Polly: A Christmas Recollection

POLLY
IN UNIFORM STYLE —————
Each, small quarto, $1.00

The young man found it necessary to lean over and throw a steadying arm around her.
A CHRISTMAS RECOLLECTION BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE ILLUSTRATED BY A. CASTAIGNE
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK, 1897
Copyright, 1894, by Charles Scribner's Sons TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK

Get out of the room, you drunken vagabond! he roared.
Torm was deeply offended. He made a low, grand bow, and with as much dignity as his unsteady condition would admit, marched very statelily from the room, and passing out through the dining-room, where he stopped to abstract only one more drink from the long, heavy, cut-glass decanter on the sideboard, meandered to his house in the back-yard, where he proceeded to talk religion to Charity, his wife, as he always did when he was particularly drunk. He was expounding the vision of the golden candlestick, and the bowl and seven lamps and two olive-trees, when he fell asleep.
The roarer, as has been said, was the Colonel; the meanderer was Drinkwater Torm. The Colonel gave him the name, because, he said, if he were to drink water once he would die.