oth of
the mercurial age, and therefore good to do errands. Harry was in front
somewhere flanked in like wise, and the other children lay in
miscellaneously between, like sardines when you have first opened the
box I had invited Lycidas, because, besides being my best friend, he is
the best fellow in the world, and so deserves the best Christmas eve can
give him. Under the full moon, on the still white snow, with sixteen
children at the happiest, and with the blessed memories of the best the
world has ever had, there can be nothing better than two or three such
hours.

"First, driver, out on Commonwealth Avenue. That will tone down the
horses. Stop on the left after you have passed Fairfield Street." So we
dashed up to the front of Haliburton's palace, where he was keeping his
first Christmas tide. And the children, whom Harry had hushed down for a
square or two, broke forth with good full voice under his strong lead in

"Shepherd of tender sheep,"

singing with all that unconscious pathos with which children do sing,
and starting the tears in your eyes in the midst of your gladness. The
instant the horses' bells stopped their voices began. In an instant more
we saw Haliburton and Anna run to the window and pull up the shades, and
in a minute more faces at all the windows. And so the children sung
through Clement's old hymn. Little did Clement think of bells and snow,
as he taught it in his Sunday school there in Alexandria. But perhaps
to-day, as they pin up the laurels and the palm in the chapel at
Alexandria, they are humming the words, not thinking of Clement more
than he thought of us. As the children closed with

"Swell the triumphant song
To Christ, our King."

Haliburton came running out, and begged me to bring them in. But I told
him, "No," as soon as I could hush their shouts of "Merry Christmas";
that we had a long journey before us, and must not alight by the way.
And the children broke out with

"Hail to the night,
Hail to the day,"

rather a favorite,--quicker and more to the childish taste perhaps than
the other,--and with another "Merry Christmas" we were off again.

Off, the length of Commonwealth Avenue, to where it crosses the
Brookline branch of the Mill-Dam, dashing along with the gayest of the
sleighing-parties as we came back into town, up Chestnut Street, through
Louisburg Square; ran the sleigh into a bank on the slope of Pinckney
Street in front of Walter's house;