ep-drawn breathing of precious sleep, that drowns all
cares. The youth lying there could sleep, and die, and forget! but he
himself must keep awake, and live, and wander!

Upon the face of Hans a smile was playing; he was dreaming! Did he see
the long-sought Paradise? He saw in his dream a house with snow-covered
gable and little windows; a small house, closely encircled by other
houses, a garden in front. In a room inside sat his parents round a
cheerful fire. The spinning-wheel whizzed, and the cat purred in comfort
in front of the fire. Softly there fell, now and again, a needle from
the Christmas-tree. A resinous, pine-tree odor filled the room. From the
next house a clear, maiden's voice was singing the old, old Christmas
carol,--

"A rose has bloomed
From a tender root,
Our fathers have sung:
Out of Jesse it came."

And the crackling of the fire, the whizzing of the spinning-wheel, and
the maiden's song seemed to the dreamer fairer than a thousand Edens. An
indescribable homesickness overcame him.

When he awoke, the east was radiant with the blush of morning. He sprang
up and seized his staff. Scales seemed to fall from his eyes. "Home,
home!" a thousand voices seemed to echo within him.

But up the mountains, outlined by the red of the morn, he saw the old
man wandering on his comfortless path.

_A Yarn Spun by a Yankee._

"A white-haired, thin-visaged, weather-worn old gentleman in a
blue, Quaker-cut coat."

_Hawthorne._

A TALE OF A TURKEY.

I.

The shutters of a little spur of warehouses which breaks out into
mountainous stores and open valleys of streets around the corner, but
which itself overlooks no fairer view than a narrow, muddy alley of a
thoroughfare scarcely broad enough to admit two drays abreast, and, by
actual measurement,--taken with persistent diligence by the adjacent
office boys,--just two running-jumps from gutter to gutter; the shutters
of this, in its own eyes, important little trade centre, were up, and a
great clattering they had made in getting up on a clear, tingling night
before Christmas, eighteen hundred and--no matter what.

The porters had come out in their faded greatcoats, bandaged right and
left in woolly mufflers, and more than usually clumsy in padded gloves,
and had been bitten and tossed about by the wind with such unbecoming
violence that even a porter felt it necessary to hurry and bustle.
Taking the shutters by assault