"and coming mince pies cast their shadows before."

In this state of desolation and dismay, I called--I could not help
it--at the house to which I had so fondly anticipated an invitation, and
a welcome. My protest must here however be recorded, that though I
called in the hope of being asked, it was my fixed determination not to
avail myself of so protracted a piece of politeness. No: my triumph
would have been to have annihilated them with an engagement made in
September, payable three months after date. With these feelings, I gave
an agitated knock--they were stoning the plums, and did not immediately
attend. I rung--how unlike a dinner bell it sounded! A girl at length
made her appearance, and, with a mouthful of citron, informed me that
the family had gone to spend their Christmas Eve in Portland Place. I
rushed down the steps, I hardly knew whither. My first impulse was to go
to some wharf and inquire what vessels were starting for America. But it
was a cold night--I went home and threw myself on my miserable couch. In
other words, I went to bed.

I dozed and dreamed away the hours till day-break. Sometimes I fancied
myself seated in a roaring circle, roasting chestnuts at a blazing log:
at others, that I had fallen into the Serpentine while skating, and that
the Humane Society were piling upon me a Pelion, or rather a Vesuvius
of blankets. I awoke a little refreshed. Alas! it was the twenty-fifth
of the month--It was Christmas Day! Let the reader, if he possess the
imagination of Milton, conceive my sensations.

I swallowed an atom of dry toast--nothing could calm the fever of my
soul. I stirred the fire and read Zimmermann alternately. Even
reason--the last remedy one has recourse to in such cases--came at
length to my relief: I argued myself into a philosophic fit. But,
unluckily, just as the Lethean tide within me was at its height, my
landlady broke in upon my lethargy, and chased away by a single word all
the little sprites and pleasures that were acting as my physicians, and
prescribing balm for my wounds. She paid me the usual compliment, and
then--"Do you dine at home to-day, sir?" abruptly inquired she. Here was
a question. No Spanish inquisitor ever inflicted such complete dismay in
so short a sentence. Had she given me a Sphynx to expound, a Gordian
tangle to untwist; had she set me a lesson in algebra, or asked me the
way to Brobdingnag; had she desired me to show her the North Pole, or
the meaning