s; but it will be
true.

It's a merry Christmas, this Twenty-fifth of December, eighteen hundred
and eighty-seven,--a very merry Christmas; times have scarcely changed
at all in the last thirty years. The sun shines down brightly, and the
frosty air is fall of gladness; for Santa Claus, with his untold
wonders, has come and gone. Ecstasies over dolls and transports over
tea-sets, screams of delight at hobby-horses and enthusiastic
exclamations at humming-tops, have passed. Paint-boxes and
writing-desks, leaden soldiers and tin trumpets, at last, are reduced to
blissful matters of course. The streets, which all the morning have
been thronged with laughing groups of happy children, are now almost
deserted. Senators and cabmen, ministers of state and town constables,
romping school-girls and worn-out actresses, _Lady Dedlock_ and her
washer-woman, men, women, and children of all degrees, have quietly
seated themselves to roasted turkey and plum-pudding. Even the little
boys who _will_ play marbles under the library windows, who are
constantly being "fat" and wanting "ups" and "roundings," and who are
invariably ordered to "knuckle down and bore it hard," are now intently
occupied with the succulent delights of "drum-sticks" and gizzards. And
yet the man whose fingers now form these letters _then_ sits alone. Time
has not passed lightly over _his_ head. The few hairs that straggle from
beneath his skull-cap are gray, and the faintest breath makes him wrap
closer in his thickly-wadded dressing-gown. His face is worn and pale,
and the wrinkled hand, though it only holds a little cigarette, will
sometimes tremble as it moves. The Christmas dinner is pushed away
untasted. _Chateau-Margaux_ has lost its flavor, and silver and crystal
do not bring appetite now. Even the glowing sunshine, which plate-glass
and silk damask cannot keep out, is unheeded. He gazes wearily at the
magnificent furniture, and smokes. He has talked much to the world, and
it has heard him. Flung into life without a friend, governed only by
the will of a race born to command, he has struggled through sneers and
sarcasm to eminence. Men fear him now, women flatter, nearly all envy;
yet he is alone. He knows this; he knows that in all the laughing groups
who enjoy this wine-drinking and turkey-eating day his name has not been
mentioned once. Nature allows no trifling with her laws; flowers do not
bloom in deserts. He has crushed sentiment; he has stifled affec