'I have just left him,' she said. Her colour deepened a little as she spoke. Something in her tones caused him slightly to cloud his brows, as though from a vague perplexity. His face grew somewhat paler, and he took one or two steps nearer to where she stood.

Ah!' suddenly exclaimed Eloise, while turning an abrupt rosy-red. 'I believe you have begun to guess my secret before I've told you a word of it. Here, give me both of your hands.' So speaking she glided up to him, and seized both of his passive hands in both of her own. 'It was all settled to-night. We are engaged to be married, Alfred and I. It seems so funny to call him "Alfred." You like him, do you not? I know you do, by the polite way in which you treat him. But then, everybody must like himI think he has no such incommodity as an enemy, And you're pleased, are you not? Well, if you are, tell me so.' She was shaking each of his hands in an impulsive, intimate manner, while a very full and pretty smile bloomed on her blushing face.

Reginald never remembered afterward how he behaved at this crisis. He believes it most probable that he acquitted himself with decent selfpossession. But the ordeal did not last long, for a little while later Mrs. Ross appeared in the hall, and Eloise, deserting him, ran coyly toward her guardian with the important intelli

gence.

Reginald slipped away after this. He went upstairs into his own room, and, locking the door, threw himself within a chair. An hour passed while he sat thus in the almost utter darkness of his chamber, but it did not seem to him longer than five minutes before he at length rose and struck a light. Looking at his watch, he promptly left the room and went downstairs through the silent house. All the family, including Wallace Willard, had evidently retired for the night; but on reaching the servants'

quarters he found them still occupied, and was enabled to give some low orders to the head groom, with whom he held converse in a certain gloomy passage-way. Then he passed upstairs again to his own room.

He now packed a portmanteau with a few needful articles. An hour or so later he threw himself on the bed, having left his light still burning. He remembered that he ought to leave a few lines to his mother, in some way accounting for his intended departure the next morning. But he was incapable of making the effort that such an act would have required. Besides, he could write on reaching New York. His lamp burned on, and the night grew. But though his eyes often closed, he did not sleep. Sometimes a faint sigh escaped him; sometimes he stared fixedly at the opposite wall for many moments; sometimes he lay with lowered eyelids; sometimes he moved his head in painful restlessness from side to side.

But finally, at a very late, or rather a very early, hour, sleep overmastered him. And during this sleep he was visited by a strange dream-by what many people would, perhaps unhesitatingly, call a vision, holding the old marvel-suggesting word as more pertinent to the present circumstances than any natural physical explanations. He was lying on the lounge in the sittingroom downstairs. The windows were shaded from the outer sunshine; the pale matting, the rugs, the bamboo furniture, the graceful surrounding ornaments, were all dimly evident to him. Presently his mother appeared at his side. 'Does your ankle pain you much now, Reginald?' she tenderly asked, and her hand began to smooth his hair while she spoke. 'No,' he answered; 'not at all.' And then his mother murmured, in the most natural of voices, while he seemed to feel only a vague half-surprise at her words Eloise is coming home this morning, you know, with your brother Julian- - Almost imme

diately after this, his mother vanished, and a loud wailing as of a terrified child struck upon his ear. While he was trying to discover whence the noise proceeded, Beatrice appeared beside him, holding in her hand a handkerchief, deeply stained with bloodmarks. 'Haslitt has shot your dog, Lion, Reginald,' she told him, in very composed tones. I hope you are not angry.' And then he put forward a hand and seized that of Beatrice, and, in his dream, kissed it many times. 'You noble girl' he cried. 'You good, wise, generous, charitable girl!' But as his words ended, a clear-pealing laugh sounded from the further part of the room, and Eloise, dressed in a white muslin dress, with a great pink rose on her bosom, hurried up to him, exclaiming: I'm home earlier than I expected, though I've been nearly frightened to death by that awful thunder-storm. It struck a tree all into splinters only a few yards away from me. Oh! it was horrible!' And now Eloise lowered her voice to the faintest of whispers, and scanned his face with her bright blue eyes, that had somehow turned 'But Julian very gravely serious.

came with me,' she said. He is waiting outside. Shall he come in?'

'Yes,' Reginald answered. 'Mother told me that he had accompanied you. I want to see him. I have not seen him, you know, since we were both five years old.'

And now the room seemed to darken, and neither Beatrice nor Eloise were any longer present. But a voice was speaking somewhere amid the dimness, a clear, resonant, manly voice, and yet like none other that Reginald had ever heard.

'I am here,' the voice said, 'but you cannot see me, for matter may not look on spirit. There are some things hard to explain, Reginald . . . . In truth, what is there which a poor mortal like you may really say that he knows? I cannot tell you why we were parted from each other. . . it was for a reason,

thing if you are incomplete in your life without me, so am I incomplete in my life without you. All your past perplexity, all your weak indecisions, all your abrupt outbursts of fine strength, all, all, are attributable to this. We should have been one; we are two. That tree, which you saw the lightning split in two portions last summer, will, doubtless, put forth leaves and branches from either portion in years to come. But the blessed unity will be wanting to each, which once gave the perfect tree its beautiful equipoise. Had we both lived, we would have been as one man, full of mutual love, help, sympathy. But even then, there would have been many assailing doubts for each of us, as to the special incompleteness and insufficiency of either; and when death, at unequal periods, finally divided us, the anguish, the great sense of loss would have surpassed, for him left, any suffering you have ever yet known.'

For a moment the voice paused, and it now seemed to Reginald, as if the most pitchy darkness surrounded him.

'I must leave you,' the voice recommenced; I have already remained too long... For a spirit like myself to speak of form, is to deal in what means very differently to you and to me. But you will understand me better if I say it thus: Hereafter, when you leave this earth, one form shall cover us, and we shall be one entity. . . Our severed halves shall reunite, our separate fragments shall make one strong, noble and divine union. . . Be patient till then. Be patient and

wait.

With a start, Reginald awoke. The early summer sunshine flooded the room. The lamp burned smokingly on a near table. His packed portmanteau lay close beside the bed. The hard realism of these mute facts brought

'IT

T is indeed the season of regenerated feeling the season for kindling, not merely the fire of hospitality in the hall, but the genial flame of charity in the heart. The scene of early love again rises green to memory beyond the sterile waste of years; and the idea of home, fraught with the fragrance of home-dwelling joys, reanimates the drooping spirit— as the Arabian breeze will sometimes waft the freshness of the distant fields to the weary pilgrim of the desert. Stranger and sojourner as I am in the land-though for me no social hearth may blaze, no hospitable roof throw open its doors, nor the warm grasp of friendship welcome me at the threshhold-yet I feel the influence of the season beaming into my soul from the happy looks of those around me. Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence. He who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow-beings, and sit down darkling and repining in his loneliness when all around is joyful, may have his moments of strong excitement and selfish gratification, but he wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a Merry Christmas.'

It is thus that dear, delightful Washington Irving writes of the feelings engendered by Christmas, and as in our lives each succeeding Christmas comes and goes, we realize more and more fully that the chief delight

Of

of the season is derived from the sight and sense of the happiness of others. To the child, who tries in vain to keep awake to see Santa Claus make his appearance down the chimney; to the boy with longing visions of bats and balls, books, skates, and boxes of tools; to the youth with fresh and glowing aspirations after pleasure, Christmas is a season of innocent selfishness. But to the man, who has done with toys, and who has found that even pleasure will pall, the feeling that every one is doing his best to be happy, or at the very least, to appear happy, constitutes, as Irving says, the charm of a merry Christmas. course there is, as cynics take care to remind us, a certain amount of humbug about Christmas, but I am not so sure that humbug, if it be of the right sort, and not too rampant, is at all times a misfortune. It does no one any harm to be forced to shake an indifferent, or maybe, an uncongenial, acquaintance warmly by the hand, and wish him, with effusive enthusiasm, 'a Merry Christmas and many of them." If he should respond with extra warmth, and if by chance a merry twinkle steal into his eye, it is just possible that we would say as we parted, Really, Jones is not such a bad fellow after all, although he did try to pass off on me that spavined old mare of his.' And Jones, on the other hand, might depart murmuring, 'Well, Robinson is not quite so detestable a curmudgeon as I thought, and it is not his fault if he doesn't know a good horse when he sees one.' And then, as we grow older, the accumulated treasures of memory in

6

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crease, and so sacred are the associations of Christmas, that long years, stirring events and change of clime are powerless even to cast a haze over the brightness of our earliest recollections. We still see the tender, muchloved mother, at whose knee we first learned the sweet story of Christmas, bending over the little cot at the foot of which hangs the tiny stocking ready for Santa Claus-we still remember that, ever kind, ever thoughtful as she was, at Christmas time her care seemed warmer and her love more sacred; we see her once again as she appeared to our childish eyes, a glorified and perfect being, and alas, for some of us, the vision is blotted out by a blinding rush of tears. why recapitulate those sweet and bitter memories which are so familiar to us all? To him who is separated from the home of his youth by a thousand leagues of sea, Christmas is especially dear by reason of these mingled recollections; he can be sure that then at least, he is fondly remembered, and that, amidst all their rejoicings, those he has left behind will feel a pang of tender regret when they think of the absent one. And just in the same way as every individual Englishman feels his heart stirred at Christmas time by yearning thoughts of his childhood's home, so the vast family of Englishmen, whether born in Canada, Australia, or Old England itself, turn at this season instinctively towards the land that they are all proud to call home-the land where Old Christmas finds his warmest welcome, and is most gaily decked out in holly and mistletoe. We none of us need to be prompted either by literature or art in our remembrance of friends, or in our love for Christmas, but it is very pleasant to open one of some few books, which are themselves old friends, and to be gently reminded of the old familiar faces and the old familiar scenesand among such rare books Washington Irving's Sketch Book' deserves a prominent place.

Much as we love every article and story in the Sketch Book, we recur at this time of the year with the greatest affection, to the series of papers on Old Christmas. It appears singular that an American should have written the most delightful account of Christmas that our literature possesses. Irving was, however, imbued with such warm love for his parent country, and for all her old institutions and customs, that he wrote concerning them with equal warmth, and with more truth, than would be possible to a native-born Englishman. Not only in his account of Christmas, but in his papers on 'The Boar's Head Tavern,' on 'London Antiques,' on 'Little Britain,' and in many other instances, he evinces an affection for old customs, which, from his greater familiarity with them, would not be likely to impress an Englishman so deeply. Nothing in England '—he says 'exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination, than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times.' In discoursing of these old customs and games, Irving throws a halo of sentiment around them, which renders his account charming, without in the least depriving it of the accuracy gained by study and observation. The story of his Christmas passed in the country opens with a delightful description of a day's journey by stage-coach. The revolution in our manner of travelling has been so complete, that, although stage-coaches have not been defunct half a century, we accord them all the reverence due to antiquity, and invest their memory with a tinge of sentimental regret. We know that, as a matter of fact, they were often dirty, ill-horsed, and unsafe; that a traveller was compelled either to freeze with cold outside, or to be stifled with bad air inside-and this, in a journey of any length, for four or five days at a stretch; and yet, although these and other cruel facts are patent, we obstinately shut our eyes to them and