What a happy circle gathered around that bountifully-loaded table on that Christmas day! Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, friends and lovers! While the host stood with uplifted hands, asking the Lord to bless and draw all hearts together, an "Amen" found its way out of every answering soul; and the feast went on.

Here we leave them, gentle reader,—bid them all good bye, with a wish and a prayer for their future happiness and success.

[FINIS.]


Transcriber's Notes:

2. Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without comment and consisted primarily of placing or removing missing or incorrectly placed single and double quote marks, end periods, etc..

3. Throughout the text words denoting family or other close relations, "Mother," "Father," "Aunt," "Auntie," "Old Auntie," "Brother," "Sister," "Uncle," "Massa," "Missus" and "Crazy Dimis" were inconsistently capitalized when appearing immediately before a proper name, (_i.e._ aunt Nell and Aunt Cheevers, aunt Vina,) or when standing unmodified as a substitute for a person's name, (_i.e._ "Poor Old Auntie came out from the kitchen," or; "Take me home Mother." or; "Yes Massa"), and have been correctly capitalized in this e-text.

4. SPELLING CORRECTIONS:

5. TYPOGRAPHICAL CORRECTIONS: