any
would have lacked a military man, had the Captain been absent, for there
was Cowed, the meek Bermondsey tanner, by livery a hatter, and withal a
soldier--a member of the Hon. Artillery Company,--he who sang about God
blessing the old cow's hide, and a

"Wish that his soul in heaven might dwell,
Who first invented the leather bottel;"

--and, Mrs. Brown's brother, Mr. Barthe Brick, familiarly known as _the_
"Brick," who had just commenced a song, a parody upon Fra
Diavolo,--a something very, very low, supposed to be sung by a dealer in
hearth-stones; who, at the end of each verse, vociferates "who'll buy,"
heightening the illusion by trundling a chair, on its back, round the
family circle, to represent a barrow.

No one knows where the barbarous atrocities would have ended, and all
before the refined strangers, too, had not the olive-branches--disposed
for rest by their several mammas in the room above--all awoke at once,
tumbled out of bed, and joined in a combined cry; this breaks the family
circle--mothers fly to pack their turbulent innocents for travel; the
candles flare, and carriages clatter, grinding the flints in the lane.
John, the footman, finds he has a dozen half-crowns, and Mary seven. The
last fly has departed with the little Bricks; lights appear and
disappear in the bed-chambers; and the Christmas-day--that comes but
once a year--has vanished, like a dream!

Mr. Brown has jotted the events, in his Diary, in a hand scarcely
legible. It must have been penned in a somnambulistic fit--thinking he
was at a meeting of St. Stiff's vestry, in the union board-room,--for,
after a list of member's present (the names of his guests), Captain de
Camp in the chair, follow these minutes of proceedings:--Firstly, that
one Spohf be dismissed as organist of St. Stiff's, confined in the
idiot-ward, fed on water gruel, and handed over to his own parish
(Vienna); proposed by Latimer, and seconded by Wellesley de Camp. The
second proposition appears to be to the effect that a vagrant named
Brick, dealer in hearth-stones, be confined in the refractory-ward, and
fed upon bread and water.

The morning after the festivities London oversleeps itself:--and,
awaking, finds it boxing-day. Variegated dips are being disseminated
among delighted, dirty, juveniles; whilst the boys seem chagrined at
notices for "the extinction of abuses," or "suppression of
Christmas-boxes;" which seems only to make them the more pertinacious