Charles Dickens.] WHAT CHRISTMAS IS TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE. 5

cart-rut, with its rough, and jagged ridges.
Christmas to him is a series of dinners,
and " offerings," and good things, and compli-
ments, and wedding fees, and burial fees,
and christening fees, and charity sermons,
exhorting the rich to remember the poor,
and exhorting the poor to be meek and
contented, and trust to Providence. Mean-
time, THE CURATE goes to tea-parties, and
has a great deal to do in the details of Church
business affairs, as the vestries are often
very troublesome; and has much to do in
visiting the sick, and administering religious
consolation, and riding on horseback to do
double duty morning service,here afternoon,
there–––evening service, here again, or some-
where else. This is the ordinary, regular,
hard-working, useful Curate; but if he be a
spruce young Puseyite Curate, in a black silk
sacerdotal dress-waistcoat, with a narrow,
stiff white neck-tie, and a black superfine
frock-coat, cut to the quick–––then, he very
often rivals the Vicar in his dinner-parties,
and gives him the " go-by " in evening-parties,
where he clean carries off most of the young
ladies for a little intense talk of divine things,
in one corner of the room.

If Christmas be a great fact to THE BEADLE,
the Beadle seems a greater fact to Christmas.
New broad-cloth–––new scarlet and gold–––new
gold-laced cocked hat, of old Lord Mayor
fashion–––new gold-headed cane–––no wonder
that all the little charity boys eye his inflated
presence with additional awe! No wonder
that it is inflated; for he is swollen with
the substantial comforts derived from all
the great kitchens in the neighbourhood.
There is a roasted ox in his mind. He
can never forget the year when one was
roasted whole upon the ice, and he present,
and allowed to take his turn with the basting-
ladle. It was the epic event of his life.

The Beadle is generally able to frown
the charity boys into awe and silence;
assisting the said frown, every now and
then, with a few cuts of a long yellow
twining cane, during service; whereby, amidst
the sonorous tones of the preacher, there often
breaks out a squealing cry from the hollow
and remote aisles, or distant rows of heads in
the organ loft, to the great injury of the
eloquence of the pastor, and the gravity of
the junior portion of his congregation.

But though this parish Terror of the Poor
has portentous frowns for most of those under
his dominion, he knows how to patronise
with a smile, and his rubicund beams, at
all seasons of festival, and more especially
at Christmas, fall encouragingly upon all the
cooks of the best houses round about. Per-
haps, upon the chief Bell-ringer perhaps,
we may say, upon all the bell-ringers and
now and then upon the Sexton, with whom
he does a little private business, in the way
of gratuities from mourning relatives who
come to visit graves. But as for the Pew-
opener, envy of her gains at Christmas, and

her obduracy in concealing their extent,
renders him a foe to her existence, and
haughtily unconscious of her presence as often
as he can affect not to see her. There was,
once upon a time, a good Beadle, who married
a Pew-opener–––but it was a long while ago–––
so long, that it is thought to have been in the
good old–––&c.

Christmas is not what it was to the POST-
MAN. The Government has interfered sadly
with his collection of "boxes" from house to
house; so that now he only receives gratefully
a shilling, here and there, in streets where
formerly he had but to announce, after a loud
double-rap, that " the Postman has called for
his Christmas-box! " and down came the
shilling, almost as a lawful right. He looks
melancholy as he sits on the bench outside a
country public-house; and when the Landlord
inquires the cause, he hints at the altered
times. But he does not get much sympathy
in this quarter; for THE PUBLICAN feels that
the alteration is considerably in his favour.
He has had a new beer-machine for his bar,
all beautiful with inlaid brass and ivory; he has
added a wing to his house, and he feels a proud
consciousness that, if all his town relations
live in " palaces," he is quite as important to
the sinners, his subjects, in the country.

To the CATTLE-DROVER this is a season of
arduous business, by day and by night, urging
his fatigued and often refractory beasts along
the dark roads; arid when they enter among
the many lights and glare of London, as they
sometimes do in the evening, what Christmas
is to the poor cattle, as well as the men, may
be conjectured; and all things considered, one
may fairly say the oxen have the worst of it.
THE SHEPHERD who is driving a fl6ck of sheep
to the Christmas market, seldom sees much
amusement by the way; events with him are
rare; but the journey of the PIG-DROVERS up
to town is always a " chequered " history. One
pig or another is sure to be of an original
turn of mind, and several are sure to follow
his example for a little while, and then branch
off into a line of conduct suited exclusively to
their own individuality: under cart-wheels,
dodging round pumps, hiding noses behind
tree-trunks in the country, and behind theatri-
cal boards in the front of town shops; rushing
into hedges, and round haystacks, as the drove
moves unwillingly along lanes and roads; and
into wine-cellars, and round lamp-posts, and
up " all manner of streets " in London. THE
TURKEY-DROVER has also a very busy time of it
just now; and the GOOSE-DROVER far more.
The greater difficulty attending the flocks of
geese is not because they are so much more
numerous than the turkeys, as on account of
the perverse, irritable, and stupid conditions
of mind which alternate with the goose. It
is to be remembered that the warlike turkey-
cock (so aptly called in Scotland the bubbly-jock)
and the mature fierce-necked, wing-threaten-
ing, universally-assaulting gander, being pre-
served by their toughness, are not present in