Charles Dickens.] WHAT CHRISTMAS IS IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE. 11

Service over, the bell silent, and the sexton
turning the key in the lock, off run the young
men, out of reach of remonstrance, to shoot,
until dinner at least,–––more probably until the
light fails. They shoot almost any thing that
comes across them, but especially little birds,
chaffinches, blackbirds, thrushes,–––any winged
creature distressed by the cold, or betrayed by
the smooth and cruel snow. The little chil-
dren at home are doing better than their elder
brothers. They are putting out crums of
bread for the robins, and feeling sorry and
surprised that robins prefer bread to plum-
pudding. They would have given the robins
some of their own pudding, if they had but
liked it.

In every house, there is dinner to-day,–––of
one sort or another,–––except where the closed
shutter shows that the folk are out to dinner.
The commonest dinner in the poorer houses
–––in some parts of the country–––is a curious
sort of mutton pie. The meat is cut off a loin
of mutton, and reduced to mouthfuls, and
then strewed over with currants or raisins
and spice, and the whole covered in with a
stout crust. In some places, the dinner is
baked meat and potatoes: in too many cot-
tages, there is nothing better than a morsel of
bacon to flavour the bread or potatoes. But
it may be safely said that there is more and
better dining in England on Christinas-day
than on any other day of the year.

In the houses of gentry and farmers, the
dinner and dessert are a long affair, and soon
followed by tea, that the sports may begin.
Everybody knows what these sports are, in
parlour, hall, and kitchen:–––singing, dancing,
cards, blind-man's buff, and other such games;
forfeits, ghost-story telling, snap-dragon;–––
these, with a bountiful supper interposed, last-
ing till midnight. In scattered houses, among
the wilds, card-playing goes on briskly. Wher-
ever there are Wesleyans enough to form a
congregation, they are collected at a tea-drink-
ing in their chapel; and they spend the
evening in singing hymns. Where there are
Germans settled, or any leading family which
has been in Germany, there is a Christmas-
tree lighted up somewhere. Those Christmas-
trees are as prolific as the inexhaustible cedars
of Lebanon. Wherever one strikes root, a
great number is sure to spring up under its
shelter.

However spent, the evening comes to an
end. The hymns in the chapel, and the carols
in the kitchen, and the piano in the parlour
are all hushed. The ghosts have glided by
into the night. The forfeits are redeemed.
The blind-man has recovered his sight, and
lost it again in sleep. The dust of the dancers
has subsided. The fires are nearly out, and
the candles quite so. The reflection that the
great day is over, would have been too much
for some little hearts, sighing before they slept,
but for the thought that to-morrow is Boxing-
day; and that Twelfth Night is yet to come.

But, first, will come New Year's Eve, with

its singular inconvenience (in some districts)
of nothing whatever being carried out of the
house for twenty-four hours, lest, in throwing
away anything, you should be throwing away
some luck for the next year. Not a potato-
paring, nor a drop of soap-suds or cabbage-
water, not a cinder, nor a pinch of dust,
must be removed till New Year's morning.
In these places, there is one person who
must be stirring early–––the darkest man ill
the neighbourhood. It is a serious thing
there to have a swarthy complexion and black
hair; for the owner cannot refuse to his ac-
quaintance the good luck of his being the first
to enter their houses on New Year's day. If
he is poor, or his time is precious, he is regu-
larly paid for his visit. He comes at day-
break, with something in his hand, if it is
only an orange or an egg, or a bit of ribbon,
or a twopenny picture. He can't stay a
minute,–––he has so many to visit; but he
leaves peace of mind behind him. His friends
begin the year with the advantage of having
seen a dark man enter their house the first in
the New Year.

Such, in its general features, is Christmas,
throughout the rural districts of Old Eng-
land. Here, the revellers may be living in
the midst of pastoral levels, all sheeted
with snow; there, in deep lanes, or round
a village green, with ploughed slopes
rising on either hand: here, on the spurs of
mountains, with glittering icicles hanging
from the grey precipices above them, and the
accustomed waterfall bound in silence by the
frost beside their doors; and there again, they
may be within hearing of the wintry surge,
booming along the rocky shore; but the
revelry is of much the same character every-
where. There may be one old superstition in
one place, and another in another; but that
which is no superstition is everywhere;–––the
hospitality, the mirth, the social glow which
spreads from heart to heart, which thaws the
pride and the purse-strings, and brightens the
eyes and affections.

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS IN THE
COMPANY OF JOHN DOE.

I HAVE kept (amongst a store of jovial,
genial, heart-stirring returns of the season)
some very dismal Christmases. I have
kept Christmas in Constantinople, at a
horrible Pera hotel, where I attempted
the manufacture of a plum-pudding from
the maccaroni-soup they served me for
dinner, mingled with some Zante currants,
and a box of figs I had brought from Smyrna;
and where I sat, until very late at night,
endeavouring to persuade myself that it was
cold and "Christmassy" (though it wasn't),
drinking Levant wine, and listening to the
howling of the dogs outside, mingled with
the clank of a portable fire-engine, which
some soldiers were carrying to one of those
extensive conflagrations which never happen