THE CHRIST CHURCH CHIMES.
It was a cold winter evening. The chill blast came sweeping from the chain of hills that guard our city on the north, laden with the cold breath of a thousand leagues of ice and snow. There was a sharp, polar glitter in the myriad stars that wheeled on their appointed course through the dark blue heaven, in whose expanse no single cloud was visible. Howling through the icy streets came the strong, wild north wind, tearing in its fierce frenzy the sailcloth awnings into tatters, swinging the public-house signs, and shaking the window shutters, like a bold burglar bent on the perpetration of crime. Then onward, onward it sped over the dark steel-colored bay, and out to the wild, wide, open sea, to do battle with the sails of the stanch barks that were struggling towards a haven.
But within, the good people of Boston were stoutly waging battle against the common enemy on this bitter Christmas eve. In some of the old-fashioned houses at the North End, inhabited by old-fashioned people, the ruddy light that streamed through the parlor windows on the street announced that huge fires of oak and hickory were blazing on the ample hearths. But in far the greater number of dwellings, the less genial, but more powerful anthracite was contending with the wintry elements.
In an upper room of an old, crazy, wooden house, a poor woman, thinly clad, sat sewing beside a rusty, sheet-iron stove, poorly supplied with chips. She had been once eminently handsome, and but for the wanness and hollowness of her face, would have appeared so still.
Two little boys, of eight and nine years of age, were warming themselves, or seeking to warm themselves, at the stove, before retiring to their little bed in a small room adjoining.
"Isn't this nice, mother?" said the younger, a bright, black-eyed boy. "Didn't I get a nice lot of chips to-day?"
"Yes, dearest, you are always a good and industrious boy," said the mother, snatching a moment from her work to imprint a kiss upon his forehead.
"Poor pa' will have a nice fire to warm him when he comes home," said the elder boy.