, and
+whose unfortunate baby (Old Cheeseman) had been brought up at the
+cost of a grandfather who would never consent to see it, baby, boy,
+or man:  which grandfather was now dead, and serve him right--that's
+my putting in--and which grandfather's large property, there being
+no will, was now, and all of a sudden and for ever, Old Cheeseman's!
+Our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant
+plains of knowledge, the Reverend wound up a lot of bothering
+quotations by saying, would "come among us once more" that day
+fortnight, when he desired to take leave of us himself, in a more
+particular manner.  With these words, he stared severely round at
+our fellows, and went solemnly out.
+
+There was precious consternation among the members of the Society,
+now.  Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more began to try to
+make out that they had never belonged to it.  However, the President
+stuck up, and said that they must stand or fall together, and that
+if a breach was made it should be over his body--which was meant to
+encourage the Society:  but it didn't.  The President further said,
+he would consider the position in which they stood, and would give
+them his best opinion and advice in a few days.  This was eagerly
+looked for, as he knew a good deal of the world on account of his
+father's being in the West Indies.
+
+After days and days of hard thinking, and drawing armies all over
+his slate, the President called our fellows together, and made the
+matter clear.  He said it was plain that when Old Cheeseman came on
+the appointed day, his first revenge would be to impeach the
+Society, and have it flogged all round.  After witnessing with joy
+the torture of his enemies, and gloating over the cries which agony
+would extort from them, the probability was that he would invite the
+Reverend, on pretence of conversation, into a private room--say the
+parlour into which Parents were shown, where the two great globes
+were which were never used--and would there reproach him with the
+various frauds and oppressions he had endured at his hands.  At the
+close of his observations he would make a signal to a Prizefighter
+concealed in the passage, who would then appear and pitch into the
+Reverend, till he was left insensible.  Old Cheeseman would then
+make Jane a present of from five to ten pounds, and would leave the
+establishment in fiendish triumph.
+
+The President explained that against the parlour part, or the Jane
+part, of these arrangements he had nothing to say; but, on the part
+of the Society, he counselled deadly resistance.  With this view he
+recommended that all available desks should be filled with stones,
+and that the first word of the complaint should be the signal to
+every fellow to let fly at Old Cheeseman.  The bold advice put the
+Society in better spirits, and was unanimously taken.  A post about
+Old Cheeseman's size was put up in the playground, and all our
+fellows practised at it till it was dinted all over.
+
+When the day came, and Places were called, every fellow sat down in
+a tremble.  There had been much discussing and disputing as to how
+Old Cheeseman would come; but it was the general opinion that he
+would appear in a sort of triumphal car drawn by four horses, with
+two livery servants in front, and the Prizefighter in disguise up
+behind.  So, all our fellows sat listening for the sound of wheels.
+But no wheels were heard, for Old Cheeseman walked after all, and
+came into the school without any preparation.  Pretty much as he
+used to be, only dressed in black.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the Reverend, presenting him, "our so long
+respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of
+knowledge, is desirous to offer a word or two.  Attention,
+gentlemen, one and all!"
+
+Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked at the
+President.  The President was all ready, and taking aim at old
+Cheeseman with his eyes.
+
+What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his old desk, look round
+him with a queer smile as if there was a tear in his eye, and begin
+in a quavering, mild voice, "My dear companions and old friends!"
+
+Every fellow's hand came out of his desk, and the President suddenly
+began to cry.
+
+"My dear companions and old friends," said Old Cheeseman, "you have
+heard of my good fortune.  I have passed so many years under this
+roof--my entire life so far, I may say--that I hope you have been
+glad to hear of it for my sake.  I could never enjoy it without
+exchanging congratulations with you.  If we have ever misunderstood
+one another at all, pray, my dear boys, let us forgive and forget.
+I have a great tenderness for you, and I am sure you return it.  I
+want in the fulness of a grateful heart to shake hands with you
+every one.  I have come back to do it, if you please, my dear boys."
+
+Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows had
+broken out here and there:  but now, when Old Cheeseman began with
+him as first boy, laid his left hand affectionately on his shoulder
+and gave him his right; and when the President said "Indeed, I don't
+deserve it, sir; upon my honour I don't;" there was sobbing and
+crying all over the school.  Every other fellow said he didn't
+deserve it, much in the same way; but Old Cheeseman, not minding
+that a bit, went cheerfully round to every boy, and wound up with
+every master--finishing off the Reverend last.
+
+Then a snivelling little chap in a corner, who was always under some
+punishment or other, set up a shrill cry of "Success to Old
+Cheeseman!  Hooray!"  The Reverend glared upon him, and said, "MR.
+Cheeseman, sir."  But, Old Cheeseman protesting that he liked his
+old name a great deal better than his new one, all our fellows took
+up the cry; and, for I don't know how many minutes, there was such a
+thundering of feet and hands, and such a roaring of Old Cheeseman,
+as never was heard.
+
+After that, there was a spread in the dining-room of the most
+magnificent kind.  Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits,
+confectionaries, jellies, neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles,
+crackers--eat all you can and pocket what you like--all at Old
+Cheeseman's expense.  After that, speeches, whole holiday, double
+and treble sets of all manners of things for all manners of games,
+donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself, dinner for all the masters
+at the Seven Bells (twenty pounds a-head our fellows estimated it
+at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day every year, and
+another on Old Cheeseman's birthday--Reverend bound down before the
+fellows to allow it, so that he could never back out--all at Old
+Cheeseman's expense.
+
+And didn't our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside the Seven
+Bells?  O no!
+
+But there's something else besides.  Don't look at the next story-
+teller, for there's more yet.  Next day, it was resolved that the
+Society should make it up with Jane, and then be dissolved.  What do
+you think of Jane being gone, though!  "What?  Gone for ever?" said
+our fellows, with long faces.  "Yes, to be sure," was all the answer
+they could get.  None of the people about the house would say
+anything more.  At length, the first boy took upon himself to ask
+the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was really gone?  The
+Reverend (he has got a daughter at home--turn-up nose, and red)
+replied severely, "Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is gone."  The idea of
+calling Jane, Miss Pitt!  Some said she had been sent away in
+disgrace for taking money from Old Cheeseman; others said she had
+gone into Old Cheeseman's service at a rise of ten pounds a year.
+All that our fellows knew, was, she was gone.
+
+It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an open
+carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a
+lady and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a long time and
+stood up to see it played.  Nobody thought much about them, until
+the same little snivelling chap came in, against all rules, from the
+post where he was Scout, and said, "It's Jane!"  Both Elevens forgot
+the game directly, and ran crowding round the carriage.  It WAS
+Jane!  In such a bonnet!  And if you'll believe me, Jane was married
+to Old Cheeseman.
+
+It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at
+it in the playground, to see a carriage at the low part of the wall
+where it joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up
+in it, looking over.  The gentleman was always Old Cheeseman, and
+the lady was always Jane.
+
+The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way.  There had
+been a good many changes among our fellows then, and it had turned
+out that Bob Tarter's father wasn't worth Millions!  He wasn't worth
+anything.  Bob had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had
+purchased his discharge.  But that's not the carriage.  The carriage
+stopped, and all our fellows stopped as soon as it was seen.
+
+"So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!" said the lady,
+laughing, as our fellows swarmed up the wall to shake hands with
+her.  "Are you never going to do it?"
+
+"Never! never! never!" on all sides.
+
+I didn't understand what she meant then, but of course I do now.  I
+was very much pleased with her face though, and with her good way,
+and I couldn't help looking at her--and at him too--with all our
+fellows clustering so joyfully about them.
+
+They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might as
+well swarm up the wall myself, and shake hands with them as the rest
+did.  I was quite as glad to see them as the rest were, and was
+quite as familiar with them in a moment.
+
+"Only a fortnight now," said Old Cheeseman, "to the holidays.  Who
+stops?  Anybody?"
+
+A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices cried "He
+does!"  For it was the year when you were all away; and rather low I
+was about it, I can tell you.
+
+"Oh!" said Old Cheeseman.  "But it's solitary here in the holiday
+time.  He had better come to us."
+
+So I went to their delightful house, and was as happy as I could
+possibly be.  They understand how to conduct themselves towards
+boys, THEY do.  When they take a boy to the play, for instance, they
+DO take him.  They don't go in after it's begun, or come out before
+it's over.  They know how to bring a boy up, too.  Look at their
+own!  Though he is very little as yet, what a capital boy he is!
+Why, my next favourite to Mrs. Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young
+Cheeseman.
+
+So, now I have told you all I know about Old Cheeseman.  And it's
+not much after all, I am afraid.  Is it?
+
+
+
+NOBODY'S STORY
+
+
+
+He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, which was
+always silently rolling on to a vast undiscovered ocean.  It had
+rolled on, ever since the world began.  It had changed its course
+sometimes, and turned into new channels, leaving its old ways dry
+and barren; but it had ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow
+until Time should be no more.  Against its strong, unfathomable
+stream, nothing made head.  No living creature, no flower, no leaf,
+no particle of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed back
+from the undiscovered ocean.  The tide of the river set resistlessly
+towards it; and the tide never stopped, any more than the earth
+stops in its circling round the sun.
+
+He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live.  He had
+no hope of ever being rich enough to live a month without hard work,
+but he was quite content, GOD knows, to labour with a cheerful will.
+He was one of an immense family, all of whose sons and daughters
+gained their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising
+up betimes until their lying down at night.  Beyond this destiny he
+had no prospect, and he sought none.
+
+There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, in the
+neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that.
+Such clash and uproar came from the Bigwig family, at the
+unaccountable proceedings of which race, he marvelled much.  They
+set up the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass,
+before his door; and darkened his house with the legs and tails of
+uncouth images of horses.  He wondered what it all meant, smiled in
+a rough good-humoured way he had, and kept at his hard work.
+
+The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people
+thereabouts, and all the noisiest) had undertaken to save him the
+trouble of thinking for himself, and to manage him and his affairs.
+"Why truly," said he, "I have little time upon my hands; and if you
+will be so good as to take care of me, in return for the money I pay
+over"--for the Bigwig family were not above his money--"I shall be
+relieved and much obliged, considering that you know best."  Hence
+the drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, and the ugly images of
+horses which he was expected to fall down and worship.
+
+"I don't understand all this," said he, rubbing his furrowed brow
+confusedly.  "But it HAS a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out."
+
+"It means," returned the Bigwig family, suspecting something of what
+he said, "honour and glory in the highest, to the highest merit."
+
+"Oh!" said he.  And he was glad to hear that.
+
+But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze, and
+brass, he failed to find a rather meritorious countryman of his,
+once the son of a Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single countryman
+whomsoever of that kind.  He could find none of the men whose
+knowledge had rescued him and his children from terrific and
+disfiguring disease, whose boldness had raised his forefathers from
+the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy had opened a new and high
+existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled the working man's
+world with accumulated wonders.  Whereas, he did find others whom he
+knew no good of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.
+
+"Humph!" said he.  "I don't quite understand it."
+
+So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to get it out of his
+mind.
+
+Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened
+streets; but it was a precious place to him.  The hands of his wife
+were hardened with toil, and she was old before her time; but she
+was dear to him.  His children, stunted in their growth, bore traces
+of unwholesome nurture; but they had beauty in his sight.  Above all
+other things, it was an earnest desire of this man's soul that his
+children should be taught.  "If I am sometimes misled," said he,
+"for want of knowledge, at least let them know better, and avoid my
+mistakes.  If it is hard to me to reap the harvest of pleasure and
+instruction that is stored in books, let it be easier to them."
+
+But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels
+concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man's children.  Some
+of the family insisted on such a thing being primary and
+indispensable above all other things; and others of the family
+insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above
+all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote
+pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all
+varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and
+courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummelings, and fell
+together by the ears in unintelligible animosity.  Meanwhile, this
+man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the demon
+Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself.  He saw his
+daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge; he saw his son
+go moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime;
+he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies
+so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather
+wished them idiots.
+
+"I don't understand this any the better," said he; "but I think it
+cannot be right.  Nay, by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest
+against this as my wrong!"
+
+Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually short-lived,
+and his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and
+holidays, and he saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and
+thence how drunkenness arose with all its train of ruin.  Then he
+appealed to the Bigwig family, and said, "We are a labouring people,
+and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring people of
+whatever condition were made--by a higher intelligence than yours,
+as I poorly understand it--to be in need of mental refreshment and
+recreation.  See what we fall into, when we rest without it.  Come!
+Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!"
+
+But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar absolutely
+deafening.  When some few voices were faintly heard, proposing to
+show him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation, the
+mighty changes of time, the workings of nature and the beauties of
+art--to show him these things, that is to say, at any period of his
+life when he could look upon them--there arose among the Bigwigs
+such roaring and raving, such pulpiting and petitioning, such
+maundering and memorialising, such name-calling and dirt-throwing,
+such a shrill wind of parliamentary questioning and feeble replying-
+-where "I dare not" waited on "I would"--that the poor fellow stood
+aghast, staring wildly around.
+
+"Have I provoked all this," said he, with his hands to his
+affrighted ears, "by what was meant to be an innocent request,
+plainly arising out of my familiar experience, and the common
+knowledge of all men who choose to open their eyes?  I don't
+understand, and I am not understood.  What is to come of such a
+state of things!"
+
+He was bending over his work, often asking himself the question,
+when the news began to spread that a pestilence had appeared among
+the labourers, and was slaying them by thousands.  Going forth to
+look about him, he soon found this to be true.  The dying and the
+dead were mingled in the close and tainted houses among which his
+life was passed.  New poison was distilled into the always murky,
+always sickening air.  The robust and the weak, old age and infancy,
+the father and the mother, all were stricken down alike.
+
+What means of flight had he?  He remained there, where he was, and
+saw those who were dearest to him die.  A kind preacher came to him,
+and would have said some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom,
+but he replied:
+
+"O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to
+residence in this foetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me
+for my delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my
+numbered days is new mire added to the heap under which I lie
+oppressed!  But, give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a
+little of its light and air; give me pure water; help me to be
+clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy life, in which our
+spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and callous creatures
+you too often see us; gently and kindly take the bodies of those who
+die among us, out of the small room where we grow to be so familiar
+with the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to us; and,
+Teacher, then I will hear--none know better than you, how willingly-
+-of Him whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had
+compassion for all human sorrow!"
+
+He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came and
+stood near to him dressed in black.  He, also, had suffered heavily.
+His young wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so,
+too, his only child.
+
+"Master, 'tis hard to bear--I know it--but be comforted.  I would
+give you comfort, if I could."
+
+The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, "O you
+labouring men!  The calamity began among you.  If you had but lived
+more healthily and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft
+mourner that I am this day."
+
+"Master," returned the other, shaking his head, "I have begun to
+understand a little that most calamities will come from us, as this
+one did, and that none will stop at our poor doors, until we are
+united with that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things
+that are right.  We cannot live healthily and decently, unless they
+who undertook to manage us provide the means.  We cannot be
+instructed unless they will teach us; we cannot be rationally
+amused, unless they will amuse us; we cannot but have some false
+gods of our own, while they set up so many of theirs in all the
+public places.  The evil consequences of imperfect instruction, the
+evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of
+unnatural restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will
+all come from us, and none of them will stop with us.  They will
+spread far and wide.  They always do; they always have done--just
+like the pestilence.  I understand so much, I think, at last."
+
+But the Master said again, "O you labouring men!  How seldom do we
+ever hear of you, except in connection with some trouble!"
+
+"Master," he replied, "I am Nobody, and little likely to be heard of
+(nor yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is
+some trouble.  But it never begins with me, and it never can end
+with me.  As sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from
+me."
+
+There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig family,
+getting wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the late
+desolation, resolved to unite with him to do the things that were
+right--at all events, so far as the said things were associated with
+the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence.
+But, as their fear wore off, which it soon began to do, they resumed
+their falling out among themselves, and did nothing.  Consequently
+the scourge appeared again--low down as before--and spread
+avengingly upward as before, and carried off vast numbers of the
+brawlers.  But not a man among them ever admitted, if in the least
+degree he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with it.
+
+So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this, in the
+main, is the whole of Nobody's story.
+
+Had he no name, you ask?  Perhaps it was Legion.  It matters little
+what his name was.  Let us call him Legion.
+
+If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Waterloo,
+you will have seen, in some quiet little church, a monument erected
+by faithful companions in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major B,
+Captains C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I and J, seven
+non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and thirty rank and file,
+who fell in the discharge of their duty on the memorable day.  The
+story of Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the earth.
+They bear their share of the battle; they have their part in the
+victory; they fall; they leave no name but in the mass.  The march
+of the proudest of us, leads to the dusty way by which they go.  O!
+Let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire, and not forget
+them when it is burnt out.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Christmas Stories by Dickens
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,2368 @@
+% The Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Christmas Stories by Dickens
+% #50 in our series by Charles Dickens
+% 
+% 
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+% 
+% Some Christmas Stories
+% 
+% by Charles Dickens
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+% September, 1998  [Etext #1467]
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+% The Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Christmas Stories by Dickens
+% ******This file should be named cdscs10.txt or cdscs10.zip******
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+
+\input gutenberg-toc2.tex
+
+
+
+% This etext was prepared from the 1911 Chapman and Hall Christmas
+% Stories (Volume 1) edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+\begin{document}
+
+% Some Short Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens
+\gtitle{Some Short Christmas Stories}
+
+\gauthor{Charles Dickens}
+
+% Contents:
+% 
+% A Christmas Tree
+% What Christmas is as we Grow Older
+% The Poor Relation's Story
+% The Child's Story
+% The Schoolboy's Story
+% Nobody's Story
+
+
+
+\chapter{A Christmas Tree}
+
+
+
+I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children
+assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree.  The tree
+was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high
+above their heads.  It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of
+little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright
+objects.  There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green
+leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least,
+and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable
+twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads,
+wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic
+furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched
+among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping;
+there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in
+appearance than many real men---and no wonder, for their heads took
+off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles
+and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes,
+sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were
+trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold
+and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there
+were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in
+enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were
+teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles,
+conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially
+dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts,
+crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me,
+delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend,
+``There was everything, and more.''  This motley collection of odd
+objects, clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back
+the bright looks directed towards it from every side---some of the
+diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and
+a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty
+mothers, aunts, and nurses---made a lively realisation of the fancies
+of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and
+all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their
+wild adornments at that well-remembered time.
+
+Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house
+awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not
+care to resist, to my own childhood.  I begin to consider, what do
+we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our
+own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.
+
+Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its
+growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy
+tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top---%
+for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to
+grow downward towards the earth---I look into my youngest Christmas
+recollections!
+
+All toys at first, I find.  Up yonder, among the green holly and red
+berries, is the Tumbler with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't
+lie down, but whenever he was put upon the floor, persisted in
+rolling his fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and
+brought those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me---when I affected
+to laugh very much, but in my heart of hearts was extremely doubtful
+of him.  Close beside him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which
+there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown, with an
+obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide open, who was
+not to be endured on any terms, but could not be put away either;
+for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of
+Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected.  Nor is the frog
+with cobbler's wax on his tail, far off; for there was no knowing
+where he wouldn't jump; and when he flew over the candle, and came
+upon one's hand with that spotted back---red on a green ground---he
+was horrible.  The cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was
+stood up against the candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the
+same branch, was milder, and was beautiful; but I can't say as much
+for the larger cardboard man, who used to be hung against the wall
+and pulled by a string; there was a sinister expression in that nose
+of his; and when he got his legs round his neck (which he very often
+did), he was ghastly, and not a creature to be alone with.
+
+When did that dreadful Mask first look at me?  Who put it on, and
+why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life?
+It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll,
+why then were its stolid features so intolerable?  Surely not
+because it hid the wearer's face.  An apron would have done as much;
+and though I should have preferred even the apron away, it would not
+have been absolutely insupportable, like the mask.  Was it the
+immovability of the mask?  The doll's face was immovable, but I was
+not afraid of \emph{her}.  Perhaps that fixed and set change coming over a
+real face, infused into my quickened heart some remote suggestion
+and dread of the universal change that is to come on every face, and
+make it still?  Nothing reconciled me to it.  No drummers, from whom
+proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no
+regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box, and
+fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs;
+no old woman, made of wires and a brown-paper composition, cutting
+up a pie for two small children; could give me a permanent comfort,
+for a long time.  Nor was it any satisfaction to be shown the Mask,
+and see that it was made of paper, or to have it locked up and be
+assured that no one wore it.  The mere recollection of that fixed
+face, the mere knowledge of its existence anywhere, was sufficient
+to awake me in the night all perspiration and horror, with, ``O I
+know it's coming!  O the mask!''
+
+I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers---there
+he is! was made of, then!  His hide was real to the touch, I
+recollect.  And the great black horse with the round red spots all
+over him---the horse that I could even get upon---I never wondered
+what had brought him to that strange condition, or thought that such
+a horse was not commonly seen at Newmarket.  The four horses of no
+colour, next to him, that went into the waggon of cheeses, and could
+be taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of
+fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for their manes, and to
+stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they were
+brought home for a Christmas present.  They were all right, then;
+neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests,
+as appears to be the case now.  The tinkling works of the music-%
+cart, I \emph{did} find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and
+I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves,
+perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down,
+head foremost, on the other, rather a weak-minded person---though
+good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, next him, made of little
+squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one
+another, each developing a different picture, and the whole
+enlivened by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
+
+Ah!  The Doll's house!---of which I was not proprietor, but where I
+visited.  I don't admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as
+that stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps,
+and a real balcony---greener than I ever see now, except at watering
+places; and even they afford but a poor imitation.  And though it
+\emph{did} open all at once, the entire house-front (which was a blow, I
+admit, as cancelling the fiction of a staircase), it was but to shut
+it up again, and I could believe.  Even open, there were three
+distinct rooms in it:  a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly
+furnished, and best of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-%
+irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils---oh, the
+warming-pan!---and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to
+fry two fish.  What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble
+feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured, each with its own
+peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and
+garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss!  Could
+all the Temperance Societies of these later days, united, give me
+such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little
+set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran out of
+the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and
+which made tea, nectar.  And if the two legs of the ineffectual
+little sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, and want purpose,
+like Punch's hands, what does it matter?  And if I did once shriek
+out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable company with
+consternation, by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon,
+inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the worse for
+it, except by a powder!
+
+Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green
+roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to
+hang.  Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and
+with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green.  What fat
+black letters to begin with!  ``A was an archer, and shot at a frog.''
+Of course he was.  He was an apple-pie also, and there he is!  He
+was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his
+friends, except X, who had so little versatility, that I never knew
+him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe---like Y, who was always
+confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a
+Zebra or a Zany.  But, now, the very tree itself changes, and
+becomes a bean-stalk---the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack
+climbed to the Giant's house!  And now, those dreadfully
+interesting, double-headed giants, with their clubs over their
+shoulders, begin to stride along the boughs in a perfect throng,
+dragging knights and ladies home for dinner by the hair of their
+heads.  And Jack---how noble, with his sword of sharpness, and his
+shoes of swiftness!  Again those old meditations come upon me as I
+gaze up at him; and I debate within myself whether there was more
+than one Jack (which I am loth to believe possible), or only one
+genuine original admirable Jack, who achieved all the recorded
+exploits.
+
+Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak, in which---%
+the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her
+basket---Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give
+me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf
+who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his
+appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about
+his teeth.  She was my first love.  I felt that if I could have
+married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.
+But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out
+the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession
+on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.  O the wonderful
+Noah's Ark!  It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub,
+and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have
+their legs well shaken down before they could be got in, even there---%
+and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door,
+which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch---but what was
+\emph{that} against it!  Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than
+the elephant:  the lady-bird, the butterfly---all triumphs of art!
+Consider the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was
+so indifferent, that he usually tumbled forward, and knocked down
+all the animal creation.  Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic
+tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers;
+and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve
+themselves into frayed bits of string!
+
+Hush!  Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree---not Robin Hood,
+not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him and all
+Mother Bunch's wonders, without mention), but an Eastern King with a
+glittering scimitar and turban.  By Allah! two Eastern Kings, for I
+see another, looking over his shoulder!  Down upon the grass, at the
+tree's foot, lies the full length of a coal-black Giant, stretched
+asleep, with his head in a lady's lap; and near them is a glass box,
+fastened with four locks of shining steel, in which he keeps the
+lady prisoner when he is awake.  I see the four keys at his girdle
+now.  The lady makes signs to the two kings in the tree, who softly
+descend.  It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights.
+
+Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me.  All
+lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans.  Common flower-pots
+are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top;
+trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw down
+into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to
+them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the
+traders, with loud cries, will scare them.  Tarts are made,
+according to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned
+pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers at the gate of
+Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up
+people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blind-fold.
+
+Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only
+waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy,
+that will make the earth shake.  All the dates imported come from
+the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant
+knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son.  All olives are of
+the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which the Commander of the
+Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the
+fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the apple
+purchased (with two others) from the Sultan's gardener for three
+sequins, and which the tall black slave stole from the child.  All
+dogs are associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who
+jumped upon the baker's counter, and put his paw on the piece of bad
+money.  All rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who was a
+ghoule, could only peck by grains, because of her nightly feasts in
+the burial-place.  My very rocking-horse,---there he is, with his
+nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!---should
+have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as
+the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all
+his father's Court.
+
+Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper branches of
+my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light!  When I wake in bed, at
+daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings, the white snow dimly
+beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I hear
+Dinarzade.  ``Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you finish
+the history of the Young King of the Black Islands.''  Scheherazade
+replies, ``If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day,
+sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful
+story yet.''  Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders
+for the execution, and we all three breathe again.
+
+At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the leaves---%
+it may be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie, or of these
+many fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on his desert island,
+Philip Quarll among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton with Mr.\ %
+Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the Mask---or it may be the result of
+indigestion, assisted by imagination and over-doctoring---a
+prodigious nightmare.  It is so exceedingly indistinct, that I don't
+know why it's frightful---but I know it is.  I can only make out that
+it is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to be
+planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear
+the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes, and
+receding to an immeasurable distance.  When it comes closest, it is
+worse.  In connection with it I descry remembrances of winter nights
+incredibly long; of being sent early to bed, as a punishment for
+some small offence, and waking in two hours, with a sensation of
+having been asleep two nights; of the laden hopelessness of morning
+ever dawning; and the oppression of a weight of remorse.
+
+And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of
+the ground, before a vast green curtain.  Now, a bell rings---a magic
+bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells---and
+music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of
+orange-peel and oil.  Anon, the magic bell commands the music to
+cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself up majestically, and
+The Play begins!  The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of
+his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous
+Peasant with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take from this
+hour forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an
+Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed since he and I
+have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed
+surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my
+remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto
+the end of time.  Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane
+Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down,
+went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the
+worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for
+it that he ought to have been let off.  Comes swift to comfort me,
+the Pantomime---stupendous Phenomenon!---when clowns are shot from
+loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright constellation that
+it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with scales of pure gold,
+twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it
+no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather) puts
+red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries ``Here's somebody coming!'' or
+taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, ``Now, I sawed you do
+it!'' when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being
+changed into Anything; and ``Nothing is, but thinking makes it so.''
+Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation---%
+often to return in after-life---of being unable, next day, to get
+back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the
+bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy,
+with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy
+immortality along with her.  Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as
+my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as
+often, and has never yet stayed by me!
+
+Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,---there it is, with its
+familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!---and all
+its attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water
+colours, in the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth,
+or the Exile of Siberia.  In spite of a few besetting accidents and
+failures (particularly an unreasonable disposition in the
+respectable Kelmar, and some others, to become faint in the legs,
+and double up, at exciting points of the drama), a teeming world of
+fancies so suggestive and all-embracing, that, far below it on my
+Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real Theatres in the day-time,
+adorned with these associations as with the freshest garlands of the
+rarest flowers, and charming me yet.
+
+But hark!  The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep!
+What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them
+set forth on the Christmas Tree?  Known before all the others,
+keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little
+bed.  An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some
+travellers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a
+manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a
+solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl
+by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a
+widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the
+opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick
+person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the
+water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude;
+again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again,
+restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the
+deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the
+ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a
+thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one
+voice heard, ``Forgive them, for they know not what they do.''
+
+Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas
+associations cluster thick.  School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil
+silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool impertinent inquiries,
+long disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of
+huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked;
+cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher up, with the smell of
+trodden grass and the softened noise of shouts in the evening air;
+the tree is still fresh, still gay.  If I no more come home at
+Christmas-time, there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven!) while
+the World lasts; and they do!  Yonder they dance and play upon the
+branches of my Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart dances
+and plays too!
+
+And I do come home at Christmas.  We all do, or we all should.  We
+all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday---the
+longer, the better---from the great boarding-school, where we are for
+ever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.
+As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have
+we not been, when we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas
+Tree!
+
+Away into the winter prospect.  There are many such upon the tree!
+On, by low-lying, misty grounds, through fens and fogs, up long
+hills, winding dark as caverns between thick plantations, almost
+shutting out the sparkling stars; so, out on broad heights, until we
+stop at last, with sudden silence, at an avenue.  The gate-bell has
+a deep, half-awful sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on
+its hinges; and, as we drive up to a great house, the glancing
+lights grow larger in the windows, and the opposing rows of trees
+seem to fall solemnly back on either side, to give us place.  At
+intervals, all day, a frightened hare has shot across this whitened
+turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of deer trampling the hard
+frost, has, for the minute, crushed the silence too.  Their watchful
+eyes beneath the fern may be shining now, if we could see them, like
+the icy dewdrops on the leaves; but they are still, and all is
+still.  And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees falling
+back before us, and closing up again behind us, as if to forbid
+retreat, we come to the house.
+
+There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good
+comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories---%
+Ghost Stories, or more shame for us---round the Christmas fire; and
+we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.  But,
+no matter for that.  We came to the house, and it is an old house,
+full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the
+hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too)
+lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls.  We are a
+middle-aged nobleman, and we make a generous supper with our host
+and hostess and their guests---it being Christmas-time, and the old
+house full of company---and then we go to bed.  Our room is a very
+old room.  It is hung with tapestry.  We don't like the portrait of
+a cavalier in green, over the fireplace.  There are great black
+beams in the ceiling, and there is a great black bedstead, supported
+at the foot by two great black figures, who seem to have come off a
+couple of tombs in the old baronial church in the park, for our
+particular accommodation.  But, we are not a superstitious nobleman,
+and we don't mind.  Well! we dismiss our servant, lock the door, and
+sit before the fire in our dressing-gown, musing about a great many
+things.  At length we go to bed.  Well! we can't sleep.  We toss and
+tumble, and can't sleep.  The embers on the hearth burn fitfully and
+make the room look ghostly.  We can't help peeping out over the
+counterpane, at the two black figures and the cavalier---that wicked-%
+looking cavalier---in green.  In the flickering light they seem to
+advance and retire:  which, though we are not by any means a
+superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable.  Well! we get nervous---%
+more and more nervous.  We say ``This is very foolish, but we can't
+stand this; we'll pretend to be ill, and knock up somebody.''  Well!
+we are just going to do it, when the locked door opens, and there
+comes in a young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who
+glides to the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there,
+wringing her hands.  Then, we notice that her clothes are wet.  Our
+tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth, and we can't speak; but, we
+observe her accurately.  Her clothes are wet; her long hair is
+dabbled with moist mud; she is dressed in the fashion of two hundred
+years ago; and she has at her girdle a bunch of rusty keys.  Well!
+there she sits, and we can't even faint, we are in such a state
+about it.  Presently she gets up, and tries all the locks in the
+room with the rusty keys, which won't fit one of them; then, she
+fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in green, and says,
+in a low, terrible voice, ``The stags know it!''  After that, she
+wrings her hands again, passes the bedside, and goes out at the
+door.  We hurry on our dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always
+travel with pistols), and are following, when we find the door
+locked.  We turn the key, look out into the dark gallery; no one
+there.  We wander away, and try to find our servant.  Can't be done.
+We pace the gallery till daybreak; then return to our deserted room,
+fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant (nothing ever haunts
+him) and the shining sun.  Well! we make a wretched breakfast, and
+all the company say we look queer.  After breakfast, we go over the
+house with our host, and then we take him to the portrait of the
+cavalier in green, and then it all comes out.  He was false to a
+young housekeeper once attached to that family, and famous for her
+beauty, who drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was
+discovered, after a long time, because the stags refused to drink of
+the water.  Since which, it has been whispered that she traverses
+the house at midnight (but goes especially to that room where the
+cavalier in green was wont to sleep), trying the old locks with the
+rusty keys.  Well! we tell our host of what we have seen, and a
+shade comes over his features, and he begs it may be hushed up; and
+so it is.  But, it's all true; and we said so, before we died (we
+are dead now) to many responsible people.
+
+There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries, and
+dismal state-bedchambers, and haunted wings shut up for many years,
+through which we may ramble, with an agreeable creeping up our back,
+and encounter any number of ghosts, but (it is worthy of remark
+perhaps) reducible to a very few general types and classes; for,
+ghosts have little originality, and ``walk'' in a beaten track.  Thus,
+it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a
+certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has
+certain planks in the floor from which the blood \emph{will} \emph{not} be taken
+out.  You may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or
+plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub and scrub, as his
+grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his great-%
+grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be---no redder and
+no paler---no more and no less---always just the same.  Thus, in such
+another house there is a haunted door, that never will keep open; or
+another door that never will keep shut, or a haunted sound of a
+spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a sigh, or
+a horse's tramp, or the rattling of a chain.  Or else, there is a
+turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour, strikes thirteen when the
+head of the family is going to die; or a shadowy, immovable black
+carriage which at such a time is always seen by somebody, waiting
+near the great gates in the stable-yard.  Or thus, it came to pass
+how Lady Mary went to pay a visit at a large wild house in the
+Scottish Highlands, and, being fatigued with her long journey,
+retired to bed early, and innocently said, next morning, at the
+breakfast-table, ``How odd, to have so late a party last night, in
+this remote place, and not to tell me of it, before I went to bed!''
+Then, every one asked Lady Mary what she meant?  Then, Lady Mary
+replied, ``Why, all night long, the carriages were driving round and
+round the terrace, underneath my window!''  Then, the owner of the
+house turned pale, and so did his Lady, and Charles Macdoodle of
+Macdoodle signed to Lady Mary to say no more, and every one was
+silent.  After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it
+was a tradition in the family that those rumbling carriages on the
+terrace betokened death.  And so it proved, for, two months
+afterwards, the Lady of the mansion died.  And Lady Mary, who was a
+Maid of Honour at Court, often told this story to the old Queen
+Charlotte; by this token that the old King always said, ``Eh, eh?
+What, what?  Ghosts, ghosts?  No such thing, no such thing!''  And
+never left off saying so, until he went to bed.
+
+Or, a friend of somebody's whom most of us know, when he was a young
+man at college, had a particular friend, with whom he made the
+compact that, if it were possible for the Spirit to return to this
+earth after its separation from the body, he of the twain who first
+died, should reappear to the other.  In course of time, this compact
+was forgotten by our friend; the two young men having progressed in
+life, and taken diverging paths that were wide asunder.  But, one
+night, many years afterwards, our friend being in the North of
+England, and staying for the night in an inn, on the Yorkshire
+Moors, happened to look out of bed; and there, in the moonlight,
+leaning on a bureau near the window, steadfastly regarding him, saw
+his old college friend!  The appearance being solemnly addressed,
+replied, in a kind of whisper, but very audibly, ``Do not come near
+me.  I am dead.  I am here to redeem my promise.  I come from
+another world, but may not disclose its secrets!''  Then, the whole
+form becoming paler, melted, as it were, into the moonlight, and
+faded away.
+
+Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of the picturesque
+Elizabethan house, so famous in our neighbourhood.  You have heard
+about her?  No!  Why, \emph{she} went out one summer evening at twilight,
+when she was a beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age, to
+gather flowers in the garden; and presently came running, terrified,
+into the hall to her father, saying, ``Oh, dear father, I have met
+myself!''  He took her in his arms, and told her it was fancy, but
+she said, ``Oh no!  I met myself in the broad walk, and I was pale
+and gathering withered flowers, and I turned my head, and held them
+up!''  And, that night, she died; and a picture of her story was
+begun, though never finished, and they say it is somewhere in the
+house to this day, with its face to the wall.
+
+Or, the uncle of my brother's wife was riding home on horseback, one
+mellow evening at sunset, when, in a green lane close to his own
+house, he saw a man standing before him, in the very centre of a
+narrow way.  ``Why does that man in the cloak stand there!'' he
+thought.  ``Does he want me to ride over him?''  But the figure never
+moved.  He felt a strange sensation at seeing it so still, but
+slackened his trot and rode forward.  When he was so close to it, as
+almost to touch it with his stirrup, his horse shied, and the figure
+glided up the bank, in a curious, unearthly manner---backward, and
+without seeming to use its feet---and was gone.  The uncle of my
+brother's wife, exclaiming, ``Good Heaven!  It's my cousin Harry,
+from Bombay!'' put spurs to his horse, which was suddenly in a
+profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange behaviour, dashed
+round to the front of his house.  There, he saw the same figure,
+just passing in at the long French window of the drawing-room,
+opening on the ground.  He threw his bridle to a servant, and
+hastened in after it.  His sister was sitting there, alone.  ``Alice,
+where's my cousin Harry?''  ``Your cousin Harry, John?''  ``Yes.  From
+Bombay.  I met him in the lane just now, and saw him enter here,
+this instant.''  Not a creature had been seen by any one; and in that
+hour and minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin died in
+India.
+
+Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who died at ninety-%
+nine, and retained her faculties to the last, who really did see the
+Orphan Boy; a story which has often been incorrectly told, but, of
+which the real truth is this---because it is, in fact, a story
+belonging to our family---and she was a connexion of our family.
+When she was about forty years of age, and still an uncommonly fine
+woman (her lover died young, which was the reason why she never
+married, though she had many offers), she went to stay at a place in
+Kent, which her brother, an Indian-Merchant, had newly bought.
+There was a story that this place had once been held in trust by the
+guardian of a young boy; who was himself the next heir, and who
+killed the young boy by harsh and cruel treatment.  She knew nothing
+of that.  It has been said that there was a Cage in her bedroom in
+which the guardian used to put the boy.  There was no such thing.
+There was only a closet.  She went to bed, made no alarm whatever in
+the night, and in the morning said composedly to her maid when she
+came in, ``Who is the pretty forlorn-looking child who has been
+peeping out of that closet all night?''  The maid replied by giving a
+loud scream, and instantly decamping.  She was surprised; but she
+was a woman of remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed herself
+and went downstairs, and closeted herself with her brother.  ``Now,
+Walter,'' she said, ``I have been disturbed all night by a pretty,
+forlorn-looking boy, who has been constantly peeping out of that
+closet in my room, which I can't open.  This is some trick.''  ``I am
+afraid not, Charlotte,'' said he, ``for it is the legend of the house.
+It is the Orphan Boy.  What did he do?''  ``He opened the door
+softly,'' said she, ``and peeped out.  Sometimes, he came a step or
+two into the room.  Then, I called to him, to encourage him, and he
+shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the door.''  ``The
+closet has no communication, Charlotte,'' said her brother, ``with any
+other part of the house, and it's nailed up.''  This was undeniably
+true, and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to get it open,
+for examination.  Then, she was satisfied that she had seen the
+Orphan Boy.  But, the wild and terrible part of the story is, that
+he was also seen by three of her brother's sons, in succession, who
+all died young.  On the occasion of each child being taken ill, he
+came home in a heat, twelve hours before, and said, Oh, Mamma, he
+had been playing under a particular oak-tree, in a certain meadow,
+with a strange boy---a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who was very
+timid, and made signs!  From fatal experience, the parents came to
+know that this was the Orphan Boy, and that the course of that child
+whom he chose for his little playmate was surely run.
+
+Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit up alone to
+wait for the Spectre---where we are shown into a room, made
+comparatively cheerful for our reception---where we glance round at
+the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire---where
+we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty
+daughter have retired, after laying down a fresh store of wood upon
+the hearth, and setting forth on the small table such supper-cheer
+as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine---%
+where the reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after
+another, like so many peals of sullen thunder---and where, about the
+small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of divers
+supernatural mysteries.  Legion is the name of the haunted German
+students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the
+schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off
+the footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally
+blows open.  Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our
+Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all
+down the boughs!
+
+Among the later toys and fancies hanging there---as idle often and
+less pure---be the images once associated with the sweet old Waits,
+the softened music in the night, ever unalterable!  Encircled by the
+social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of
+my childhood stand unchanged!  In every cheerful image and
+suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested
+above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World!  A
+moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark
+to me as yet, and let me look once more!  I know there are blank
+spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and
+smiled; from which they are departed.  But, far above, I see the
+raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow's Son; and God is good!  If
+Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O
+may I, with a grey head, turn a child's heart to that figure yet,
+and a child's trustfulness and confidence!
+
+Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and
+dance, and cheerfulness.  And they are welcome.  Innocent and
+welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas
+Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow!  But, as it sinks into the
+ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves.  ``This, in
+commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion.
+This, in remembrance of Me!''
+
+
+
+\chapter{What Christmas Is As We Grow Older}
+
+
+
+Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our
+limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or
+seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes;
+grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made
+the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.
+
+Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts over-leaped that
+narrow boundary; when there was some one (very dear, we thought
+then, very beautiful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to the fulness
+of our happiness; when we were wanting too (or we thought so, which
+did just as well) at the Christmas hearth by which that some one
+sat; and when we intertwined with every wreath and garland of our
+life that some one's name.
+
+That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have
+long arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in the
+palest edges of the rainbow!  That was the time for the beatified
+enjoyment of the things that were to be, and never were, and yet the
+things that were so real in our resolute hope that it would be hard
+to say, now, what realities achieved since, have been stronger!
+
+What!  Did that Christmas never really come when we and the
+priceless pearl who was our young choice were received, after the
+happiest of totally impossible marriages, by the two united families
+previously at daggers---drawn on our account?  When brothers and
+sisters-in-law who had always been rather cool to us before our
+relationship was effected, perfectly doted on us, and when fathers
+and mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited incomes?  Was that
+Christmas dinner never really eaten, after which we arose, and
+generously and eloquently rendered honour to our late rival, present
+in the company, then and there exchanging friendship and
+forgiveness, and founding an attachment, not to be surpassed in
+Greek or Roman story, which subsisted until death?  Has that same
+rival long ceased to care for that same priceless pearl, and married
+for money, and become usurious?  Above all, do we really know, now,
+that we should probably have been miserable if we had won and worn
+the pearl, and that we are better without her?
+
+That Christmas when we had recently achieved so much fame; when we
+had been carried in triumph somewhere, for doing something great and
+good; when we had won an honoured and ennobled name, and arrived and
+were received at home in a shower of tears of joy; is it possible
+that \emph{that} Christmas has not come yet?
+
+And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as
+we advance at such a noticeable mile-stone in the track as this
+great birthday, we look back on the things that never were, as
+naturally and full as gravely as on the things that have been and
+are gone, or have been and still are?  If it be so, and so it seems
+to be, must we come to the conclusion that life is little better
+than a dream, and little worth the loves and strivings that we crowd
+into it?
+
+No!  Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear Reader, on
+Christmas Day!  Nearer and closer to our hearts be the Christmas
+spirit, which is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance,
+cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance!  It is in the
+last virtues especially, that we are, or should be, strengthened by
+the unaccomplished visions of our youth; for, who shall say that
+they are not our teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable
+nothings of the earth!
+
+Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle
+of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring,
+expands!  Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take
+their places by the Christmas hearth.
+
+Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy,
+to your shelter underneath the holly!  We know you, and have not
+outlived you yet.  Welcome, old projects and old loves, however
+fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around
+us.  Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the
+earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven!  Do we build no
+Christmas castles in the clouds now?  Let our thoughts, fluttering
+like butterflies among these flowers of children, bear witness!
+Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever
+looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with
+truth.  Around this little head on which the sunny curls lie heaped,
+the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there was no
+scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of our
+first-love.  Upon another girl's face near it---placider but smiling
+bright---a quiet and contented little face, we see Home fairly
+written.  Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see
+how, when our graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other
+hearts than ours are moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other
+happiness blooms, ripens, and decays---no, not decays, for other
+homes and other bands of children, not yet in being nor for ages yet
+to be, arise, and bloom and ripen to the end of all!
+
+Welcome, everything!  Welcome, alike what has been, and what never
+was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly,
+to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-%
+hearted!  In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the
+blaze, an enemy's face?  By Christmas Day we do forgive him!  If the
+injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come
+here and take his place.  If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence,
+assured that we will never injure nor accuse him.
+
+On this day we shut out Nothing!
+
+``Pause,'' says a low voice.  ``Nothing?  Think!''
+
+``On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing.''
+
+``Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying
+deep?'' the voice replies.  ``Not the shadow that darkens the whole
+globe?  Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?''
+
+Not even that.  Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces
+towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts
+bring those we loved, among us.  City of the Dead, in the blessed
+name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the
+Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will
+receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are dear to us!
+
+Yes.  We can look upon these children angels that alight, so
+solemnly, so beautifully among the living children by the fire, and
+can bear to think how they departed from us.  Entertaining angels
+unawares, as the Patriarchs did, the playful children are
+unconscious of their guests; but we can see them---can see a radiant
+arm around one favourite neck, as if there were a tempting of that
+child away.  Among the celestial figures there is one, a poor
+misshapen boy on earth, of a glorious beauty now, of whom his dying
+mother said it grieved her much to leave him here, alone, for so
+many years as it was likely would elapse before he came to her---%
+being such a little child.  But he went quickly, and was laid upon
+her breast, and in her hand she leads him.
+
+There was a gallant boy, who fell, far away, upon a burning sand
+beneath a burning sun, and said, ``Tell them at home, with my last
+love, how much I could have wished to kiss them once, but that I
+died contented and had done my duty!''  Or there was another, over
+whom they read the words, ``Therefore we commit his body to the
+deep,'' and so consigned him to the lonely ocean and sailed on.  Or
+there was another, who lay down to his rest in the dark shadow of
+great forests, and, on earth, awoke no more.  O shall they not, from
+sand and sea and forest, be brought home at such a time!
+
+There was a dear girl---almost a woman---never to be one---who made a
+mourning Christmas in a house of joy, and went her trackless way to
+the silent City.  Do we recollect her, worn out, faintly whispering
+what could not be heard, and falling into that last sleep for
+weariness?  O look upon her now!  O look upon her beauty, her
+serenity, her changeless youth, her happiness!  The daughter of
+Jairus was recalled to life, to die; but she, more blest, has heard
+the same voice, saying unto her, ``Arise for ever!''
+
+We had a friend who was our friend from early days, with whom we
+often pictured the changes that were to come upon our lives, and
+merrily imagined how we would speak, and walk, and think, and talk,
+when we came to be old.  His destined habitation in the City of the
+Dead received him in his prime.  Shall he be shut out from our
+Christmas remembrance?  Would his love have so excluded us?  Lost
+friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we
+will not so discard you!  You shall hold your cherished places in
+our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season
+of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will
+shut out Nothing!
+
+The winter sun goes down over town and village; on the sea it makes
+a rosy path, as if the Sacred tread were fresh upon the water.  A
+few more moments, and it sinks, and night comes on, and lights begin
+to sparkle in the prospect.  On the hill-side beyond the
+shapelessly-diffused town, and in the quiet keeping of the trees
+that gird the village-steeple, remembrances are cut in stone,
+planted in common flowers, growing in grass, entwined with lowly
+brambles around many a mound of earth.  In town and village, there
+are doors and windows closed against the weather, there are flaming
+logs heaped high, there are joyful faces, there is healthy music of
+voices.  Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of
+the Household Gods, but be those remembrances admitted with tender
+encouragement!  They are of the time and all its comforting and
+peaceful reassurances; and of the history that re-united even upon
+earth the living and the dead; and of the broad beneficence and
+goodness that too many men have tried to tear to narrow shreds.
+
+
+
+\chapter{The Poor Relation's Story}
+
+
+
+He was very reluctant to take precedence of so many respected
+members of the family, by beginning the round of stories they were
+to relate as they sat in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire; and
+he modestly suggested that it would be more correct if ``John our
+esteemed host'' (whose health he begged to drink) would have the
+kindness to begin.  For as to himself, he said, he was so little
+used to lead the way that really--- But as they all cried out here,
+that he must begin, and agreed with one voice that he might, could,
+would, and should begin, he left off rubbing his hands, and took his
+legs out from under his armchair, and did begin.
+
+I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise the
+assembled members of our family, and particularly John our esteemed
+host to whom we are so much indebted for the great hospitality with
+which he has this day entertained us, by the confession I am going
+to make.  But, if you do me the honour to be surprised at anything
+that falls from a person so unimportant in the family as I am, I can
+only say that I shall be scrupulously accurate in all I relate.
+
+I am not what I am supposed to be.  I am quite another thing.
+Perhaps before I go further, I had better glance at what I \emph{am}
+supposed to be.
+
+It is supposed, unless I mistake---the assembled members of our
+family will correct me if I do, which is very likely (here the poor
+relation looked mildly about him for contradiction); that I am
+nobody's enemy but my own.  That I never met with any particular
+success in anything.  That I failed in business because I was
+unbusiness-like and credulous---in not being prepared for the
+interested designs of my partner.  That I failed in love, because I
+was ridiculously trustful---in thinking it impossible that Christiana
+could deceive me.  That I failed in my expectations from my uncle
+Chill, on account of not being as sharp as he could have wished in
+worldly matters.  That, through life, I have been rather put upon
+and disappointed in a general way.  That I am at present a bachelor
+of between fifty-nine and sixty years of age, living on a limited
+income in the form of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that
+John our esteemed host wishes me to make no further allusion.
+
+The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to the
+following effect.
+
+I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road---a very clean back room, in
+a very respectable house---where I am expected not to be at home in
+the day-time, unless poorly; and which I usually leave in the
+morning at nine o'clock, on pretence of going to business.  I take
+my breakfast---my roll and butter, and my half-pint of coffee---at the
+old-established coffee-shop near Westminster Bridge; and then I go
+into the City---I don't know why---and sit in Garraway's Coffee House,
+and on 'Change, and walk about, and look into a few offices and
+counting-houses where some of my relations or acquaintance are so
+good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire if the weather
+happens to be cold.  I get through the day in this way until five
+o'clock, and then I dine:  at a cost, on the average, of one and
+threepence.  Having still a little money to spend on my evening's
+entertainment, I look into the old-established coffee-shop as I go
+home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of toast.  So, as
+the large hand of the clock makes its way round to the morning hour
+again, I make my way round to the Clapham Road again, and go to bed
+when I get to my lodging---fire being expensive, and being objected
+to by the family on account of its giving trouble and making a dirt.
+
+Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so obliging as to
+ask me to dinner.  Those are holiday occasions, and then I generally
+walk in the Park.  I am a solitary man, and seldom walk with
+anybody.  Not that I am avoided because I am shabby; for I am not at
+all shabby, having always a very good suit of black on (or rather
+Oxford mixture, which has the appearance of black and wears much
+better); but I have got into a habit of speaking low, and being
+rather silent, and my spirits are not high, and I am sensible that I
+am not an attractive companion.
+
+The only exception to this general rule is the child of my first
+cousin, Little Frank.  I have a particular affection for that child,
+and he takes very kindly to me.  He is a diffident boy by nature;
+and in a crowd he is soon run over, as I may say, and forgotten.  He
+and I, however, get on exceedingly well.  I have a fancy that the
+poor child will in time succeed to my peculiar position in the
+family.  We talk but little; still, we understand each other.  We
+walk about, hand in hand; and without much speaking he knows what I
+mean, and I know what he means.  When he was very little indeed, I
+used to take him to the windows of the toy-shops, and show him the
+toys inside.  It is surprising how soon he found out that I would
+have made him a great many presents if I had been in circumstances
+to do it.
+
+Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the Monument---he is
+very fond of the Monument---and at the Bridges, and at all the sights
+that are free.  On two of my birthdays, we have dined on e-la-mode
+beef, and gone at half-price to the play, and been deeply
+interested.  I was once walking with him in Lombard Street, which we
+often visit on account of my having mentioned to him that there are
+great riches there---he is very fond of Lombard Street---when a
+gentleman said to me as he passed by, ``Sir, your little son has
+dropped his glove.''  I assure you, if you will excuse my remarking
+on so trivial a circumstance, this accidental mention of the child
+as mine, quite touched my heart and brought the foolish tears into
+my eyes.
+
+When Little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be very
+much at a loss what to do with myself, but I have the intention of
+walking down there once a month and seeing him on a half holiday.  I
+am told he will then be at play upon the Heath; and if my visits
+should be objected to, as unsettling the child, I can see him from a
+distance without his seeing me, and walk back again.  His mother
+comes of a highly genteel family, and rather disapproves, I am
+aware, of our being too much together.  I know that I am not
+calculated to improve his retiring disposition; but I think he would
+miss me beyond the feeling of the moment if we were wholly
+separated.
+
+When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave much more in this
+world than I shall take out of it; but, I happen to have a miniature
+of a bright-faced boy, with a curling head, and an open shirt-frill
+waving down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me, but I can't
+believe that it was ever like), which will be worth nothing to sell,
+and which I shall beg may he given to Frank.  I have written my dear
+boy a little letter with it, in which I have told him that I felt
+very sorry to part from him, though bound to confess that I knew no
+reason why I should remain here.  I have given him some short
+advice, the best in my power, to take warning of the consequences of
+being nobody's enemy but his own; and I have endeavoured to comfort
+him for what I fear he will consider a bereavement, by pointing out
+to him, that I was only a superfluous something to every one but
+him; and that having by some means failed to find a place in this
+great assembly, I am better out of it.
+
+Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning to
+speak a little louder) is the general impression about me.  Now, it
+is a remarkable circumstance which forms the aim and purpose of my
+story, that this is all wrong.  This is not my life, and these are
+not my habits.  I do not even live in the Clapham Road.
+Comparatively speaking, I am very seldom there.  I reside, mostly,
+in a---I am almost ashamed to say the word, it sounds so full of
+pretension---in a Castle.  I do not mean that it is an old baronial
+habitation, but still it is a building always known to every one by
+the name of a Castle.  In it, I preserve the particulars of my
+history; they run thus:
+
+It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk) into
+partnership, and when I was still a young man of not more than five-%
+and-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle Chill, from whom I had
+considerable expectations, that I ventured to propose to Christiana.
+I had loved Christiana a long time.  She was very beautiful, and
+very winning in all respects.  I rather mistrusted her widowed
+mother, who I feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind;
+but, I thought as well of her as I could, for Christiana's sake.  I
+never had loved any one but Christiana, and she had been all the
+world, and O far more than all the world, to me, from our childhood!
+
+Christiana accepted me with her mother's consent, and I was rendered
+very happy indeed.  My life at my uncle Chill's was of a spare dull
+kind, and my garret chamber was as dull, and bare, and cold, as an
+upper prison room in some stern northern fortress.  But, having
+Christiana's love, I wanted nothing upon earth.  I would not have
+changed my lot with any human being.
+
+Avarice was, unhappily, my uncle Chill's master-vice.  Though he was
+rich, he pinched, and scraped, and clutched, and lived miserably.
+As Christiana had no fortune, I was for some time a little fearful
+of confessing our engagement to him; but, at length I wrote him a
+letter, saying how it all truly was.  I put it into his hand one
+night, on going to bed.
+
+As I came down-stairs next morning, shivering in the cold December
+air; colder in my uncle's unwarmed house than in the street, where
+the winter sun did sometimes shine, and which was at all events
+enlivened by cheerful faces and voices passing along; I carried a
+heavy heart towards the long, low breakfast-room in which my uncle
+sat.  It was a large room with a small fire, and there was a great
+bay window in it which the rain had marked in the night as if with
+the tears of houseless people.  It stared upon a raw yard, with a
+cracked stone pavement, and some rusted iron railings half uprooted,
+whence an ugly out-building that had once been a dissecting-room (in
+the time of the great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to my
+uncle), stared at it.
+
+We rose so early always, that at that time of the year we
+breakfasted by candle-light.  When I went into the room, my uncle
+was so contracted by the cold, and so huddled together in his chair
+behind the one dim candle, that I did not see him until I was close
+to the table.
+
+As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being infirm,
+he always walked about the house with a stick), and made a blow at
+me, and said, ``You fool!''
+
+``Uncle,'' I returned, ``I didn't expect you to be so angry as this.''
+Nor had I expected it, though he was a hard and angry old man.
+
+``You didn't expect!'' said he; ``when did you ever expect?  When did
+you ever calculate, or look forward, you contemptible dog?''
+
+``These are hard words, uncle!''
+
+``Hard words?  Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as you with,'' said he.
+``Here!  Betsy Snap!  Look at him!''
+
+Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old woman---our only
+domestic---always employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing
+my uncle's legs.  As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his
+lean grip on the crown of her head, she kneeling beside him, and
+turned her face towards me.  An involuntary thought connecting them
+both with the Dissecting Room, as it must often have been in the
+surgeon's time, passed across my mind in the midst of my anxiety.
+
+``Look at the snivelling milksop!'' said my uncle.  ``Look at the baby!
+This is the gentleman who, people say, is nobody's enemy but his
+own.  This is the gentleman who can't say no.  This is the gentleman
+who was making such large profits in his business that he must needs
+take a partner, t'other day.  This is the gentleman who is going to
+marry a wife without a penny, and who falls into the hands of
+Jezabels who are speculating on my death!''
+
+I knew, now, how great my uncle's rage was; for nothing short of his
+being almost beside himself would have induced him to utter that
+concluding word, which he held in such repugnance that it was never
+spoken or hinted at before him on any account.
+
+``On my death,'' he repeated, as if he were defying me by defying his
+own abhorrence of the word.  ``On my death---death---Death!  But I'll
+spoil the speculation.  Eat your last under this roof, you feeble
+wretch, and may it choke you!''
+
+You may suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast to
+which I was bidden in these terms; but, I took my accustomed seat.
+I saw that I was repudiated henceforth by my uncle; still I could
+bear that very well, possessing Christiana's heart.
+
+He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he took
+it on his knees with his chair turned away from the table where I
+sat.  When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the candle; and the
+cold, slate-coloured, miserable day looked in upon us.
+
+``Now, Mr.\ Michael,'' said he, ``before we part, I should like to have
+a word with these ladies in your presence.''
+
+``As you will, sir,'' I returned; ``but you deceive yourself, and wrong
+us, cruelly, if you suppose that there is any feeling at stake in
+this contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love.''
+
+To this, he only replied, ``You lie!'' and not one other word.
+
+We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to the house
+where Christiana and her mother lived.  My uncle knew them very
+well.  They were sitting at their breakfast, and were surprised to
+see us at that hour.
+
+``Your servant, ma'am,'' said my uncle to the mother.  ``You divine the
+purpose of my visit, I dare say, ma'am.  I understand there is a
+world of pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped up here.  I am
+happy to bring it all it wants, to make it complete.  I bring you
+your son-in-law, ma'am---and you, your husband, miss.  The gentleman
+is a perfect stranger to me, but I wish him joy of his wise
+bargain.''
+
+He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him again.
+
+
+It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relation) to suppose
+that my dear Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced by her
+mother, married a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage wheels is
+often, in these changed times, thrown upon me as she rides by.  No,
+no.  She married me.
+
+The way we came to be married rather sooner than we intended, was
+this.  I took a frugal lodging and was saving and planning for her
+sake, when, one day, she spoke to me with great earnestness, and
+said:
+
+``My dear Michael, I have given you my heart.  I have said that I
+loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your wife.  I am as much
+yours through all changes of good and evil as if we had been married
+on the day when such words passed between us.  I know you well, and
+know that if we should be separated and our union broken off, your
+whole life would be shadowed, and all that might, even now, be
+stronger in your character for the conflict with the world would
+then be weakened to the shadow of what it is!''
+
+``God help me, Christiana!'' said I.  ``You speak the truth.''
+
+``Michael!'' said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maidenly
+devotion, ``let us keep apart no longer.  It is but for me to say
+that I can live contented upon such means as you have, and I well
+know you are happy.  I say so from my heart.  Strive no more alone;
+let us strive together.  My dear Michael, it is not right that I
+should keep secret from you what you do not suspect, but what
+distresses my whole life.  My mother:  without considering that what
+you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of my
+faith:  sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to
+my misery.  I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to
+you.  I would rather share your struggles than look on.  I want no
+better home than you can give me.  I know that you will aspire and
+labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so
+when you will!''
+
+I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to me.  We were
+married in a very little while, and I took my wife to our happy
+home.  That was the beginning of the residence I have spoken of; the
+Castle we have ever since inhabited together, dates from that time.
+All our children have been born in it.  Our first child---now
+married---was a little girl, whom we called Christiana.  Her son is
+so like Little Frank, that I hardly know which is which.
+
+
+The current impression as to my partner's dealings with me is also
+quite erroneous.  He did not begin to treat me coldly, as a poor
+simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally quarrelled; nor did he
+afterwards gradually possess himself of our business and edge me
+out.  On the contrary, he behaved to me with the utmost good faith
+and honour.
+
+Matters between us took this turn:- On the day of my separation from
+my uncle, and even before the arrival at our counting-house of my
+trunks (which he sent after me, \emph{not} carriage paid), I went down to
+our room of business, on our little wharf, overlooking the river;
+and there I told John Spatter what had happened.  John did not say,
+in reply, that rich old relatives were palpable facts, and that love
+and sentiment were moonshine and fiction.  He addressed me thus:
+
+``Michael,'' said John, ``we were at school together, and I generally
+had the knack of getting on better than you, and making a higher
+reputation.''
+
+``You had, John,'' I returned.
+
+``Although'' said John, ``I borrowed your books and lost them; borrowed
+your pocket-money, and never repaid it; got you to buy my damaged
+knives at a higher price than I had given for them new; and to own
+to the windows that I had broken.''
+
+``All not worth mentioning, John Spatter,'' said I, ``but certainly
+true.''
+
+``When you were first established in this infant business, which
+promises to thrive so well,'' pursued John, ``I came to you, in my
+search for almost any employment, and you made me your clerk.''
+
+``Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter,'' said I; ``still,
+equally true.''
+
+``And finding that I had a good head for business, and that I was
+really useful \emph{to} the business, you did not like to retain me in that
+capacity, and thought it an act of justice soon to make me your
+partner.''
+
+``Still less worth mentioning than any of those other little
+circumstances you have recalled, John Spatter,'' said I; ``for I was,
+and am, sensible of your merits and my deficiencies.''
+
+``Now, my good friend,'' said John, drawing my arm through his, as he
+had had a habit of doing at school; while two vessels outside the
+windows of our counting-house---which were shaped like the stern
+windows of a ship---went lightly down the river with the tide, as
+John and I might then be sailing away in company, and in trust and
+confidence, on our voyage of life; ``let there, under these friendly
+circumstances, be a right understanding between us.  You are too
+easy, Michael.  You are nobody's enemy but your own.  If I were to
+give you that damaging character among our connexion, with a shrug,
+and a shake of the head, and a sigh; and if I were further to abuse
+the trust you place in me---''
+
+``But you never will abuse it at all, John,'' I observed.
+
+``Never!'' said he; ``but I am putting a case---I say, and if I were
+further to abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our common
+affairs in the dark, and this other piece in the light, and again
+this other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my
+strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last I
+found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on
+some bare common, a hopeless number of miles out of the way.''
+
+``Exactly so,'' said I.
+
+``To prevent this, Michael,'' said John Spatter, ``or the remotest
+chance of this, there must be perfect openness between us.  Nothing
+must be concealed, and we must have but one interest.''
+
+``My dear John Spatter,'' I assured him, ``that is precisely what I
+mean.''
+
+``And when you are too easy,'' pursued John, his face glowing with
+friendship, ``you must allow me to prevent that imperfection in your
+nature from being taken advantage of, by any one; you must not
+expect me to humour it---''
+
+``My dear John Spatter,'' I interrupted, ``I \emph{don't} expect you to humour
+it.  I want to correct it.''
+
+``And I, too,'' said John.
+
+``Exactly so!'' cried I.  ``We both have the same end in view; and,
+honourably seeking it, and fully trusting one another, and having
+but one interest, ours will be a prosperous and happy partnership.''
+
+``I am sure of it!'' returned John Spatter.  And we shook hands most
+affectionately.
+
+I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very happy day.  Our
+partnership throve well.  My friend and partner supplied what I
+wanted, as I had foreseen that he would, and by improving both the
+business and myself, amply acknowledged any little rise in life to
+which I had helped him.
+
+
+I am not (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as he slowly
+rubbed his hands) very rich, for I never cared to be that; but I
+have enough, and am above all moderate wants and anxieties.  My
+Castle is not a splendid place, but it is very comfortable, and it
+has a warm and cheerful air, and is quite a picture of Home.
+
+Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, married John Spatter's
+eldest son.  Our two families are closely united in other ties of
+attachment.  It is very pleasant of an evening, when we are all
+assembled together---which frequently happens---and when John and I
+talk over old times, and the one interest there has always been
+between us.
+
+I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness is.  Some of our
+children or grandchildren are always about it, and the young voices
+of my descendants are delightful---O, how delightful!---to me to hear.
+My dearest and most devoted wife, ever faithful, ever loving, ever
+helpful and sustaining and consoling, is the priceless blessing of
+my house; from whom all its other blessings spring.  We are rather a
+musical family, and when Christiana sees me, at any time, a little
+weary or depressed, she steals to the piano and sings a gentle air
+she used to sing when we were first betrothed.  So weak a man am I,
+that I cannot bear to hear it from any other source.  They played it
+once, at the Theatre, when I was there with Little Frank; and the
+child said wondering, ``Cousin Michael, whose hot tears are these
+that have fallen on my hand!''
+
+Such is my Castle, and such are the real particulars of my life
+therein preserved.  I often take Little Frank home there.  He is
+very welcome to my grandchildren, and they play together.  At this
+time of the year---the Christmas and New Year time---I am seldom out
+of my Castle.  For, the associations of the season seem to hold me
+there, and the precepts of the season seem to teach me that it is
+well to be there.
+
+
+``And the Castle is---'' observed a grave, kind voice among the
+company.
+
+``Yes.  My Castle,'' said the poor relation, shaking his head as he
+still looked at the fire, ``is in the Air.  John our esteemed host
+suggests its situation accurately.  My Castle is in the Air!  I have
+done.  Will you be so good as to pass the story?''
+
+
+
+\chapter{The Child's Story}
+
+
+
+Once upon a time, a good many years ago, there was a traveller, and
+he set out upon a journey.  It was a magic journey, and was to seem
+very long when he began it, and very short when he got half way
+through.
+
+He travelled along a rather dark path for some little time, without
+meeting anything, until at last he came to a beautiful child.  So he
+said to the child, ``What do you do here?''  And the child said, ``I am
+always at play.  Come and play with me!''
+
+So, he played with that child, the whole day long, and they were
+very merry.  The sky was so blue, the sun was so bright, the water
+was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers were so
+lovely, and they heard such singing-birds and saw so many butteries,
+that everything was beautiful.  This was in fine weather.  When it
+rained, they loved to watch the falling drops, and to smell the
+fresh scents.  When it blew, it was delightful to listen to the
+wind, and fancy what it said, as it came rushing from its home---%
+where was that, they wondered!---whistling and howling, driving the
+clouds before it, bending the trees, rumbling in the chimneys,
+shaking the house, and making the sea roar in fury.  But, when it
+snowed, that was best of all; for, they liked nothing so well as to
+look up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down from
+the breasts of millions of white birds; and to see how smooth and
+deep the drift was; and to listen to the hush upon the paths and
+roads.
+
+They had plenty of the finest toys in the world, and the most
+astonishing picture-books:  all about scimitars and slippers and
+turbans, and dwarfs and giants and genii and fairies, and blue-%
+beards and bean-stalks and riches and caverns and forests and
+Valentines and Orsons:  and all new and all true.
+
+But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost the child.  He called
+to him over and over again, but got no answer.  So, he went upon his
+road, and went on for a little while without meeting anything, until
+at last he came to a handsome boy.  So, he said to the boy, ``What do
+you do here?''  And the boy said, ``I am always learning.  Come and
+learn with me.''
+
+So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and Juno, and the Greeks
+and the Romans, and I don't know what, and learned more than I could
+tell---or he either, for he soon forgot a great deal of it.  But,
+they were not always learning; they had the merriest games that ever
+were played.  They rowed upon the river in summer, and skated on the
+ice in winter; they were active afoot, and active on horseback; at
+cricket, and all games at ball; at prisoner's base, hare and hounds,
+follow my leader, and more sports than I can think of; nobody could
+beat them.  They had holidays too, and Twelfth cakes, and parties
+where they danced till midnight, and real Theatres where they saw
+palaces of real gold and silver rise out of the real earth, and saw
+all the wonders of the world at once.  As to friends, they had such
+dear friends and so many of them, that I want the time to reckon
+them up.  They were all young, like the handsome boy, and were never
+to be strange to one another all their lives through.
+
+Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures, the traveller
+lost the boy as he had lost the child, and, after calling to him in
+vain, went on upon his journey.  So he went on for a little while
+without seeing anything, until at last he came to a young man.  So,
+he said to the young man, ``What do you do here?''  And the young man
+said, ``I am always in love.  Come and love with me.''
+
+So, he went away with that young man, and presently they came to one
+of the prettiest girls that ever was seen---just like Fanny in the
+corner there---and she had eyes like Fanny, and hair like Fanny, and
+dimples like Fanny's, and she laughed and coloured just as Fanny
+does while I am talking about her.  So, the young man fell in love
+directly---just as Somebody I won't mention, the first time he came
+here, did with Fanny.  Well! he was teased sometimes---just as
+Somebody used to be by Fanny; and they quarrelled sometimes---just as
+Somebody and Fanny used to quarrel; and they made it up, and sat in
+the dark, and wrote letters every day, and never were happy asunder,
+and were always looking out for one another and pretending not to,
+and were engaged at Christmas-time, and sat close to one another by
+the fire, and were going to be married very soon---all exactly like
+Somebody I won't mention, and Fanny!
+
+But, the traveller lost them one day, as he had lost the rest of his
+friends, and, after calling to them to come back, which they never
+did, went on upon his journey.  So, he went on for a little while
+without seeing anything, until at last he came to a middle-aged
+gentleman.  So, he said to the gentleman, ``What are you doing here?''
+And his answer was, ``I am always busy.  Come and be busy with me!''
+
+So, he began to be very busy with that gentleman, and they went on
+through the wood together.  The whole journey was through a wood,
+only it had been open and green at first, like a wood in spring; and
+now began to be thick and dark, like a wood in summer; some of the
+little trees that had come out earliest, were even turning brown.
+The gentleman was not alone, but had a lady of about the same age
+with him, who was his Wife; and they had children, who were with
+them too.  So, they all went on together through the wood, cutting
+down the trees, and making a path through the branches and the
+fallen leaves, and carrying burdens, and working hard.
+
+Sometimes, they came to a long green avenue that opened into deeper
+woods.  Then they would hear a very little, distant voice crying,
+``Father, father, I am another child!  Stop for me!''  And presently
+they would see a very little figure, growing larger as it came
+along, running to join them.  When it came up, they all crowded
+round it, and kissed and welcomed it; and then they all went on
+together.
+
+Sometimes, they came to several avenues at once, and then they all
+stood still, and one of the children said, ``Father, I am going to
+sea,'' and another said, ``Father, I am going to India,'' and another,
+``Father, I am going to seek my fortune where I can,'' and another,
+``Father, I am going to Heaven!''  So, with many tears at parting,
+they went, solitary, down those avenues, each child upon its way;
+and the child who went to Heaven, rose into the golden air and
+vanished.
+
+Whenever these partings happened, the traveller looked at the
+gentleman, and saw him glance up at the sky above the trees, where
+the day was beginning to decline, and the sunset to come on.  He
+saw, too, that his hair was turning grey.  But, they never could
+rest long, for they had their journey to perform, and it was
+necessary for them to be always busy.
+
+At last, there had been so many partings that there were no children
+left, and only the traveller, the gentleman, and the lady, went upon
+their way in company.  And now the wood was yellow; and now brown;
+and the leaves, even of the forest trees, began to fall.
+
+So, they came to an avenue that was darker than the rest, and were
+pressing forward on their journey without looking down it when the
+lady stopped.
+
+``My husband,'' said the lady.  ``I am called.''
+
+They listened, and they heard a voice a long way down the avenue,
+say, ``Mother, mother!''
+
+It was the voice of the first child who had said, ``I am going to
+Heaven!'' and the father said, ``I pray not yet.  The sunset is very
+near.  I pray not yet!''
+
+But, the voice cried, ``Mother, mother!'' without minding him, though
+his hair was now quite white, and tears were on his face.
+
+Then, the mother, who was already drawn into the shade of the dark
+avenue and moving away with her arms still round his neck, kissed
+him, and said, ``My dearest, I am summoned, and I go!''  And she was
+gone.  And the traveller and he were left alone together.
+
+And they went on and on together, until they came to very near the
+end of the wood:  so near, that they could see the sunset shining
+red before them through the trees.
+
+Yet, once more, while he broke his way among the branches, the
+traveller lost his friend.  He called and called, but there was no
+reply, and when he passed out of the wood, and saw the peaceful sun
+going down upon a wide purple prospect, he came to an old man
+sitting on a fallen tree.  So, he said to the old man, ``What do you
+do here?''  And the old man said with a calm smile, ``I am always
+remembering.  Come and remember with me!''
+
+So the traveller sat down by the side of that old man, face to face
+with the serene sunset; and all his friends came softly back and
+stood around him.  The beautiful child, the handsome boy, the young
+man in love, the father, mother, and children:  every one of them
+was there, and he had lost nothing.  So, he loved them all, and was
+kind and forbearing with them all, and was always pleased to watch
+them all, and they all honoured and loved him.  And I think the
+traveller must be yourself, dear Grandfather, because this what you
+do to us, and what we do to you.
+
+
+
+\chapter{The Schoolboy's Story}
+
+
+
+Being rather young at present---I am getting on in years, but still I
+am rather young---I have no particular adventures of my own to fall
+back upon.  It wouldn't much interest anybody here, I suppose, to
+know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin \emph{she} is, or how
+they do stick it into parents---particularly hair-cutting, and
+medical attendance.  One of our fellows was charged in his half's
+account twelve and sixpence for two pills---tolerably profitable at
+six and threepence a-piece, I should think---and he never took them
+either, but put them up the sleeve of his jacket.
+
+As to the beef, it's shameful.  It's \emph{not} beef.  Regular beef isn't
+veins.  You can chew regular beef.  Besides which, there's gravy to
+regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours.  Another of our
+fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father
+that he couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer.
+Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!
+
+However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things.  So is
+beer.  It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in
+which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of
+profit.
+
+Why, look at the pie-crust alone.  There's no flakiness in it.  It's
+solid---like damp lead.  Then our fellows get nightmares, and are
+bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows.  Who can wonder!
+
+Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his
+night-cap, got hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket-bat, and went
+down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his
+appearance he was a Ghost.  Why, he never would have done that if
+his meals had been wholesome.  When we all begin to walk in our
+sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry for it.
+
+Old Cheeseman wasn't second Latin Master then; he was a fellow
+himself.  He was first brought there, very small, in a post-chaise,
+by a woman who was always taking snuff and shaking him---and that was
+the most he remembered about it.  He never went home for the
+holidays.  His accounts (he never learnt any extras) were sent to a
+Bank, and the Bank paid them; and he had a brown suit twice a-year,
+and went into boots at twelve.  They were always too big for him,
+too.
+
+In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows who lived within
+walking distance, used to come back and climb the trees outside the
+playground wall, on purpose to look at Old Cheeseman reading there
+by himself.  He was always as mild as the tea---and \emph{that}'S pretty
+mild, I should hope!---so when they whistled to him, he looked up and
+nodded; and when they said, ``Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what have you
+had for dinner?'' he said, ``Boiled mutton;'' and when they said, ``An't
+it solitary, Old Cheeseman?'' he said, ``It is a little dull
+sometimes:'' and then they said, ``Well good-bye, Old Cheeseman!'' and
+climbed down again.  Of course it was imposing on Old Cheeseman to
+give him nothing but boiled mutton through a whole Vacation, but
+that was just like the system.  When they didn't give him boiled
+mutton, they gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat.  And
+saved the butcher.
+
+So Old Cheeseman went on.  The holidays brought him into other
+trouble besides the loneliness; because when the fellows began to
+come back, not wanting to, he was always glad to see them; which was
+aggravating when they were not at all glad to see him, and so he got
+his head knocked against walls, and that was the way his nose bled.
+But he was a favourite in general.  Once a subscription was raised
+for him; and, to keep up his spirits, he was presented before the
+holidays with two white mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful
+puppy.  Old Cheeseman cried about it---especially soon afterwards,
+when they all ate one another.
+
+Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of all sorts
+of cheeses---Double Glo'sterman, Family Cheshireman, Dutchman, North
+Wiltshireman, and all that.  But he never minded it.  And I don't
+mean to say he was old in point of years---because he wasn't---only he
+was called from the first, Old Cheeseman.
+
+At last, Old Cheeseman was made second Latin Master.  He was brought
+in one morning at the beginning of a new half, and presented to the
+school in that capacity as ``Mr.\ Cheeseman.''  Then our fellows all
+agreed that Old Cheeseman was a spy, and a deserter, who had gone
+over to the enemy's camp, and sold himself for gold.  It was no
+excuse for him that he had sold himself for very little gold---two
+pound ten a quarter and his washing, as was reported.  It was
+decided by a Parliament which sat about it, that Old Cheeseman's
+mercenary motives could alone be taken into account, and that he had
+``coined our blood for drachmas.''  The Parliament took the expression
+out of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius.
+
+When it was settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman was a
+tremendous traitor, who had wormed himself into our fellows' secrets
+on purpose to get himself into favour by giving up everything he
+knew, all courageous fellows were invited to come forward and enrol
+themselves in a Society for making a set against him.  The President
+of the Society was First boy, named Bob Tarter.  His father was in
+the West Indies, and he owned, himself, that his father was worth
+Millions.  He had great power among our fellows, and he wrote a
+parody, beginning -%
+
+\begin{verse}
+  ``Who made believe to be so meek\\
+  That we could hardly hear him speak,\\
+  Yet turned out an Informing Sneak?\\
+  Old Cheeseman.''
+\end{verse}
+
+- and on in that way through more than a dozen verses, which he used
+to go and sing, every morning, close by the new master's desk.  He
+trained one of the low boys, too, a rosy-cheeked little Brass who
+didn't care what he did, to go up to him with his Latin Grammar one
+morning, and say it so:  \emph{nominativus} \emph{pronominum}---Old Cheeseman, \emph{raro}
+\emph{exprimitur}---was never suspected, \emph{nisi} \emph{distinctionis}---of being an
+informer, \emph{aut} \emph{emphasis} \emph{gratia}---until he proved one.  \emph{ut}---for
+instance, \emph{vos} \emph{damnastis}---when he sold the boys.  \emph{quasi}---as though,
+\emph{dicat}---he should say, \emph{pretaerea} \emph{nemo}---I'm a Judas!  All this
+produced a great effect on Old Cheeseman.  He had never had much
+hair; but what he had, began to get thinner and thinner every day.
+He grew paler and more worn; and sometimes of an evening he was seen
+sitting at his desk with a precious long snuff to his candle, and
+his hands before his face, crying.  But no member of the Society
+could pity him, even if he felt inclined, because the President said
+it was Old Cheeseman's conscience.
+
+So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn't he lead a miserable life!  Of
+course the Reverend turned up his nose at him, and of course \emph{she}
+did---because both of them always do that at all the masters---but he
+suffered from the fellows most, and he suffered from them
+constantly.  He never told about it, that the Society could find
+out; but he got no credit for that, because the President said it
+was Old Cheeseman's cowardice.
+
+He had only one friend in the world, and that one was almost as
+powerless as he was, for it was only Jane.  Jane was a sort of
+wardrobe woman to our fellows, and took care of the boxes.  She had
+come at first, I believe, as a kind of apprentice---some of our
+fellows say from a Charity, but I don't know---and after her time was
+out, had stopped at so much a year.  So little a year, perhaps I
+ought to say, for it is far more likely.  However, she had put some
+pounds in the Savings' Bank, and she was a very nice young woman.
+She was not quite pretty; but she had a very frank, honest, bright
+face, and all our fellows were fond of her.  She was uncommonly neat
+and cheerful, and uncommonly comfortable and kind.  And if anything
+was the matter with a fellow's mother, he always went and showed the
+letter to Jane.
+
+Jane was Old Cheeseman's friend.  The more the Society went against
+him, the more Jane stood by him.  She used to give him a good-%
+humoured look out of her still-room window, sometimes, that seemed
+to set him up for the day.  She used to pass out of the orchard and
+the kitchen garden (always kept locked, I believe you!) through the
+playground, when she might have gone the other way, only to give a
+turn of her head, as much as to say ``Keep up your spirits!'' to Old
+Cheeseman.  His slip of a room was so fresh and orderly that it was
+well known who looked after it while he was at his desk; and when
+our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on his plate at dinner, they
+knew with indignation who had sent it up.
+
+Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a quantity of
+meeting and debating, that Jane should be requested to cut Old
+Cheeseman dead; and that if she refused, she must be sent to
+Coventry herself.  So a deputation, headed by the President, was
+appointed to wait on Jane, and inform her of the vote the Society
+had been under the painful necessity of passing.  She was very much
+respected for all her good qualities, and there was a story about
+her having once waylaid the Reverend in his own study, and got a
+fellow off from severe punishment, of her own kind comfortable
+heart.  So the deputation didn't much like the job.  However, they
+went up, and the President told Jane all about it.  Upon which Jane
+turned very red, burst into tears, informed the President and the
+deputation, in a way not at all like her usual way, that they were a
+parcel of malicious young savages, and turned the whole respected
+body out of the room.  Consequently it was entered in the Society's
+book (kept in astronomical cypher for fear of detection), that all
+communication with Jane was interdicted:  and the President
+addressed the members on this convincing instance of Old Cheeseman's
+undermining.
+
+But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman was false to
+our fellows---in their opinion, at all events---and steadily continued
+to be his only friend.  It was a great exasperation to the Society,
+because Jane was as much a loss to them as she was a gain to him;
+and being more inveterate against him than ever, they treated him
+worse than ever.  At last, one morning, his desk stood empty, his
+room was peeped into, and found to be vacant, and a whisper went
+about among the pale faces of our fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable
+to bear it any longer, had got up early and drowned himself.
+
+The mysterious looks of the other masters after breakfast, and the
+evident fact that old Cheeseman was not expected, confirmed the
+Society in this opinion.  Some began to discuss whether the
+President was liable to hanging or only transportation for life, and
+the President's face showed a great anxiety to know which.  However,
+he said that a jury of his country should find him game; and that in
+his address he should put it to them to lay their hands upon their
+hearts and say whether they as Britons approved of informers, and
+how they thought they would like it themselves.  Some of the Society
+considered that he had better run away until he found a forest where
+he might change clothes with a wood-cutter, and stain his face with
+blackberries; but the majority believed that if he stood his ground,
+his father---belonging as he did to the West Indies, and being worth
+millions---could buy him off.
+
+All our fellows' hearts beat fast when the Reverend came in, and
+made a sort of a Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself with the
+ruler; as he always did before delivering an address.  But their
+fears were nothing to their astonishment when he came out with the
+story that Old Cheeseman, ``so long our respected friend and fellow-%
+pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge,'' he called him---O yes!
+I dare say!  Much of that!---was the orphan child of a disinherited
+young lady who had married against her father's wish, and whose
+young husband had died, and who had died of sorrow herself, and
+whose unfortunate baby (Old Cheeseman) had been brought up at the
+cost of a grandfather who would never consent to see it, baby, boy,
+or man:  which grandfather was now dead, and serve him right---that's
+my putting in---and which grandfather's large property, there being
+no will, was now, and all of a sudden and for ever, Old Cheeseman's!
+Our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant
+plains of knowledge, the Reverend wound up a lot of bothering
+quotations by saying, would ``come among us once more'' that day
+fortnight, when he desired to take leave of us himself, in a more
+particular manner.  With these words, he stared severely round at
+our fellows, and went solemnly out.
+
+There was precious consternation among the members of the Society,
+now.  Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more began to try to
+make out that they had never belonged to it.  However, the President
+stuck up, and said that they must stand or fall together, and that
+if a breach was made it should be over his body---which was meant to
+encourage the Society:  but it didn't.  The President further said,
+he would consider the position in which they stood, and would give
+them his best opinion and advice in a few days.  This was eagerly
+looked for, as he knew a good deal of the world on account of his
+father's being in the West Indies.
+
+After days and days of hard thinking, and drawing armies all over
+his slate, the President called our fellows together, and made the
+matter clear.  He said it was plain that when Old Cheeseman came on
+the appointed day, his first revenge would be to impeach the
+Society, and have it flogged all round.  After witnessing with joy
+the torture of his enemies, and gloating over the cries which agony
+would extort from them, the probability was that he would invite the
+Reverend, on pretence of conversation, into a private room---say the
+parlour into which Parents were shown, where the two great globes
+were which were never used---and would there reproach him with the
+various frauds and oppressions he had endured at his hands.  At the
+close of his observations he would make a signal to a Prizefighter
+concealed in the passage, who would then appear and pitch into the
+Reverend, till he was left insensible.  Old Cheeseman would then
+make Jane a present of from five to ten pounds, and would leave the
+establishment in fiendish triumph.
+
+The President explained that against the parlour part, or the Jane
+part, of these arrangements he had nothing to say; but, on the part
+of the Society, he counselled deadly resistance.  With this view he
+recommended that all available desks should be filled with stones,
+and that the first word of the complaint should be the signal to
+every fellow to let fly at Old Cheeseman.  The bold advice put the
+Society in better spirits, and was unanimously taken.  A post about
+Old Cheeseman's size was put up in the playground, and all our
+fellows practised at it till it was dinted all over.
+
+When the day came, and Places were called, every fellow sat down in
+a tremble.  There had been much discussing and disputing as to how
+Old Cheeseman would come; but it was the general opinion that he
+would appear in a sort of triumphal car drawn by four horses, with
+two livery servants in front, and the Prizefighter in disguise up
+behind.  So, all our fellows sat listening for the sound of wheels.
+But no wheels were heard, for Old Cheeseman walked after all, and
+came into the school without any preparation.  Pretty much as he
+used to be, only dressed in black.
+
+``Gentlemen,'' said the Reverend, presenting him, ``our so long
+respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of
+knowledge, is desirous to offer a word or two.  Attention,
+gentlemen, one and all!''
+
+Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked at the
+President.  The President was all ready, and taking aim at old
+Cheeseman with his eyes.
+
+What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his old desk, look round
+him with a queer smile as if there was a tear in his eye, and begin
+in a quavering, mild voice, ``My dear companions and old friends!''
+
+Every fellow's hand came out of his desk, and the President suddenly
+began to cry.
+
+``My dear companions and old friends,'' said Old Cheeseman, ``you have
+heard of my good fortune.  I have passed so many years under this
+roof---my entire life so far, I may say---that I hope you have been
+glad to hear of it for my sake.  I could never enjoy it without
+exchanging congratulations with you.  If we have ever misunderstood
+one another at all, pray, my dear boys, let us forgive and forget.
+I have a great tenderness for you, and I am sure you return it.  I
+want in the fulness of a grateful heart to shake hands with you
+every one.  I have come back to do it, if you please, my dear boys.''
+
+Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows had
+broken out here and there:  but now, when Old Cheeseman began with
+him as first boy, laid his left hand affectionately on his shoulder
+and gave him his right; and when the President said ``Indeed, I don't
+deserve it, sir; upon my honour I don't;'' there was sobbing and
+crying all over the school.  Every other fellow said he didn't
+deserve it, much in the same way; but Old Cheeseman, not minding
+that a bit, went cheerfully round to every boy, and wound up with
+every master---finishing off the Reverend last.
+
+Then a snivelling little chap in a corner, who was always under some
+punishment or other, set up a shrill cry of ``Success to Old
+Cheeseman!  Hooray!''  The Reverend glared upon him, and said, ``\emph{Mr}.
+Cheeseman, sir.''  But, Old Cheeseman protesting that he liked his
+old name a great deal better than his new one, all our fellows took
+up the cry; and, for I don't know how many minutes, there was such a
+thundering of feet and hands, and such a roaring of Old Cheeseman,
+as never was heard.
+
+After that, there was a spread in the dining-room of the most
+magnificent kind.  Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits,
+confectionaries, jellies, neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles,
+crackers---eat all you can and pocket what you like---all at Old
+Cheeseman's expense.  After that, speeches, whole holiday, double
+and treble sets of all manners of things for all manners of games,
+donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself, dinner for all the masters
+at the Seven Bells (twenty pounds a-head our fellows estimated it
+at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day every year, and
+another on Old Cheeseman's birthday---Reverend bound down before the
+fellows to allow it, so that he could never back out---all at Old
+Cheeseman's expense.
+
+And didn't our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside the Seven
+Bells?  O no!
+
+But there's something else besides.  Don't look at the next story-%
+teller, for there's more yet.  Next day, it was resolved that the
+Society should make it up with Jane, and then be dissolved.  What do
+you think of Jane being gone, though!  ``What?  Gone for ever?'' said
+our fellows, with long faces.  ``Yes, to be sure,'' was all the answer
+they could get.  None of the people about the house would say
+anything more.  At length, the first boy took upon himself to ask
+the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was really gone?  The
+Reverend (he has got a daughter at home---turn-up nose, and red)
+replied severely, ``Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is gone.''  The idea of
+calling Jane, Miss Pitt!  Some said she had been sent away in
+disgrace for taking money from Old Cheeseman; others said she had
+gone into Old Cheeseman's service at a rise of ten pounds a year.
+All that our fellows knew, was, she was gone.
+
+It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an open
+carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a
+lady and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a long time and
+stood up to see it played.  Nobody thought much about them, until
+the same little snivelling chap came in, against all rules, from the
+post where he was Scout, and said, ``It's Jane!''  Both Elevens forgot
+the game directly, and ran crowding round the carriage.  It \emph{was}
+Jane!  In such a bonnet!  And if you'll believe me, Jane was married
+to Old Cheeseman.
+
+It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at
+it in the playground, to see a carriage at the low part of the wall
+where it joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up
+in it, looking over.  The gentleman was always Old Cheeseman, and
+the lady was always Jane.
+
+The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way.  There had
+been a good many changes among our fellows then, and it had turned
+out that Bob Tarter's father wasn't worth Millions!  He wasn't worth
+anything.  Bob had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had
+purchased his discharge.  But that's not the carriage.  The carriage
+stopped, and all our fellows stopped as soon as it was seen.
+
+``So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!'' said the lady,
+laughing, as our fellows swarmed up the wall to shake hands with
+her.  ``Are you never going to do it?''
+
+``Never! never! never!'' on all sides.
+
+I didn't understand what she meant then, but of course I do now.  I
+was very much pleased with her face though, and with her good way,
+and I couldn't help looking at her---and at him too---with all our
+fellows clustering so joyfully about them.
+
+They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might as
+well swarm up the wall myself, and shake hands with them as the rest
+did.  I was quite as glad to see them as the rest were, and was
+quite as familiar with them in a moment.
+
+``Only a fortnight now,'' said Old Cheeseman, ``to the holidays.  Who
+stops?  Anybody?''
+
+A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices cried ``He
+does!''  For it was the year when you were all away; and rather low I
+was about it, I can tell you.
+
+``Oh!'' said Old Cheeseman.  ``But it's solitary here in the holiday
+time.  He had better come to us.''
+
+So I went to their delightful house, and was as happy as I could
+possibly be.  They understand how to conduct themselves towards
+boys, \emph{they} do.  When they take a boy to the play, for instance, they
+\emph{do} take him.  They don't go in after it's begun, or come out before
+it's over.  They know how to bring a boy up, too.  Look at their
+own!  Though he is very little as yet, what a capital boy he is!
+Why, my next favourite to Mrs.\ Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young
+Cheeseman.
+
+So, now I have told you all I know about Old Cheeseman.  And it's
+not much after all, I am afraid.  Is it?
+
+
+
+\chapter{Nobody's Story}
+
+
+
+He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, which was
+always silently rolling on to a vast undiscovered ocean.  It had
+rolled on, ever since the world began.  It had changed its course
+sometimes, and turned into new channels, leaving its old ways dry
+and barren; but it had ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow
+until Time should be no more.  Against its strong, unfathomable
+stream, nothing made head.  No living creature, no flower, no leaf,
+no particle of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed back
+from the undiscovered ocean.  The tide of the river set resistlessly
+towards it; and the tide never stopped, any more than the earth
+stops in its circling round the sun.
+
+He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live.  He had
+no hope of ever being rich enough to live a month without hard work,
+but he was quite content, \emph{God} knows, to labour with a cheerful will.
+He was one of an immense family, all of whose sons and daughters
+gained their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising
+up betimes until their lying down at night.  Beyond this destiny he
+had no prospect, and he sought none.
+
+There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, in the
+neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that.
+Such clash and uproar came from the Bigwig family, at the
+unaccountable proceedings of which race, he marvelled much.  They
+set up the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass,
+before his door; and darkened his house with the legs and tails of
+uncouth images of horses.  He wondered what it all meant, smiled in
+a rough good-humoured way he had, and kept at his hard work.
+
+The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people
+thereabouts, and all the noisiest) had undertaken to save him the
+trouble of thinking for himself, and to manage him and his affairs.
+``Why truly,'' said he, ``I have little time upon my hands; and if you
+will be so good as to take care of me, in return for the money I pay
+over''---for the Bigwig family were not above his money---``I shall be
+relieved and much obliged, considering that you know best.''  Hence
+the drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, and the ugly images of
+horses which he was expected to fall down and worship.
+
+``I don't understand all this,'' said he, rubbing his furrowed brow
+confusedly.  ``But it \emph{has} a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out.''
+
+``It means,'' returned the Bigwig family, suspecting something of what
+he said, ``honour and glory in the highest, to the highest merit.''
+
+``Oh!'' said he.  And he was glad to hear that.
+
+But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze, and
+brass, he failed to find a rather meritorious countryman of his,
+once the son of a Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single countryman
+whomsoever of that kind.  He could find none of the men whose
+knowledge had rescued him and his children from terrific and
+disfiguring disease, whose boldness had raised his forefathers from
+the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy had opened a new and high
+existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled the working man's
+world with accumulated wonders.  Whereas, he did find others whom he
+knew no good of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.
+
+``Humph!'' said he.  ``I don't quite understand it.''
+
+So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to get it out of his
+mind.
+
+Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened
+streets; but it was a precious place to him.  The hands of his wife
+were hardened with toil, and she was old before her time; but she
+was dear to him.  His children, stunted in their growth, bore traces
+of unwholesome nurture; but they had beauty in his sight.  Above all
+other things, it was an earnest desire of this man's soul that his
+children should be taught.  ``If I am sometimes misled,'' said he,
+``for want of knowledge, at least let them know better, and avoid my
+mistakes.  If it is hard to me to reap the harvest of pleasure and
+instruction that is stored in books, let it be easier to them.''
+
+But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels
+concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man's children.  Some
+of the family insisted on such a thing being primary and
+indispensable above all other things; and others of the family
+insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above
+all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote
+pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all
+varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and
+courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummelings, and fell
+together by the ears in unintelligible animosity.  Meanwhile, this
+man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the demon
+Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself.  He saw his
+daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge; he saw his son
+go moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime;
+he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies
+so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather
+wished them idiots.
+
+``I don't understand this any the better,'' said he; ``but I think it
+cannot be right.  Nay, by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest
+against this as my wrong!''
+
+Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually short-lived,
+and his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and
+holidays, and he saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and
+thence how drunkenness arose with all its train of ruin.  Then he
+appealed to the Bigwig family, and said, ``We are a labouring people,
+and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring people of
+whatever condition were made---by a higher intelligence than yours,
+as I poorly understand it---to be in need of mental refreshment and
+recreation.  See what we fall into, when we rest without it.  Come!
+Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!''
+
+But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar absolutely
+deafening.  When some few voices were faintly heard, proposing to
+show him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation, the
+mighty changes of time, the workings of nature and the beauties of
+art---to show him these things, that is to say, at any period of his
+life when he could look upon them---there arose among the Bigwigs
+such roaring and raving, such pulpiting and petitioning, such
+maundering and memorialising, such name-calling and dirt-throwing,
+such a shrill wind of parliamentary questioning and feeble replying-%
+-where ``I dare not'' waited on ``I would''---that the poor fellow stood
+aghast, staring wildly around.
+
+``Have I provoked all this,'' said he, with his hands to his
+affrighted ears, ``by what was meant to be an innocent request,
+plainly arising out of my familiar experience, and the common
+knowledge of all men who choose to open their eyes?  I don't
+understand, and I am not understood.  What is to come of such a
+state of things!''
+
+He was bending over his work, often asking himself the question,
+when the news began to spread that a pestilence had appeared among
+the labourers, and was slaying them by thousands.  Going forth to
+look about him, he soon found this to be true.  The dying and the
+dead were mingled in the close and tainted houses among which his
+life was passed.  New poison was distilled into the always murky,
+always sickening air.  The robust and the weak, old age and infancy,
+the father and the mother, all were stricken down alike.
+
+What means of flight had he?  He remained there, where he was, and
+saw those who were dearest to him die.  A kind preacher came to him,
+and would have said some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom,
+but he replied:
+
+``O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to
+residence in this foetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me
+for my delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my
+numbered days is new mire added to the heap under which I lie
+oppressed!  But, give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a
+little of its light and air; give me pure water; help me to be
+clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy life, in which our
+spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and callous creatures
+you too often see us; gently and kindly take the bodies of those who
+die among us, out of the small room where we grow to be so familiar
+with the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to us; and,
+Teacher, then I will hear---none know better than you, how willingly-%
+-of Him whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had
+compassion for all human sorrow!''
+
+He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came and
+stood near to him dressed in black.  He, also, had suffered heavily.
+His young wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so,
+too, his only child.
+
+``Master, 'tis hard to bear---I know it---but be comforted.  I would
+give you comfort, if I could.''
+
+The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, ``O you
+labouring men!  The calamity began among you.  If you had but lived
+more healthily and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft
+mourner that I am this day.''
+
+``Master,'' returned the other, shaking his head, ``I have begun to
+understand a little that most calamities will come from us, as this
+one did, and that none will stop at our poor doors, until we are
+united with that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things
+that are right.  We cannot live healthily and decently, unless they
+who undertook to manage us provide the means.  We cannot be
+instructed unless they will teach us; we cannot be rationally
+amused, unless they will amuse us; we cannot but have some false
+gods of our own, while they set up so many of theirs in all the
+public places.  The evil consequences of imperfect instruction, the
+evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of
+unnatural restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will
+all come from us, and none of them will stop with us.  They will
+spread far and wide.  They always do; they always have done---just
+like the pestilence.  I understand so much, I think, at last.''
+
+But the Master said again, ``O you labouring men!  How seldom do we
+ever hear of you, except in connection with some trouble!''
+
+``Master,'' he replied, ``I am Nobody, and little likely to be heard of
+(nor yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is
+some trouble.  But it never begins with me, and it never can end
+with me.  As sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from
+me.''
+
+There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig family,
+getting wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the late
+desolation, resolved to unite with him to do the things that were
+right---at all events, so far as the said things were associated with
+the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence.
+But, as their fear wore off, which it soon began to do, they resumed
+their falling out among themselves, and did nothing.  Consequently
+the scourge appeared again---low down as before---and spread
+avengingly upward as before, and carried off vast numbers of the
+brawlers.  But not a man among them ever admitted, if in the least
+degree he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with it.
+
+So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this, in the
+main, is the whole of Nobody's story.
+
+Had he no name, you ask?  Perhaps it was Legion.  It matters little
+what his name was.  Let us call him Legion.
+
+If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Waterloo,
+you will have seen, in some quiet little church, a monument erected
+by faithful companions in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major B,
+Captains C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I and J, seven
+non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and thirty rank and file,
+who fell in the discharge of their duty on the memorable day.  The
+story of Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the earth.
+They bear their share of the battle; they have their part in the
+victory; they fall; they leave no name but in the mass.  The march
+of the proudest of us, leads to the dusty way by which they go.  O!
+Let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire, and not forget
+them when it is burnt out.
+
+
+\end{document}
+
+
+% End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Some Christmas Stories by Dickens
+% 
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