oo cold to stay there
any longer. The church clock struck--_ting-tang, ting-tang_--in the
frosty air.... A quarter past! The New Year had been with us all the
while. It was our German-made kitchen clock had stopped.

We laughed aloud because the strain was relaxed; then bolted the door
and began putting away the supper things.

"If anybody wants to make me a New Year's Gift," said Tony, "they can
gie me a thousand a year."

"And then yu'd be done for," I said. "Yu cuden' stand a life o' nort to
du. Nor cude I. We'm both in the same box, Tony. We've both got only
our strength and skill and health, and if that fails, then we'm done.
We'm our own stock-in-trade, and if we fail ourselves, then we've both
got only the workhouse or the road."

"Iss," said Mam Widger, "an' I don' know but what yu'm worse off than
Tony. He _cude_ get somebody to work his boats--for a time. An' I cude
work. But afore yu comes to the workhouse yu jest walk along thees way,
an' if us got ort to eat yu shall hae some o'it."

"Be damn'd if yu shan't!" said Tony. (I was putting away the pepper-pot
at the moment). "Us 'ouldn't never let thee starve, not if us had it
ourselves for to give 'ee."

* * * * *

So there 'tis. I'd wish to do the same for him, that he knows. How much
the spirit of such an offer can mean, only those who have been without
a home can understand fully. This New Year's Day has been happier than
most. Life has made me a New Year's Gift so good that I cannot free
myself from a suspicion of its being too good.

It has given me home.

X

POSTSCRIPT

SEACOMBE.

I am often asked why I have forsaken the society of educated people,
and have made my home among 'rough uneducated' people, in a poor man's
house. The briefest answer is, that it is good to live among those who,
on the whole, are one's superiors.

It is pointed out with considerable care what ill effects such a life
has, or is likely to have, upon a man. It is looked upon as a kind of
relapse. But to settle down in a poor man's house is by no means to
adopt a way of life that is less trouble. On the contrary, it is more
trouble.

It is true that most of what schoolmasters call one's accomplishments
have to be dropped. One cannot keep up everything anywhere.

It is true that one goes to the theatre less and reads less. Life,
lived with a will, is play eno