With the deep gloom of the Beyond is wed,
And I, unanswered, sit within and brood,
And thou, Old Year, art silent—Thou art dead!"
When the chaplain finished his reading, my boy, I told him that he must excuse the party for going to sleep, as they were really very tired.
On New Year's day, my boy, the General of the Mackerel Brigade desired me to make a few calls with him; and appeared at my lodgings in a confirmed state of kid gloves, which he bought for the express purpose of making a joke.
"A happy New Year to you, my Duke of Wellington," says I. "You look as frisky as a spring lamb."
Immediately a look of intense meaning came over his Corinthian face, and he remarked, with awful solemnity:
"Thunder! you might better call me a goat, my Prushian blue, seeing that I've got a couple of kids on hand just now."
The joke was a good article in the glove line, my boy, and I don't think that the general had been studying over it more than four hours before we met.
We made our first call at a house where the ladies were covered with smiles as with a garment; and remarked that the day was fine. The general smiled in return, until his profile reminded me of a cracked tea-pot; and says he: "Ladies, allow me to tender the compliments of the season. In this wine," says he, "which I hold in my hand, I behold the roses of your cheeks when you blush, and the sparkle of your eyes when you laugh. Let us hope that another New Year will find our unhappy country free from her enemies, and the curse of African slavery blotted out of the map."