nbounded beer. I kept New Year's day in company with a pretty cousin with
glossy black hair, who was to have dined with me on Christmas-day, and who
took such pity on me that she shortly became Mrs. Prupper. Our eldest boy
was born, by a curious coincidence, next Christmas-day--which I kept very
jovially, with the doctor, after it was all over, and we _didn't_ christen
him Whitecross.

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS, AS WE GROW OLDER. BY CHARLES DICKENS.

Time was, with most of us, when Christmas-day encircling all our limited
world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound
together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped every
thing and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture
shining in our bright young eyes, complete.

Time came, perhaps, all so soon! when our thoughts overleaped that narrow
boundary; when there was some one (very dear, we thought then, very
beautiful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to the fullness of our
happiness; when we were wanting too (or we thought so, which did just as
well) at the Christmas hearth by which that some one sat; and when we
intertwined with every wreath and garland of our life that some one's
name.

That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have long
arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in the palest edges of
the rainbow! That was the time for the beatified enjoyment of the things
that were to be, and never were, and yet the things that were so real in
our resolute hope that it would be hard to say, now, what realities
achieved since, have been stronger!

What! Did that Christmas never really come when we and the priceless pearl
who was our young choice were received, after the happiest of totally
impossible marriages, by the two united families previously at
daggers-drawn on our account? When brothers and sisters in law who had
always been rather cool to us before our relationship was effected,
perfectly doted on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us with
unlimited incomes? Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten, after
which we arose, and generously and eloquently rendered honor to our late
rival, present in the company, then and there exchanging friendship and
forgiveness, and founding an attachment, not to be surpassed in Greek or
Roman story, which subsisted until death? Has that same rival long ceased
to care for that same priceless pearl, and married for money