efs or animosities at a time when every other
countenance is glowing with light, and hope, and sunshine, should be
denied all the charities of humanity, and exiled to Kamschatka, or some
other inhospitable clime, to growl and fret with the wild beasts, or the
wilder elements.

How dear is the light of home when glowing with the fires of Christmas!
What though the elements be wild without, or Jack Frost blow his whistling
pipe at the door, or fierce winds rumble down the chimney, and tell of
sweeping gusts and howling storms abroad, if within and around that
charmed circle is breathed the spirit of kindness and affection! Should
the titled stranger or the ragged beggar knock, throw wide open the doors
of thy hospitality; and while prattling infants recount the joys of the
season, and school-boy striplings pursue their holiday sports, and
gray-haired men who have traversed the wide world over, tell how in all
their wanderings they have never passed a Christmas from home; he will
turn his thoughts with a melancholy pleasure to the distant fireside
beyond the sea, and to the friends who are gathered there, and wonder
where the wanderer is spending his Christmas.

With all respect for the ancient and honorable class of 'old bachelors,'
whose sympathy and good fellowship we most earnestly desire, be it said,
that if to any it is allowed to be miserable at Christmas, it surely is to
them. We would not for the world say aught to heighten the sad picture of
their social desolation, by dwelling on the thousand tender endearments of
home, the ten thousand cords of love, of which they know nothing. Certain
it is, that to many of them 'merrie Christmas' brings only pangs of
remorse; and we have known more than one crusty member of the fraternity,
who on such occasions would rush incontinently from the scene and the
sound of merriment, and shut themselves under lock and key, until the
storm was passed, and people have recovered their lost senses.

Such an one, however, we are proud to say, was _not_ TOM HARDESTY, though
bachelor he was, in the superlative degree. Every body wondered how he
managed to preserve his good-humor and vivacity under the frosts of
three-score winters. At the period of this authentic history, Tom was the
village grocer; a station he had filled to his own profit and the town's
convenience until he had become a piece of village furniture, necessary to
its existence as a corporation. His little store, with its