To the myriad hearts below;
But that deep sleep still hung heavy
On the sleeper's thoughtful brow.
To her quiet face the dream-light
Had a lingering glory given;
But the child herself was keeping
Her Christmas-day in Heaven!
What Christmas Is In The Company Of John Doe. By Charles Dickens.
I have kept (among a store of jovial, genial, heart-stirring returns of the season) some very dismal Christmasses. I have kept Christmas in Constantinople, at a horrible Pera hotel, where I attempted the manufacture of a plum-pudding from the maccaroni-soup they served me for dinner, mingled with some Zante currants, and a box of figs I had brought from Smyrna; and where I sat, until very late at night, endeavoring to persuade myself that it was cold and “Christmassy” (though it wasn't), drinking Levant wine, and listening to the howling of the dogs outside, mingled with the clank of a portable fire-engine, which some soldiers were carrying to one of those extensive conflagrations which never happen in Constantinople oftener than three times a day. I have kept Christmas on board a Boulogne packet, in company with a basin, several despair-stricken females, and a damp steward; who, to all our inquiries whether we should be “in soon,” had the one unvarying answer of “pretty near,” to give. I have kept Christmas, when a boy, at a French boarding-school, where they gave me nothing but lentils and bouilli for dinner, on the auspicious day itself. I have kept Christmas by the bed-side of a sick friend, and wished him the compliments of the season in his physic-bottles (had they contained another six months' life, poor soul!) I have kept Christmas at rich men's tables, where I have been uncomfortable; and once in a cobbler's shop, where I was excessively convivial. I have spent one Christmas in prison. Start not, urbane reader! I was not sent there for larceny, nor for misdemeanor: but for debt.