"Bless you, no, mum! He jine! I think I see him a-jining! Nothing pleases him. He's too high for any body. I never see the likes of him!"
The feet then ascended the stairs, and after another pause of a few moments, the din of merriment was resumed. I was furious at the sympathy which my loneliness created. I could bear the laughter and shouting of the Christmas party no longer, and once, more with a determination of having my revenge, I went to bed. I lay there for several hours; and did not close my eyes before I had vowed solemnly that I would not pass another Christmas Day in solitude, and in lodgings—and I didn't.
In the course of the following year, I married the lovely daughter of Mr. Sergeant Shuttleface. My angel was a most astonishing piano-forte performer, and copied high art pictures in Berlin wool with marvelous skill, but was curiously ignorant of housekeeping; so, we spent the beginning of our wedded bliss in furnished apartments in order that she might gain experience gradually.
On one point, however, I was resolute; I would not spend a second Christmas Day in lodgings. I took a house, therefore, toward the close of the year, and repeatedly urged my wife to vacate our apartments that we might set up for ourselves. This responsibility she shrunk from with unremitting reluctance. There were besides innumerable delays. Carpets wouldn't fit; painters wouldn't work above one day a week: paper-hangers hung fire; and blacksmiths, charging by the day, did no more than one day's work in six. Time wore on. December came, advanced, and it seemed to be my fate to undergo another Christmas torment. However, to my inexpressible joy, every thing was announced to be in readiness on the twenty-fourth. My sposa had by this time learned enough of housekeeping to feel strong enough for its duties, and on Christmas Eve we left our rooms in Bedford-square, and took our Christmas pudding, in a cab, to my suburban villa near Fulham. And a merry Christmas we made of it! I don't think I ever ate a better pudding, though I have eaten a good many since then.
CRAZED.
BY SYDNEY YENDYS.
"The Spring again hath started on the course
Wherein she seeketh Summer thro' the earth.
I will arise and go upon my way.
It may be that the leaves of Autumn hid
His footsteps from me; it may be the snows.
"He is not dead. There was no funeral;
I wore no weeds. He must be in the Earth,
Oh where is he, that I may come to him
And he may charm the fever of my brain.
"Oh, Spring, I hope that thou wilt be my friend.
Thro' the long weary summer I toiled sore;
Having much sorrow of the envious woods
And groves that burgeoned round me where I came,
And when I would have seen him, shut him in.