ept no albums; they are really as pretty
as cousins can be; and when violent hands, with white kid gloves, are
laid on one, it is sometimes difficult to effect an escape with becoming
elegance. I could not, however, give up my darling hope of a pleasanter
prospect. They fought with me in fifty engagements--that I pretended to
have made. I showed them the Court Guide, with ten names
obliterated--being those of persons who had _not_ asked me to mince-meat
and mistletoe; and I ultimately gained my cause by quartering the
remains of an infectious fever on the sensitive fears of my aunt, and by
dividing a rheumatism and a sprained ankle between my sympathetic
cousins.

As soon as they were gone, I walked out, sauntering involuntarily in
the direction of the only house in which I felt I could spend a "happy"
Christmas. As I approached, a porter brought a large hamper to the door.
"A present from the country," thought I, "yes, they _do_ dine at home;
they must ask me; they know that I am in town." Immediately afterward a
servant issued with a letter; he took the nearest way to my lodgings,
and I hurried back by another street to receive the so-much-wished-for
invitation. I was in a state of delirious delight.

I arrived--but there was no letter. I sat down to wait, in a spirit of
calmer enjoyment than I had experienced for some days; and in less than
half an hour a note was brought to me. At length, the desired despatch
had come; it seemed written on the leaf of a lily with a pen dipped in
dew. I opened it--and had nearly fainted with disappointment. It was
from a stock-broker, who begins an anecdote of Mr. Rothschild before
dinner, and finishes it with the fourth bottle--and who makes his eight
children stay up to supper and snap-dragon. In macadamizing a stray
stone in one of his periodical puddings, I once lost a tooth, and with
it an heiress of some reputation. I wrote a most irritable apology, and
despatched my warmest regards in a whirlwind.

December the twenty-fourth--I began to count the hours, and uttered many
poetical things about the wings of Time. Alack! no letter came;--yes, I
received a note from a distinguished dramatist, requesting the honor,
etc. But I was too cunning for this, and practiced wisdom for once. I
happened to reflect that his pantomime was to make its appearance on the
night after, and that his object was to perpetrate the whole programme
upon me. Regret that I could not have the pleasure of me