THE HOLLY TREE INN

AND

A CHRISTMAS TREE

THE WILLIAMS EDITION OF |

A CHRISTMAS CAROL and THE

CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

and MR. PICKWICK'S CHRISTMAS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND LINE BY

GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS

CXDMP ANION VOLUMES TO "THE HOLLY TREE INN" $2.00 EACH

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.

PUBLISHERS _ - - _ NEW YORK

THE HOL'

A CHRI

A- WRITTEN

By e

WITH iir nTCV

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THE F

iMxl vitT >iWoH ^T

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THE HOLLY TREE INN

AND

A CHRISTMAS TREE

AS WRITTEN IN THE CHRISTMAS STORIES

By CHARLES DICKENS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND LINE BY

GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS

NEW YORK

THE BAKER ^ TAYLOR COMPANY

Copyright, 1907, by The Baker & Taylor Company

Published, October, 1907

t^'^A

LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Cooy R-icelved

NOV n 1907

Cepyrleht Entry cuss A ' XXC. N^.

COPY E

It

01

•iiS't^

The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

...^....^ . jl

Jntrotiuction

SINCE his first writing of Christmas in Pickwick, Charles Dickens has forever be- come associated with that season. No other writer ever succeeded better than he in covering the earth with a mantle of snow. To the hearth he brought the good-will and wholesome cheer of the Christmas Tide, and his Christmas books and short stories, alike, are forceful expressions of our own feelings because, full of life and spirit, humor and pathos, he made the fancies of the season his own. The charity of diffusing good cheer among both rich and poor has never been taught by a more seasonable and thoughtful writer.

1

INTRODUCTION

Dickens was very fond of the old nursery tales and believed he was giving expression to them in a higher form in these Christmas writings. The virtues, manly and social, which he desired to teach, were to him the ghosts and goblins of his child- hood's fairy fancies. The more formidable drag- ons and giants to be conquered were aggressively assembled in the shadow of the hearth. So it is not to be wondered at, that with such source of inspiration these writings should carry to numer- ous firesides a sense of the obligations of Christ- mas with its claim upon our better natures.

The childhood and early manhood of Dickens were years of great importance with respect to changes wrought in social history, and may be said to mark the parting of the ways between the ages, past and present. His life began when the stage coach was the only means of quick travel, but he lived to cross the Atlantic in a steamship, and his writings are filled with charming and vivid descriptions of these bygone manners and customs,

known so well because of his experience as a re-

[vi]

INTRODUCTION

porter, in which capacity he travelled extensively and met the celebrated people of his time. He was most successful in casting a charm upon the wayside inn and because of him the doors are ever open to the weary traveller and the bright light of the fire casts its welcome on the snow.

The Holly-Tree Inn, which comprises the main text of this volume, was written between the crea- tion of "Hard Times" and ''Little Dorrit." It was Dickens's contribution to "Household Words" for Christmas, 1855, and gained great popularity by being included in his readings. Writing from Boston, Dickens states, — "Another extraordinary success has been *Nickleby' and * Boots at the Holly-Tree Inn' (appreciated here at Boston, by the by, even more than Copperfield)." And what wonder when we consider the delightful character of the Boots and know the two wholesome, childish children who live in this chapter!

The child characters of Dickens have ever been a subject of contention, and some of his most pop- ular juvenile creations have been declared most

[vii]

INTRODUCTION

unlifelike. If we do feel that ''Little Nell" and "Paul Dombey" are not living children, there are indeed, many to counterbalance them, such as David Copperfield, Tiny Tim, Oliver Twist, and, perhaps more than any of these, the children of the Holly-Tree Inn. Where in all literature can be found such delightful children?

From the moment we step out of the coach with the traveller designated as "myself" on that snowy Christmas Eve, and the waiter "whose head became as white as King Lear's in a single moment," replies to our question, "What Inn is this?" "The Holly-Tree, Sir," we follow the magician into its homely atmosphere. Our cu- riosity is like that of the women of the house, who, that they might get a glimpse of those dear chil- dren, were "seven deep at the key hole." And this curiosity is not the least abated as, thought after thought, scene after scene relating to old inns, are brought to the traveller's hearth.

When in a moment of desperation and loneli- ness the traveller summons the Boots and we are

[ viii ]

II I INTRODUCTION

given the delightful romance of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr., we are sure to hold with Boots in at least two opinions, ''firstly, that there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as innocent of guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a jolly good thing for a great many couples on their way to be married, if they could be stopped in time, and brought back separately."

Dickens once said, "Knowledge has a very limited power when it informs the head only; but, when it informs the heart as well, it has a power over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe." And so we find all of Dickens's wonderful knowledge of humanity and of English inns laid before us with a warmth of heart upon which the cold, snowy wastes, outside the "Holly-Tree" make but little impression, and, indeed, we confess to delight at being snowed up there for a whole week.

With our mind aglow with visions of Inns —

their romances and their tragedies — we eagerly

[ix]

INTRODUCTION

welcome — **A Christmas Tree," included in this volume. Here is, indeed, a Christmas tree to cheer the souls of all men. For each a gift hangs in its branches; a message in its light, and our imagination is so inspired that "all common things become uncommon and enchanted. . . . 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 portions 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!'"

In regard to the pictorial embellishment of the

INTRODUCTION

"Holly-Tree" there seems to be little of impor- tance. This would certainly have pleased its author who told Forster, his biographer, that he preferred to have his works appear without illus- trations. And this attitude is not difficult to understand, for he had suffered much at the hands of a school of caricaturists who saw only the distorted side of his writings without recognizing their more subtle and human phase. Dickens was, undeniably, a caricaturist, but under this mantle he drew for us a most human world. The contention that all the old illustrations for Dickens are irreproachable is absurd and, for proof, we have only to summon before us the varied, mani- fold and living personalities he has given us. Mrs. Gamp is truly a caricature, but is Tiny Tim, is Oliver Twist, are the Children in **The Holly- Tree".^ To consider these as such would be like assigning all of Shakespeare's characters to that world of distortion, just because Falstaff, assuredly as Mrs. Gamp, can be so classii5ed.

Every artist who approaches Dickens should

[xi]

INTRODUCTION

recognize this distinction through his subtle pene- tration into the text.

In the early sixties there arose a school of illus- trators who studied from life and were thus able to mirror its manifold phases. They brought to the art of illustrating all the pains and effort usually bestowed upon a painting, with the result that a series of illustrations beginning with those memorable drawings for "Edwin Drood," by Sir Luke Fildes, appeared. Following this came Fred- erick Barnard's great pictorial characterizations and the subtle and charming interpretations of Charles Green. With these men began the true pictorial understanding of Dickens, for their penetration into the various characters was deep and discerning. Caricature was recognized, but it was not allowed, as in the earlier pictures, to predominate all other traits. In place of the usual puppets of the original illustrations, living men and women greeted us as old friends.

And from this wholesome and novel achieve- ment in illustration dating back some forty years,

[xii]

INTRODUCTION

we find the root of all such work, since become a vital phase of our pictorial expression. But these older men were sadly hindered by the in- adequate methods of reproduction. To-day the artist meets his public with a facsimile of the original that may carry his meaning in a most subtle manner.

To continue the aims of these men is to dis- cern in Dickens those human traits by which he is daily becoming better known. And the fact that this phase of Dickens is appealing to us more and more is the measure of his true worth.

So it is with delight that we turn to this pro- foundly human document of the *' Holly-Tree," especially to the Boots's narration of that lovely romance of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr. Here no caricature veils the keen insight of Dickens into all that is human.

A pleasing humor pervades the whole. Who reads and does not look back upon those days of childhood when clouds were castles and shadows

[ xiii ]

INTRODUCTION

were dragons; when with the first breath of Spring

we came out of the hearth's dreamland and saUied

forth into the green fields?

It has been the writer's aim to embody in the

pictures for this volume that human interest

exemplified in Dickens's closing words of the

"Holly-Tree," — ''I began at the Holly-Tree, by

idle accident, to associate the Christmas-time of

year with human interest, and with some inquiry

into, and some care for, the lives of those by whom

I find myself surrounded. I hope that I am none

the worse for it, and that no one near me or afar

off is the worse for it. And I say. May the green

Holly-Tree flourish, striking its roots deep into

our English ground, and having its germinating

qualities carried by the birds of Heaven all over the

world!"

George Alfred Williams.

Chatham, New Jersey.

[xiv]

Contents;

PART I

The Holly Tree Inn

PAGE

First Branch — Myself 21

Second Branch — The Boots 67

Third Branch — The Bill 92

PART II

A Christmas Tree 103

[XV]

I

I

IList of 3[Uu2ftration0

The Holly Tree Inn .... Frontispiece '

FACING PAGE

Angela Leathy whom I was shortly to have

married 22 *"

/ then discovered that, inside or out, I was the

only passenger 26

A lean dwarf man upon a little pony ... 48 I was taken, by quick association, to the Anglers'

Inns of England 60

Master Harry 68

Tucks hery in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house, much

bolder than Brass 76

Cobbs 80

Mrs. Harry W aimers. Junior 86

''Edwin/' said I 94

[ xvii ]

THE HOLLY TREE

FIRST BRANCH

MYSELF

I HAVE kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man. Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which I have never breathed until now.

I might greatly move the reader by some ac- count of the innumerable places I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon or received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely because I am by original

constitution and character a bashful man. But I

[21]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.

That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man and beast I was once snowed up.

It happened in the memorable year when I

parted for ever from Angela Leath, whom I was shortly to have mar- ried, on making the dis- covery that she preferred my bosom friend. From our school-days I had freely admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, though I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be natural, and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstances that I resolved to go to America — on my way to the Devil.

Communicating my discovery neither to Angela [22]

• '\ ^

Ingeia J^eath, whom S waA dhoxtlij to have maxxied.

THE HOLLY TREE INN

nor to Edwin, but resolving to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and for- giveness, which the steam-tender for shore should cany to the post when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall, — I say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and con- soling myself as I could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held dear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.

The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for ever, at five o'clock in the morning. I had shaved by candle-light, of course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.

How well I remember the forlorn aspect of

Fleet-street when I came out of the Temple ! The

street-lamps flickering in the gusty northeast wind,

as if the very gas were contorted with cold; the

white-topped houses; the bleak, star-lighted sky;

[23]

"-^1

THE HOLLY TREE INN

the market people and other early stragglers, trot- ting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light and warmth of the few coffee- shops and public-houses that were open for such customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the wind had already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face like a steel whip.

It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. The Postoffice packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool, weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had the intervening time on my hands. I had taken this into consideration, and had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name) on the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared to me by my having first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before my ex- patriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid

being sought out before my resolution should have

[24]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

been rendered irrevocable by being carried into

full effect, I had written to Angela over night, in

my usual manner, lamenting that urgent business,

of which she should know all particulars by-and-

by — took me unexpectedly away from her for a

week or ten days.

There was no Northern Railway at that time,

and in its place there were stage-coaches; which I

occasionally find myself, in common with some

other people, affecting to lament now, but which

everybody dreaded as a very serious penance then.

I had secured the box-seat on the fastest of these,

and my business in Fleet-street was to get into a

cab with my portmanteau, so to make the best of

my way to the Peacock at Islington, where I was

to join this coach. But when one of our Temple

watchmen, who carried my portmanteau into

Fleet-street for me, told me about the huge blocks

of ice that had for some days past been floating in

the river, having closed up in the night, and made

a walk from the Temple Gardens over to the

Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the question,

[25]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

whether the box-seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my unhappiness. I was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far gone as to wish to be frozen to death.

When I got up to the Peacock, — where I found everybody drinking hot purl, in self-preservation, — I asked if there were an inside seat to spare. I then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger. This gave me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the weather, since that coach always loaded particularly well. However, I took a little purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach. When I was seated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of making a rather ridiculous appear- ance, I began my journey.

It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For

a little while, pale, uncertain ghosts of houses and

trees appeared and vanished, and then it was hard,

black, frozen day. People were lighting their

fires; smoke was mounting straight up high into

the rarefied air; and we were rattling for Highgate

[26]

11=:

if?

^} m^f/

V\m- r /

THE HOLLY TREE INN

Archway over the hardest ground I have ever heard the ring of iron shoes on. As we got into the country, everything seemed to have grown old and gray. The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and homesteads, the ricks in farmers' yards. Out-door work was abandoned, horse- troughs at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers lounged about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary coach going by. I don't know when the snow began to set in; but I know that we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark, "That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-day." Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick.

The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does. I was warm and valiant after eating and drinking, — particularly after dinner;

[27]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

cold and depressed at all other times. I was always bewildered as to time and place, and always more or less out of my senses. The coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a moment's intermission. They kept the time and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with a precision that worried me to death. While we changed horses, the guard and coach- man went stumping up and down the road, print- ing off their shoes in the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselves without being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end. Our horses tumbled down in solitary places, and we got them up, — which was the pleasantest variety I had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing. All night long we went on in this manner. Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great North Road, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne all day again.

[28]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we ought to have been; but I know that we were scores of miles behind- hand, and that our case was growing worse every hour. The drift was becoming prodigiously deep; landmarks were getting snowed out; the road and the fields were all one; instead of having fences and hedge-rows to guide us, we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that might sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside. Still the coach- man and guard — who kept together on the box, always in council, and looking well about them — made out the track with astonish- ing sagacity.

When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to

my fancy, like a large drawing on a slate, with

abundance of slate-pencil expended on the churches

and houses where the snow lay thickest. When

we came within a town, and found the church

[29]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

clocks all stopped, the dial-faces choked with snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball; similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end, turning our clogged wheels and en- couraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak, wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us was a snowy Sahara. One would have thought this enough: notwithstanding which, I pledge my word that it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of birds. At nine o'clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst from our horn, and a wel- come sound of talking, with a glimmering and moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state. I found that we were going to change.

They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, [30]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

whose bare head became as white as King Lear's in a single minute, "What Inn is this ?"

"The Holly-Tree, sir," said he.

"Upon my word, I believe," said I, apologeti- cally, to the guard and coachman, "that I must stop here."

Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the postboy, and all the stable author- ities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-eyed interest of all the rest of the establish- ment, if he meant to go on. The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd take her through it," — meaning by Her the coach, — "if so be as George would stand by him." George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by him. So the helpers were already getting the horses out.

My declaring myself beaten, after this parley,

was not an announcement without preparation.

Indeed, but for the way to the announcement

being smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt

whether, as an innately bashful man, I should

[31]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

have had the confidence to make it. As it was, it received the approval even of the guard and coachman. Therefore, with many confirmations of my inclining, and many remarks from one bystander to another, that the gentleman could go for'ard by the mail to-morrow, whereas to-night he would only be froze, and where was the good of a gentleman being froze, — ah, let alone buried alive (which latter clause was added by a humor- ous helper as a joke at my expense, and was ex- tremely well received), I saw my portmanteau got out stiff, like a frozen body; did the handsome thing by the guard and coachman; wished them good-night, and a prosperous journey; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for leaving them to fight it out alone, followed the landlord, laud- lady, and waiter of the Holly-Tree up-stairs.

I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which they showed me. It had five windows, with dark red curtains that would have absorbed the light of a general illumination; and

there were complications of drapery at the top

[32]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

of the curtains, that went wandering about the wall in a most extraordinary manner. I asked for a smaller room, and they told me there was no smaller room. They could screen me in, how- ever, the landlord said. They brought a great old japanned screen, with natives (Japanese, I suppose) engaged in a variety of idiotic pursuits all over it; and left me roasting whole before an immense fire.

My bedroom was some quarter of a mile oflf, up a great staircase at the end of a long gallery; and nobody knows what a misery this is to a bash- ful man who would rather not meet people on the stairs. It was the grimmest room I have ever had the nightmare in; and all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver candlesticks, was tall, high-shouldered, and spindle- waisted. Below, in my sitting-room, if I looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the colour of a new brick. The

chimney-piece was very high, and there was a

[33]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

bad glass — what I may call a wavy glass — above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my anterior phrenological developments, — and these never look well, in any subject, cut short off at the eyebrow. If I stood with my back to the fire, a gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on being looked at; and, in its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten curtains of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, like a nest of gigantic worms.

I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other men of similar char- acter in themselves; therefore I am emboldened to mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place but I immediately want to go away from it. Before I had finished my supper of broiled fowl and mulled port, I had impressed upon the waiter in detail my arrangements for departure in the morning. Breakfast and bill at eight. Fly at nine. Two horses, or, if needful, even four.

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long. In oasis of nightmare, I thought of

[34]

L

THE HOLLY TREE INN

Angela, and felt more depressed than ever by the reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green. What had / to do with Gretna Green? I was not going that way to the Devil, but by the I American route, I remarked in my bitterness.

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all night, and that I was snowed up. Nothing could get out of that spot on the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out by labourers from the market- town. When they might cut their way to the Holly-Tree nobody could tell me.

It was now Christmas-eve. I should have had

a dismal Christmas-time of it anywhere, and

consequently that did not so much matter; still,

being snowed up was like dying of frost, a thing

I had not bargained for. I felt very lonely. Yet

I could no more have proposed to the landlord

and landlady to admit me to their society (though

I should have liked it very much) than I could have

asked them to present me with a piece of plate.

Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my

[35]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

character, is to be observed. Like most bashful men, I judge of other people as if they were bash- ful too. Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last degree dis- concerting to them.

Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked what books there were in the house. The waiter brought me a Book of Roads, two or three old Newspapers, a little Song-Book, terminating in a collection of Toasts and Senti- ments, a little Jest-Book, an odd volume of Pere- grine Pickle, and the Sentimental Journey, I knew every word of the two last already, but I read them through again, then tried to hum all the songs (Auld Lang Syne was among them); went entirely through the jokes, — in which I found a fund of melancholy adapted to my state of mind; proposed all the toasts, enunciated all the sentiments, and mastered the papers. The latter had nothing in them but stock advertise- ments, a meeting about a county rate, and a high-

[36]

u

THE HOLLY TREE INN

way robbery. As I am a greedy reader, I could not make this supply hold out until night; it was exhausted by tea-time. Being then entirely cast upon my own resources, I got through an hour in considering what to do next. Ultimately, it came into my head ^(from which I was anxious by any means to exclude Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my experience of Inns, and would try how long it lasted me. I stirred the fire, moved my chair a little to one side of the screen, — not daring to go far, for I knew the wind was waiting to make a rush at me, I could hear it growling, — and began.

My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery; consequently I went back to the Nursery for a starting-point, and found myself at the knee of a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a green gown, whose specialty was a dismal narrative of a landlord by the roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared for many years, until it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to convert them into pies. For

[37]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

the better devotion of himself to this branch of industry, he had constructed a secret door behind the head of the bed; and when the visitor (op- pressed with pie) had fallen asleep, this wicked landlord would look softly in with a lamp in one hand and a knife in the other, would cut his throat, and would make him into pies; for which purpose he had coppers, underneath a trap-door, always boiling; and rolled out his pastry in the dead of the night. Yet even he was not insensible to the stings of conscience, for he never went to sleep without being heard to mutter, "Too much pep- per!" which was eventually the cause of his being brought to justice. I had no sooner disposed of this criminal than there started up another of the same period, whose profession was originally housebreaking; in the pursuit of which art he had had his right ear chopped off one night as he was burglariously getting in at a window, by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom the aquiline- nosed woman, though not at all answering the

description, always mysteriously implied to be

[38]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

herself). After several years, this brave and lovely servant-maid was married to the landlord of a country Inn; which landlord had this remark- able characteristic, that he always wore a silk nightcap, and never would on any consideration take it off. At last, one night, when he was fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman lifted up his silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear there; upon which she sagaciously perceived that he was the clipped housebreaker, who had married her with the intention of putting her to death. She immediately heated the poker and terminated his career, for which she was taken to King George upon his throne, and received the compliments of royalty on her great discretion and valour. This same narrator, who had a Ghoulish pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying me to the utmost confines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her own experience, founded, I now believe, upon Raymond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun. She

said it happened to her brother-in-law, who was

[39]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

immensely rich, — which my father was not ; and immensely tall, — which my father was not. It was always a point with this Ghoul to present my dearest relations and friends to my youthful mind under circumstances of disparaging contrast. The brother-in-law was riding once through a forest on a magnificent horse (we had no magnificent horse at our house), attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog (we had no dog), when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn. A dark woman opened the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there. She answered yes, and put his horse in the stable, and took him into a room where there were two dark men. While he was at supper, a parrot in the room began to talk, saying, ''Blood, blood! Wipe up the blood!" Upon which one of the dark men wrung the parrot's neck, and said he was fond of roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the morning. After eating and drink- ing heartily, the immensely rich, tall brother-in- law went up to bed; but he was rather vexed,

[40]

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because they had shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the house. He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and thinking, when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the door. He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog! The dog came softly in, smelt about him, went straight to some straw in the corner which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the straw away, and disclosed two sheets steeped in blood. Just at that moment the candle went out, and the brother-in-law, looking through a chink in the door, saw the two dark men stealing up-stairs; one armed with a dagger that long (about five II feet); the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a

spade. Having no remembrance of the close of this adventure, I suppose my faculties to have been always so frozen with terror at this stage of it, that the power of listening stagnated within me for some quarter of an hour.

These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly-Tree hearth, to the Roadside Inn, i [41]

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renowned in my time in a sixpenny book with a folding-plate, representing in a central compart- ment of oval form the portrait of Jonathan Brad- ford, and in four corner compartments four incidents of the tragedy with which the name is associated, — coloured with a hand at once so j free and economical, that the bloom of Jonathan's

complexion passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and, smearing itself off into the next division, became rum in a bottle. Then I remembered how the landlord was found at the murdered traveller's bedside, with his own knife at his feet, and blood upon his hand; how he was hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his pro- testation that he had indeed come there to kill the traveller for his saddle-bags, but had been stricken motionless on finding him already slain; and how the ostler, years afterwards, owned the deed. By this time I had made myself quite uncomfortable. I stirred the fire, and stood with my back to it as long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the screen, and at the wormy

[42]

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curtains creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in the ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.

There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had pleasanter recollec- tions about it than any of these. I took it next. It was the Inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign, — the Mitre, — and a bar that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord's youngest daughter to distraction, — but let that pass. It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she had been, that Holly- Tree night, for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me yet.

''To be continued to-morrow,'* said I, when I

took my candle to go to bed. But my bed took

it upon itself to continue the train of thought that

night. It carried me away, like the enchanted

[43]

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1

carpet, to a distant place (though still in England), and there, alighting from a stage-coach at another Inn in the snow, as I had actually done some years before, I repeated in my sleep a curious experience I had really had here. More than a year before I made the journey in the course of which I put up at that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by death. Every night since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of that friend; sometimes as still living; sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to comfort me; always as being beautiful, placid, and happy,

[44]

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never in association with any approach to fear or distress. It was at a lonely Inn in a wide moor- land place, that I halted to pass the night. When I had looked from my bedroom window over the waste of snow on which the moon was shining, I sat down by my jBre to write a letter. I had always, until that hour, kept it within my own breast that I dreamed every night of the dear lost one. But in the letter that I wrote I recorded the circum- stance, and added that I felt much interested in proving whether the subject of my dream would still be faithful to me, travel-tired, and in that remote place. No. I lost the beloved jSgure of my vision in parting with the secret. My sleep has never looked upon it since, in sixteen years, but once. I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to awake), the well-remembered voice distinctly in my ears, conversing with it. I entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the vaulted roof of the old room, to answer me a question I had asked touching the Future Life. My hands

were still outstretched towards it as it vanished,

[45]

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when I heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the deep stillness of the night calling on all good Christians to pray for the souls of the dead; it being All Souls' Eve.

To return to the Holly-Tree. When I awoke next day, it was freezing hard, and the lowering sky threatened more snow. My breakfast cleared away, I drew my chair into its former place, and, with the fire getting so much the better of the landscape that I sat in twilight, resumed my Inn remembrances.

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I

put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale,

and before all beer was bitterness. It was on the

skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind

that rattled my lattice window came moaning at

me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on

at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved

Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still),

with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always

looking afar off; who claimed to have been a

shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching

[46]

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for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a weird behef in him that no one could count the stones II of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number

of them; likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then stood in the centre and said, **I dare!" would behold a tre- mendous apparition, and be stricken dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following: He was out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he dimly discerned, going on before him at a curious, fitfully bounding i pace, what he at first supposed to be a gig-um- brella that had been blown from some conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a little pony. Having followed this object for some distance without gaining on it, and having called to it many times without re- ceiving any answer, he pursued it for miles, and miles when, at length coming up with it, he dis-

[47]

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covered it to be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated into a wingless state, and running along the ground. Resolved to capture him or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do neither, threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making oS due west. This weird man, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker or an enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice. I paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible precipitation. That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn in Switzerland, while I was staying there. It was a very homely place, in a village of one narrow, zigzag street, among moun- tains, and you went in at the main door through the cow-house, and among the mules and the dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase to the rooms ; which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering, — like rough

[48]

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packing-cases. Outside there was nothing but the straggling street, a little toy church with a copper-coloured steeple, a pine forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides. A young man be- longing to this Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was dinner-time), and was supposed to have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for a soldier. He had got up in the night, and dropped into the village street from the loft in which he slept with another man; and he had done it so quietly, that his companion and fellow-labourer had heard no movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they said, "Louis, where is Henri.?" They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him up. Now, outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in the village, a stack of firewood; but the stack belonging to the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest house, and burnt the most fuel. It began to be noticed, while they were looking high and

low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of

[49]

J

THE HOLLY TREE INN

the Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this wood-stack; and that he would stay there for hours and hours, crowing, until he appeared in danger of splitting himself. Five weeks went on, — six weeks, — and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing the very eyes out of his head. By this time it was perceived that Louis had become inspired with a violent animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one morning he was seen by a woman, who sat nursing her goitre at a little window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of wood, with a great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the wood-stack, and bring him down dead. Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her mind, stole round to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a good climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and soon was seen upon the summit, screaming, looking down the hollow within, and crying, ''Seize Louis, the murderer! Ring the church bell! Here is the

[50]

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body!" I saw the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A heavy animal, — the dullest animal in the stables, — with a stupid head, and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of sensibility, who had been, within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way. All of which he confessed next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't be troubled any more, now that they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw him once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this murderer sitting bound to a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a

little market-place. In that instant, a great sword

[51]

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(loaded with quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world. My wonder was, not that he was so suddenly despatched, but that any head was left unreaped, within a radius of fifty yards of that tremendous sickle.

That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and the honest landlord, where I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and where one of the apartments has a zoological papering on the walls, not so accurately joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger's hind legs and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and tusks, and the bear, moulting as it were, appears as to portions of himself like a leopard. I made several American friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc Mount Blank, — except one good-humoured gentle- man, of a very sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with it that he spoke of it familiarly as *' Blank"; observing, at breakfast, "Blank looks pretty tall this morning"; or con-

[52]

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siderably doubting in the courtyard in the evening, whether there warn't some go-ahead naters in |

our country, sir, that would make out the top of i

Blank in a couple of hours from first start — now ! i

Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie. It was a Yorkshire pie, like a fort, — an abandoned fort with nothing in it ; but the waiter had a fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put the pie on the table. After some days I tried to hint, in several delicate ways, that I considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of glasses of wine into it; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, as into a basket; putting wine-bottles into it, as into a cooler; but always in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and brought up as before. At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits might not sink under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the musical

[53]

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instrument of that name in a powerful orchestra. Human prevision could not have foreseen the result — but the waiter mended the pie. With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle in again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.

The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal. I made an overland expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window. Here I was driven back by stress of weather. Arrived at my winter-quarters once more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn.

It was in the remotest part of Cromwell. A great annual Miner's Feast was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing before it by torchlight. We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the unharnessed post-horses. If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his

[54]

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traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post- horse will tread on his conductor's toes. Over and above which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him, will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor's part. With such little draw- backs on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners. It was full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-horse, — though to get rid of that noble animal was something. While my fellow-travel- lers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the jovial wheel- wright would be in a condition to go out on the

morass and mend the coach, an honest man stepped

[55]

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forth from the crowd and proposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and punch. We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean houses, where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all parties. But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames, altogether without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on perches. Nor was this the ab- surdest consequence; for when we unbent at supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and instantly disappeared. I myself, doubled up into an attitude from which self-extrication was impossible, was taken out of my frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by the taper's light during the eggs and bacon. The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness. I began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was dug out. I might be a week here, — weeks !

[56]

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There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I once passed a night at in a picturesque old town on the Welsh border. In a large double-bedded room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept unconscious in the other. After that time, the suicide bed was never used, but the other constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though as to all other respects in its old state. The story ran, that whosoever slept in this room, though never so entire a stranger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to come down in the morning with an impression that he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he might be, he was certain to make some reference if he conversed with any one. This went on for years, until it at length induced the landlord to take the disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it, — bed, hangings, and all. The strange influence (this was the story) now changed

[57]

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to a fainter one, but never changed afterwards. The occupant of that room, with occasional but very rare exceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to recall a forgotten dream he had had in the night. The landlord, on his mention- ing his perplexity, would suggest various common- place subjects, not one of which, as he very well knew, was the true subject. But the moment the landlord suggested "Poison," the traveller started, and cried, "Yes!" He never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of the dream.

This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general before me; with the women in their round hats, and the harpers with their white beards (venerable, but humbugs, I am afraid), playing outside the door while I took my dinner. The transition was natural to the Highland Inns, with the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the trout from the loch, the whiskey, and perhaps (having the materials so temptingly at

hand) the Athol brose. Once was I coming

[58]

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south from the Scottish Highlands in hot haste, hoping to change quickly at the station at the bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these eyes did with mortification see the landlord come out with a telescope and sweep the whole prospect for the horses; which horses were away picking up their own living, and did not heave in sight under four hours. Having thought of the loch-trout, I was taken by quick association to the Anglers' Inns of England (I have assisted at in- numerable feats of angling by lying in the bottom of the boat, whole summer days, doing nothing with the greatest perseverance; which I have generally found to be as effectual towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle and the utmost science), and to the pleasant white, clean, flower- pot-decorated bedrooms of those inns, overlooking the river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the church-spire, and the country bridge; and to the peerless Emma with the bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural grace

that would have converted Blue-Beard. Casting

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my eyes upon my Holly-Tree fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals the pictures of a score or more of those wonderful English posting-inns which we are all so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and which were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and extortion. He who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke, or even Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow% and moralise on their perishing remains; the stables crumbling to dust; unsettled labourers and wan- derers bivouacking in the outhouses ; grass growing in the yards; the rooms, where erst so many hun- dred beds of down were made up, let off to Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a little ill-looking beer-shop shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coach-house gates for firewood, having one of its two windows bunged up, as if it had re- ceived punishment in a fight with the Railroad; a low, bandy-legged, brick-making bulldog standing in the doorway. What could I next see in my

fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these

[60]

I was taken, by quick association, to the Anglers' Inns of England.

THE HOLLY TREE INN

times near the dismal country station ; with nothing particular on draught but cold air and damp, nothing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no business doing beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the hall? Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty apartment of four pieces up one hundred and seventy-five waxed stairs, the privilege of ringing the bell all day long without influencing anybody's mind or body but your own, and the not-too-much-for- dinner, considering the price. Next to the pro- vincial Inns of France, with the great church-tower rising above the courtyard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and down the street beyond, and the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms, which are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, by getting exactly twelve hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally become so. Away I went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy; where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying in your anteroom; where the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your face

[61]

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in summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you get what you can, and forget what you can't; where I should again like to be boiling my tea in a pocket-handkerchief dumpling, for want of a teapot. So to the old palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns and cities of the same bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases, whence you may look from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of heaven; with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with their labyrinths of ghostly bed- chambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no appearance of reality or possibility. So to the close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale attendants, and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air. So to the im- mense fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of the gondolier below, as he skims the corner; the grip of the watery odours on one particular little bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never released while you stay there); and the great bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight. Next

[62]

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I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for everybody else's getting up; and where, in the table-d'hote room at the end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing else upon them, will remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing about the river that flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest of it. I departed thence, as a matter of course, to other German Inns, where all the eatables are soddened down to the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After a draught of spark- ling beer from a foaming glass jug, and a glance

of recognition through the windows of the student

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beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine hun- dred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I stood in the bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail. Again I listened to my friend the General, — whom I had known for five minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life with two Majors, who again had made me in- timate for life with three Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians, — again, I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir; ladies' morn- ing-room, sir; gentlemen's evening-room, sir; ladies' evening-room, sir; ladies' and gentlemen's evening reuniting-room, sir; music-room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and the entire planned and finished within twelve calendar months from the first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost of five

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hundred thousand dollars, sir. Again I found, as to my individual way of thinking, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more doUarous the establishment was, the less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, to my friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large- hearted, and great people.

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject. What was I to do ? What was to become of me ? Into what extremity was I submissively to sink? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by training it? Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future. I might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way I [65]

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forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous drapery. A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other circumstances I should have rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it fast. Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me from the landlord's table and the company I might find there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair, — and some- thing in a liquid form, — and talk to me.^ I could. I would. I did.

[66]

SECOND BRANCH

THE BOOTS

Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the question. Lord, he had been everywhere! And what had he been? Bless you, he had been everything you could mention a'most!

Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in his way. Why, it would be easier for him, he ex- pected, to tell what he hadn't seen than what he had. Ah! A deal, it would.

What was the curiousest thing he had seen? Well! He didn't know. He couldn't momently name what was the curiousest thing he had seen, — unless it was a Unicorn, — and he see him once at a Fair. But supposing a young gentle- man not eight year old was to run away with a

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fine young woman of seven, might I think tliat a queer start? Certainly. Then that was a start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the shoes they run away in — and they was so little that he couldn't get his hand into 'em. Master Harry Walmers' father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down away by Shooter's Hill there, six or seven miles from Lunnon. He was a gentleman of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head up when he walked, and had what you may call Fire about him. He wrote poetry, and he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and he done it all equally beautiful. He was uncommon proud of Master Harry as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a gentleman that had a will of his own and a eye of his own, and that would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was de- lighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy books, and was never tired of hearing him say

my name is Norval, or hearing him sing his songs

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about Young May Moons is beaming love, and When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the command over the child, and the child was sl child, and it's to be wished more of 'em was!

How did Boots happen to know all this ? Why, through being under-gardener. Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and prun- ing, and this and that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you was asked ?" and then began cutting it in print all over the fence.

He couldn't say he had taken particular notice of children before that; but really it was pretty to see them two mites a going about the place to- gether, deep in love. And the courage of the boy! Bless your soul, he'd have thro wed off his

little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves, and gone

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in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet one, and she had been frightened of him. One day he stops, along with her, where Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel and says, speaking up, *'Cobbs," he says, *'I like you'' "Do you, sir? I'm proud to hear it." "Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why, do I like you do you think, Cobbs ?" "Don't know. Master Harry, I am sure." "Because Nor ah likes you, Cobbs." "Indeed, sir.^ That's very gratifying." "Gratifying, Cobbs .^ It's better than millions of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah." "Certainly, sir." "You're going away, ain't you, Cobbs .^" "Yes, sir." "Would you like another situation, Cobbs?" "Well, sir, I shouldn't object, if it was a good 'un." "Then, Cobbs," says he, "you shall be our Head Gardener when we are married." And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks away.

Boots could assure me that it was better than a picter, and equal to a play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their spark-

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ling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a ram- bling about the garden, deep in love. Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they was birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please 'em. Sometimes they would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading about the Prince and the Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would hear them plan- ning about having a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on milk and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond, II and heard Master Harry say, ''Adorable Norah,

kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or I'll jump in head-foremost." And Boots made no question he would have done it if she hadn't com- plied. On the whole. Boots said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself — only he didn't exactly know who with.

**Cobbs," said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the flowers, "I am

[71]

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going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my grandmamma's at York."

"Are you indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am going into Yorkshire, my- self, when I leave here."

"Are you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs.?"

"No, sir. I haven't got such a thing."

"Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs.^"

"No, sir."

The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, and then said, "I shall be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs, — Norah's going."

"You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, "with your beautiful sweetheart by your side."

"Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, "I never let anybody joke about it, when I can prevent them."

"It wasn't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility, — "wasn't so meant."

"I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're going to live with us. — Cobbs!"

[72]

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"Sir."

"What do you think my grandmamma gives me when I go down there?"

"I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir."

"A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs."

"Whew!" says Cobbs, "that's a spanking sum of money. Master Harry."

"A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that, — couldn't a person, Cobbs .^"

"I believe you, sir!"

"Cobbs," said the boy, "I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house, they have been joking her about me, and pre- tending to laugh at our being engaged, — pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!"

"Such, sir," says Cobbs, "is the depravity of human natur."

The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood

[73]

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for a few minutes with his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, "Good-night, Cobbs. I'm going in."

If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a going to leave that place just at that present time, well, he couldn't rightly answer me. He did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been anyways inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted change. That's what he wanted, — change. Mr. Walmers, he said to him when he gave him notice of his inten- tions to leave, *' Cobbs," he says, "have you anythink to complain of.^ I make the inquiry because if I find that any of my people really has anythink to complain of, I wish to make it right if I can." "No, sir," says Cobbs; "thanking you, sir, I find myself as well sitiwated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The truth is, sir, that I'm a-going to seek my fortun'." "O, indeed, Cobbs!" he says; "I hope you may find it." And Boots could assure me — which he did, touching his hair with his bootjack, as a salute in the way

[74]

L

THE HOLY TREE INN

of his present calling — that he hadn't found it yet.

Well, sir! Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master Harry, he went down to the old lady's at York, which old lady would have given that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any), she was so wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do, — for Infant you may call him and be within the mark, — but cut away from that old lady's with his Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna Green and be married !

Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several times since to better himself, but always come back through one thing or an- other), when, one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the coach gets them two children. The Guard says to our Governor, "I don't quite make out these little passengers, but the young gentleman's words was, that they was to be brought here." The young gentleman gets out; hands his lady out; gives the Guard something

[75]

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for himself; says to our Governor, ** We're to stop here to-night, please. Sitting-room and two bed- rooms will be required. Chops and cherry-pud- ding for two!" and tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house, much bolder than Brass.

Boots leaves me to judge what the amaze- ment of that establish- ment was, when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into the Angel, — much more so, when he, who had seen them without their seeing him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was upon. *'Cobbs," says the Governor, "if this is so, I must set off myself to York, and quiet their friends' minds. In which case you must keep your eye upon 'em, and humour 'em, till I come back. But before I take these measures, Cobbs,

[76]

Tucks her in her little shj-hhie mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much bolder than brass.

.u 1.1.1 TREE INN

i; says to our Governor, ** We're to stop night, please. Sitting-room and two bed- will be required. Chops and cherry-pud- Tig for two!" and tucks her, in her little sky-blue antle, under his arm, and walks into the house, ch bolder than Brass.

Boots leaves me to judge what the amaze- ment of that establish- ment was, when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into the Ang much

more so. when he, wh*) them without their seeing him, give the Gk)vernor his views of the expxhtion they was upon, "Cobbs," says the Governor, **if this is ,nist set off myself to York, and quiet their In which case you must keep ve upon 'em, and humour 'em, till I come efore I take these measures, Cobbs,

.^%Vi^6 nfi^\ •x'iMod A-^vrw %«.\rc»A ^\ o^V

THE HOLY TREE INN

I should wish you to find from themselves whether your opinion is correct. ''Sir, to you," says Cobbs, *'that shall be done directly."

So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry on a e-normous sofa, — immense at any time, but looking like the Great Bed of Ware, compared with him, — a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his pocket-hankecher. Their little legs was entirely off the ground, of course, and it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how small them children looked.

"It's Cobbs! It's Cobbs!" cried Master Harry, and comes running to him, and catching hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running to him on t'other side and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they both jump for joy.

"I see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs. **I thought it was you. I thought I couldn't be mis- taken in your height and figure. What's the object of your journey, sir ? — Matrimonial .?"

"We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna

Green," returned the boy. *'We have run away

[77]

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on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits, Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend."

"Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss," says Cobbs, ''for your good opinion. Did you bring any luggage with you, sir.?"

If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour upon it, the lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush, — seemingly a doll's. The gentle- man had got about half a dozen yards of string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up surprising small, a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.

"What may be the exact natur of your plans, sir.?" says Cobbs.

"To go on," replied the boy, — which the cour- age of that boy was something wonderful! — "in the morning, and be married to-morrow."

"Just so, sir," says Cobbs. "Would it meet

your views, sir, if I was to accompany you.?"

[78]

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When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, "Oh, yes, yes, Cobbs! Yes!"

"Well, sir," says Cobbs. "If you will excuse my having the freedom to give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this. I'm acquainted with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself driving, if you approved,) to the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow, but even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be worth your while. As to the small account here, sir, in case you was to find yourself running at all short, that don't signify; because I'm a part pro- prietor of this Inn, and it could stand over."

Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy again, and called him "Good Cobbs!" and "Dear Cobbs!" and bent across him to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding hearts, he felt himself the meanest rascal for deceiving 'em that ever was born.

[79]

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"Is there anything you want just at pres- ent, sir?" says Cobbs, mortally ashamed of himself.

"We should like some cakes after dinner," answered Master Harry, folding his arms, putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, "and two apples, — and jam. With dinner we should like to have toast-and-water. But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at dessert, i^nd so have I."

"It shall be ordered at the bar, sir," says Cobbs; and away he went.

Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as he had then, that he would far rather have had it out in half a dozen rounds with the Governor than have combined with him; and that he wished with all his heart there was any impossible place where those two babies could make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy ever afterwards. However, as it couldn't be, he went into the Governor's plans, and the Governor set off for York in half an hour.

[80]

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THE HOLLY TREE INN

The way in which the women of that house — without exception — every one of 'em — married and single — took to that boy when they heard the story, Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do to keep 'em from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through a pane of glass. They was seven deep at the keyhole. They was out of their minds about him and his bold spirit.

In the evening. Boots went into the room to

see how the runaway couple was getting on. The

gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting

[81]

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the lady in his arms. She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.

"Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir.^" says Cobb.

"Yes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home, and she has been in low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you could bring a biffin, please.^"

"I ask your pardon, sir," says Cobbs. "What was it you .^"

"I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond of them."

Boots withdrew in search of the required restor- ative, and, when he brought it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross. "What should you think, sir," says Cobbs, "of a chamber candle- stick.^" The gentleman approved; the chamber- maid went first, up the great staircase; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted

[82]

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by the gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and retired to his own apartment, where Boots softly locked him up.

Boots couldn't but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk- and-water, and toast and currant jelly, overnight) about the pony. It really was as much as he could do, he don't mind confessing to me, to look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked old father of lies he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he went on a lying like a Trojan about the pony. He told 'em that it did so unfort'nately happen that the pony was half clipped, you see, and that he couldn't be taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to his inside. But that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the day, and that to-morrow morning at eight o'clock the pheayton would be ready. Boots's view of the whole case, looking back on it in my room, is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to give in. She hadn't had her

[83]

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hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to brushing it herself, and its getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing put out Master Hariy. He sat behind his breakfast-cup^ a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his own father.

After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed soldiers, — at least, he knows that many such was found in the fireplace, all on horseback. In the course of the morning. Master Harry rang the bell, — it was surprising how that there boy did carry on, — and said, in a sprightly way, **Cobbs, is there any good walks in this neighbourhood ?''

"Yes, sir," says Cobbs. "There's Love-lane."

"Get out with you, Cobbs!" — that was that there boy's expression, — "you're joking."

"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love-lane. And a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior."

"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is [84]

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curious. We really ought to see Love-lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go there with Cobbs."

Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head-gardener, on account of his being so true a friend to 'em. Boots could have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened and swallowed him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and believing him. Well, sir, he turned the con- versation as well as he could, and he took 'em down Love-lane to the water-meadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily for her, — but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they was tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the children

in the wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep.

[85]

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Boots don't know — perhaps I do, — but never mind, it don't signify either way — why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them two pretty babies a lying there in the clear, still, sunny day, not dreaming half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was awake. But Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never To-day, that's where it is!

Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior's, temper was on the move. \Mien Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he ''teased her so"; and he says, "Norah, my young May Moon, your Harry tease you.^" she tells him, "Yes; and I want to go home!"

A biled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pud- ding, brought Mrs. Walmers up a little; but Boots

[86]

( "6 v.^. FrSaxxii ^Va ImcrA, ^jti n toi

THE HOLLY TREE INN

I could have wished, he must privately own to me, to have seen her more sensible of the woice of love, and less abandoning of herself to currants. However, Master Harry, he kept up, and his noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.

About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise, along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused and very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, "We are much indebted to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our little children, which we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray, ma'am, where is my boy.^" Our missis says, ''Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir. Cobbs, show Forty!" Then he says to Cobbs, "Ah, Cobbs, I am glad to see you! I understood you was here!" And Cobbs says, "Yes, sir. Your most obedient.

sir."

[87]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, per- haps; but Boots assures me that his heart beat Hke a hammer, going up-stairs. "I beg your pardon, sir," says he, while unlocking the door; '*I hope you are not angry with Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you credit and honour." And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy's father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then was, he thinks he should have ** fetched him a crack," and taken the con- sequences.

But Mr. Walmers only says, "No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!" And, the door being opened, goes in.

Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to the bedside, bend gently down, and kiss the little sleeping face. Then he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonder- fully like it (they do say he ran away with Mrs. Walmers); and then he gently shakes the little

shoulder.

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'* Harry, my dear boy! Harry!"

Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs too. Such is the honour of that mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has brought him into trouble.

''I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come home."

''Yes, pa."

Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when he has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands, at last, a looking at his father: his father standing a looking at him, the quiet image of him.

*' Please may I" — the spirit of that little creatur, and the way he kept his rising tears down ! — "please, dear pa — may I — kiss Norah before I go?"

"You may, my child."

So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly

[89]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

lady is seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he i lays his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to him, — a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the door, that one of them calls I out, "It's a shame to part 'em!" But this cham- bermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft- hearted one. Not that there was any harm in that girl. Far from it.

Finally, Boots says, that's all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away in the chaise, having hold of Master Harry's hand. The elderly lady and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In conclusion, Boots put it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as inno- cent of guile as those two children; secondly, that

[90]

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it would be a jolly good thing for a great many couples on their way to be married, if they could only be stopped in time, and brought back sep- arately.

[91]

THIRD BRANCH

THE BILL

I HAD been snowed up a whole week. The time had hung so lightly on my hands, that I should have been in great doubt of the fact but for a piece of documentary evidence that lay upon my table.

The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and the document in question was my bill. It testified emphatically to my having eaten and drunk, and warmed myself, and slept among the sheltering branches of the Holly-Tree, seven days and nights.

I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four

hours to improve itself, finding that I required

that additional margin of time for the completion

of my task. I had ordered my Bill to be upon

the table, and a chaise to be at the door, '*at eight

[92]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

o'clock to-morrow evening." It was eight o'clock to-morrow evening when I buckled up my travel- ling writing desk in its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on my warm coats and wrappers. Of course, no time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen tear to the icicles which were doubtless hanging plentifully about the farmhouse where I had first seen Angela. What I had to do was to get across to Liverpool by the shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and em- bark. It was quite enough to do, and I had not an hour too much time to do it in.

I had taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends — almost, for the time being, of my bashfulness too — and was standing for half a minute at the Inn door watching the ostler as he took another turn at the cord which tied my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps coming down towards the Holly-Tree. The road was so padded with snow that no wheels were audible; but all of us who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps

coming on, and at a lively rate too, between the

[93]

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walls of snow that had been heaped up on either side of the track. The chambermaid instantly- divined how the ease stood, and called to the ostler, "Tom, this is a Gretna job!" The ostler, knowing ji that her sex instinctively scented a marriage,

or anything in that direction, rushed up the yard bawling, "Next four out!" and in a moment the whole establishment was thrown into commotion.

I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved and was beloved; and therefore, instead of driving oflF at once, I remained at the Inn door when the fugitives drove up. A bright- eyed fellow, muffled in a mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost overthrew me. He turned to apologise, and, by Heaven, it was Edwin!

"Charley!" said he, recoiling. "Gracious powers, what do you do here.^"

"Edwin," said I, recoiling, "gracious powers, what do you do here.?" I struck my forehead as I said it, and an insupportable blaze of light seemed to shoot before my eyes.

He hurried me into the little parlour (always 1 [94]

THE HOLLY TREE INN

kept with a slow fire in it and no poker), where posting company waited while their horses were putting to, and, shutting the door, said:

"Charley, forgive me!"

''Edwin!" I returned. ''Was this well ? TMien I loved her so dearly! \Mien I had garnered up my heart so long!" I could say no more.

He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel observation, that he had not thought I should have taken it so much to heart.

I looked at him. I reproached him no more. But I looked at him.

"My dear, dear Charley," said he, "don't think ill of me, I beseech you! I know you have a right to my utmost confidence, and, believe me, you have ever had it until now. I abhor secrecy. Its meanness is intolerable to me. But I and my dear girl have observed it for your sake."

He and his dear girl! It steeled me.

"You have observed it for my sake, sir .?" said I,

wondering how his frank face could face it out so.

"Yes! — and Angela's," said he.

[95]

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I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labouring humming-top. "Explain yourself," said I, holding on by one hand to an arm-chair.

"Dear old darling Charley!" returned Edwin, in his cordial manner, "consider! When you were going on so happily with Angela, why should I compromise you with the old gentleman by mak- ing you a party to our engagement, and (after he had declined my proposals) to our secret inten- tion.? Surely it was better that you should be able honourably to say, *He never took counsel with me, never told me, never breathed a word of it.' If Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favour and support she could — God bless her for a precious creature and a priceless wife ! — I couldn't help that. Neither I nor Emmeline ever told her, any more than we told you. And for the same good reason, Charley; trust me, for the same good reason, and no other upon earth!"

Emmeline was Angela's cousin. Lived with [96]

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her. Had been brought up with her. Was her father's ward. Had property.

**Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin!" said I, embracing him with the greatest affection.

"My good fellow!" said he, "do you suppose I should be going to Gretna Green without her.?"

I ran out with Edwin, I opened the chaise door, I took Emmeline in my arms, I folded her to my heart. She was wrapped in soft white fur, like the snowy landscape: but was warm, and young, and lovely. I put their leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a five-pound note apiece, I cheered them as they drove away, I drove the other way myself as hard as I could pelt.

I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight back to London, and I married Angela. I have never until this time, even to her, disclosed the secret of my character, and the mistrust and the mistaken journey into which it led me. When she, and they, and our eight children and their seven — I mean Edwin's and Emmeline's whose eldest girl is old enough

[97]

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now to wear white for herself, and to look very like her mother in it — come to read these pages, as of course they will, I shall hardly fail to be found out at last. Never mind! I can bear it. I began at the Holly-Tree, by idle accident, to associate the Christmas-time of year with human interest, and with some inquiry into, and some care for, the lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded. I hope that I am none the worse for it, and that no one near me or afar off is the worse for it. And I say. May the green Holly- Tree flourish, striking its roots deep into our Eng- lish ground, and having its germinating qualities carried by the birds of Heaven all over the world! LOfCo

[98]

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, ward- robes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at

[103]

A CHRISTMAS TREE

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 en- chanted 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 daz- zling 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 collec-

[104]

A CHRISTMAS TREE

tion 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 adorn- ments 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 con- sider, 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

[105]

A CHRISTMAS TREE

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 him- self 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

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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 card- board 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 in- tolerable ? 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 insup- portable, like the mask. Was it the immovability

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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 recon- ciled me to it. No drummers, from whom pro- ceeded 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 com- position, 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, '*0 I know it's coming! O the mask!"

I never wondered what the dear old donkey [108]

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with the panniers — there he is I was made of, then I 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 uncere- moniously 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

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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 clat- tering over one another, each developing a dif- ferent 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 bedroom, elegantly furnished, and best of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plenti- ful assortment of diminutive utensils — oh, the warming-pan ! — and a tin man-cook in profile,

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who was always going to fry two fish. WTiat Bar- mecide 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, inadver- tently 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-

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tools, how thick the books begin to hang. Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and with delieiously 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 versatilitv, 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

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come upon me as I gaze up at him; and I debate within myself whether there was more than one Jack (which I am loath 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 Christ- mas 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

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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,

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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 Vigier's son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook after he

was set down in his drawers at the gate of Damas-

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cus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blindfold.

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 Com- mander 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 ghoul, could only peck by grains, because of her nightly feasts in the burial-

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place. My very rocking-horse, — there he is, with his nostrils turned completely inside-out, in- dicative 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 awake 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, cower- ing among the leaves — it may be born of turkey,

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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 dawn- ing; and the oppression of a weight of remorse.

And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights [118]

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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 Mon- targis 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 sas- sigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my remem- brance fresh and unfading, overtopping all pos- sible 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

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George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that

|i ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for it

i! that he ought to have been let off. Comes swift

I to comfort me, the Pantomime — stupendous

t Phenomonen! — when clowns are shot from loaded

I mortars into the great chandelier, bright constella-

IJ tion that it is; when Harlequins, covered all over

i with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like

;| amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it

I no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my

I I grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, i{

j| and cries "Here's somebody coming!" or taxes

li the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I

j| sawed you do it!" when Everything is capable,

11 with the greatest ease, of being changed into Any-

thing; 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

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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 go§s 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 sug- gestive 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

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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, speak- ing to a group of shepherds in a field ; some travel- lers, 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, teach- ing 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,

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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,

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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 oppos- ing 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 tramp- ling 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,

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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 tapestr}'. We

don't like the portrait of a cavalier in green, over

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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 par- ticular accommodation. But, we are not a super- stitious 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 fit- fully 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

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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!" Mier 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

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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 ser- vant (nothing ever haunts him) and the shining sun. Well! we make a wretched breakfast, and all the company say we look queer. After break- fast, 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 cava- lier 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

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we died (we are dead now) to many responsible people.

There is no end to the old houses, with resound- ing 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 grand- father 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

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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 mid- night 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 inno- cently 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 re- plied, "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

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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 com- pact 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 hav- ing progressed in life, and taken diverging paths

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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, terri- fied, into the hall to her father, saying, **Oh, dear

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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

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wife, exclaiming, "Good Heaven! It's my cousin Harry, from Bombay!" put spurs to his horse, i

which was suddenly in a profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange behaviour, dashed :

round to the front of his house. There, he saw ;i

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, j jl 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 '

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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 sur- prised; but she was a woman of remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed herself and went

down-stairs, and closeted herself with her brother.

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''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 succes- sion, 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,

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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 compara- tively 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 knowl-

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edge 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,

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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 merri- ment, 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 commemora- tion of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!"

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