Charles Dickens.] WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AFTER A LONG ABSENCE.

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But her Maker's sternest servant
   To her side on tiptoe stept;
Told his message in a whisper,–––
   And she stirr'd not as she slept!

Now the Christmas morn was breaking
   With a dim, uncertain hue,
And the chilling breeze of morning
   Came the broken window through;
And the hair upon her forehead,
   Was it lifted by the blast,
Or the brushing wings of Seraphs,
   With their burden as they pass'd?

All the festive bells were chiming
   To the myriad hearts below;
But that deep sleep still hung heavy
   On the sleeper's thoughtful brow.
To her quiet face the dream-light
   Had a lingering glory given;
But the child herself was keeping
   Her Christmas-day in Heaven!

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AFTER A
LONG ABSENCE.

SIXTEEN years have past since, a turbulent,
discontented boy, I left England for Australia.
My first serious study of geography began
when I twirled about a great globe to find
South Australia, which was then the fashion-
able colony. My guardians–––I was an orphan
–––were delighted to get rid of so troublesome
a personage; so, very soon I was the proud
possessor of a town and country lot of land in
the model colony of South Australia.

My voyage in a capital ship, with the best
fare every day, and no one to say " Charles,
you have had enough wine," was pleasant
enough: very different from the case of some
of my emigrating companions–––fathers and
mothers with families, who had left good
homes, good incomes, snug estates, and re-
spectable professions, excited by speeches at
public meetings, or by glowing pamphlets,
descriptive of the charms of a colonial life in
a model colony. I learned to smoke, drink
grog, and hit a bottle swung from the yard-
arm, with pistol or rifle. We had several
very agreeable scamps on board; ex-cornets
and lieutenants, ex-government clerks, spoiled
barristers and surgeons, plucked Oxonians,
empty, good-looking, well-dressed fellows, who
had smoked meerschaums, drunk Champagne,
Hock, and Burgundy, fought duels, ridden
steeple-chases, and contracted debts in every
capital in Europe. These distinguished gen-
tlemen kindly took me under their patronage,
smoked my cigars, allowed me to stand treat
for Champagne, taught me, at some slight
expense, the arts of short whist, écarté, and
unlimited loo; and to treat with becoming
hauteur any advances on the part of the inter-
mediate passengers.

By the end of the one hundred days of our
voyage, I was remarkably altered, but whether
improved, may be a question; as the leading
principles I had imbibed, were to the effect, that
work of any kind was low, and that debts were

gentlemanly. My preconceived notions of a
model colony, with all the elements of civi-
lisation, as promised in London, were rather
upset, by observing, on landing, just within
the wash of high-water, on the sandy beach,
heaps of furniture, a grand piano or two, and
chests of drawers in great numbers; and I
especially remember a huge iron-banded oak
plate-chest, half full of sand, and empty. The
cause of this wholesale abandonment was
soon made plain to me, in the shape of a
charge of ten pounds for conveying my trunks
in a bullock wagon, of which they formed less
than half the load, seven miles from the port
to the city of Adelaide;–––the said city, which
looked so grand in water colours in the
Emigration Rooms in London, being at that
time a picturesque and uncomfortable collec-
tion of tents, mud huts, and wooden cottages,
curiously warped, rather larger than a New-
foundland dog's kennel, but letting for the
rent of a mansion in any agricultural county
of England.

It is not my intention, now, to tell the
tale of the fall of the Model Colony and
colonists of South Australia, and the rise
of the Copper Mines, which I did not stay
to see. When a general smash was taking
place on all sides, I accepted the offer of
a rough diamond of an overlander, who
had come across from the old colony with a
lot of cattle and horses to sell to the
Adelaideans. He had taken a fancy to me
in consequence of the skill I had displayed in
bleeding a valuable colt at a critical moment;
one of the few useful things I had learned in
England; and, when my dashing companions
were drinking themselves into delirium tremens,
enlisting in the police, accepting situations as
shepherds, sponging for dinners on the once-
despised "snobs" and imploring the captains
of ships to let them work their way home
before the mast, he offered to take me with
him to his station in the interior, and "make
a man of me.'" I turned my back on South
Australia, and abandoned my country lot, on
an inaccessible hill, to nature, and sold my
town lot for five pounds. I began to perceive
that work was the only means of getting
on in a colony.

Accordingly, into the far Bush I went, and
on the plains of a new-settled district, all
solitary; constantly in danger from savage
blacks; constantly occupied in looking after
the wild shepherds and stockmen (herdsmen)
of my overland friend; passing days on horse-
back at one period; at another, compelled to
give my whole attention to the details of a
great establishment,–––I rubbed off my old skin.

My fashionable affectations died away; my
life became a reality, dependent on my own
exertions. It was then that my heart began to
change; it was then that I began to think
tenderly of the brothers and sisters I had left
behind, and with whom I had communicated
so little in the days of my selfishness. Rarely
oftener than twice in a year could I find