women smile upon, that envy scandalizes. to Reade, and "bummers" according to It is a mystery. It is alone. It has no Jonathan. There is the vermin of forests bosom friend. It has all the world for its and the vermin of cities, and they all have acquaintance. It goes everywhere. It their mysterious uses. That they may not does everything. It knows everybody. It multiply and become intolerable, Nature is always calm, self-possessed, observant; invents checks for them, checks of wolf and and it cares for nobody. So it says, at least, ant-eater, and man supplements Nature with and nobody suspects that beneath its tightly checks of trap and gun. And so the world buttoned frock-coat there beats a wounded wags, and the balances are maintained. heart. Thackeray should have remembered the counterpoises there are in London journalism against Superfine Reviews, and then he would not have been tempted to make some people think he had been stung by a hornet instead of only being tickled by a fly. It is a figure not to be forgotten, and I often wonder what London will look like when it is gone. I know it is a remarkable and impressive figure, for I catch glimpses of it every day in the reflecting glass of the shopwindows of Bond Street, and people turn round to look at the "something peculiar" in its gait and manner. It is I. That figure is your humble servant, and its name is Digby Spencer Ward. With which declaration we will drop the neuter gender, and come to personality and to the familiar style of autobiography. I venture to call myself a man of sentiment; for it does not seem to me that such a description is incompatible with the broader one of a man of the world. The most practical people under the sun, the English, have a strong sentimental and romantic side to their character. Mystery thrives under clouded skies. Ossian had a dark background for his weird yet gorgeous processions. Sir Walter Scott met with the noblest sentiments in the most benighted people; and it may be that here, in London, our sombre skies have something to do with the fact that this metropolis is a city of romance, a jumble of all that is strange and wonderful, a world of passion, a world of pain, a world of delight. And what a battlefield it is, when one considers how many men are fighting for the bit of ground upon which some other warrior stands! When one remembers how few are the prizes in life, how many the blanks, the result should be a large toleration for the little meannesses and the great acts of injustice which are experiences not confined to the present writer. Thackeray had his critical pest in the shape of The Superfine Review, and showed himself a mere ordinary mortal in resenting the attentions of so small an insect. Uncle Toby found the world large enough for the blue-bottle and himself, and The Superfine Review has as much right to live as Thackeray had, and as much right to exercise its functions. There are land rats and water rats. There are "skunks," according 66 At It is a good thing when you can look at your annoyances and troubles from a distance. I stand now apart from the time of my great defeat, some twenty years; and though she (it is always she whether we are happy or miserable in this life) is what they call a leader, and a beauty in what they call Society, I look down, as it were, from a height upon her. It may be that we are destined to come near to each other again, for she has, metaphysically speaking, beckoned me more than once of late. present I am on the tower of Utrecht, at the top of St. Peter's, on the dome of St. Paul's, on the observatory platform down town" in New York, so far as she and that once-blazing passion are concerned. I look down upon the panoramas of houses and trees and rivers; and there are little black specks moving about the streets and garden paths. It is a fine rebuke to human vanity to stand upon a high tower, or to look at a great city from a hollow, and to note how distance not only levels all ranks, but reduces all men to the apparent proportions of insects that a thunderstorm may sweep away in the space of a few minutes. But if the smallest living speck in Nature under the scientist's microscope is seen to be marvellously and wonderfully made, how much may we expect to have our investigations rewarded when we come down from our leaning tower of Pisa, our monument of Fish Street Hill, our balloon over Paris, to follow Asmodeus into the unroofed houses of the great city, and listen to the revelations of the chronicler who has the gift of invisibility straight from a magician not inferior to Le Diable Boiteaux, inspired by a city compared to which Madrid is a mere village, and who shall not wake you at last out of a dream, but leave you standing in the midst of a great pulsating reality. I will be your mentor, your Asmodeus, your Prince of Arabian Nights and Days, but with this advantage, that in having me for your guide, philosopher, and friend, you shall have a flesh-and-blood companion, with whom you can sympathize, a man of opinions, sentiments, feelings; a man who dares to be a man, a man who is taller than his fellows, a man who has seen the world, mark you, a man who knows it through and through; yet so much a mortal of clay that he deems it with the poet better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. My new hero, it will be noted, is a little hard on a certain journal. I wish it were not so, because I desired that everything should be pleasant in this article, and indeed in this Annual, from title-page to "Finis." But once start a hero with opinions, and you never know what he may say. We may learn at some later time that he has reason to be personally annoyed with The Superfine, or that his acerbity comes from a sympathetic admiration of Thackeray's genius and power. Meanwhile, I must apologize to the great weekly for him. Later on when he comes out to challenge criticism, depend upon it, like the Jew at the Lyceum, some one will seek to be revenged. No man, not even in fiction, may stab a critic with impunity. Possibly my friend of the new romance is willing to take the consequences of his rash and wild assault. We shall see at a future day. I decline to be responsible for his vagaries. May the sweet amenities of the time induce The Superfine teachers to forgive him! For how many Christmases I have hovered over the idea of an old-fashioned ghost story I may hardly undertake to say. "The Good Old Days; a Christmas Story with a Ghost in It!" How pleasantly and easily the introductory passages frame themselves. Chapter the First, which Introduces the Rest," for example : 66 : fascinate the intellect of finance and empty the pockets of fools. Turks and Egyptians were not borrowing in English markets, though they were occasionally objects of Christian attentions, which they have since returned without interest. The stage Irishman and the typical North-countryman had not yet shown Virtue her own bright image and shamed Vice into a corner. Mr. William Shakespeare had not flung broadcast ten thousand apples of discord to afflict mankind with endless controversies, and found a school of acting that struts and mouths and calls a child a "cheyld." The shorthand writer was waiting to be born with the Press, and Lord Coleridge and the Lord Chief Justice had not fired every other counsel and judge in the land with the desire to address law courts for fourteen days at a stretch. There were no perambulators, no Parisian modistes, no necessity for co-operative stores, no commission agents, no middlemen, no clerical magistrates, no School Board beadles, no game laws, no tickets-of-leave, no traders on charity, no Irish patriots, no deposit banks, no societies for clothing the Hottentots. As I said before, it was the good old days. The zodiac was in perfect order. Not a Christian man had heard of the vagaries of the Gulf Stream. May-day brought its flowers and its festivals to the moment by the record of the strictest sun-dial. At Easter there were gammons of bacon all over the land, and Easter hunts even in the warren of Staines forest. The red man roamed at will in the undreamt-of forests of the New World. The dusky Indian had no master but his untamed will. The wild boar and the wolf challenged the hunter's powers in English woods. The eagle sat in solemn state on the white cliffs of Dover. There were omens. The owl shrieked, the night crow crowed, the raven flapped his wings, death bells were heard at sea; your grandfather, clad in armour as he lived, walked out of his ancient picture frame; and once in a way some weird and witched tree would spout fire from its shrunken boughs. Night was night and day was day. You rose with the lark, you rested when the sun went down to shine on lands not yet weighed, and mapped, and colonized. Knives and forks were unknown implements; and when a prince struck his wife he hit her with his mailed hand, and none could say There were no tax collectors; no London cries; no Christmas bills; no lawyers to set men by the ears; no telegrams to shorten your holidays; no newspapers to chronicle your shortcomings; no gunpowder barges to blow you up in your sleep; no steam launches to run you down when you sailed in your shallop by the reed-margined river; no cynics to sneer at Christmas customs or question the reality of Christmas ghosts. In short, it was the good old days. "Limited Liability" was not yet created to him nay. There was a wonderful reality about everything in the good old days. If rest from City toils, but hath his chequewrath and vengeance were earnest passions,so book handy, with plate of gold and jewels. were love and faith. Chivalry had its limits, rare. The warder at the castle gate is but it swore by my halidom, and clenched drugged and sleepeth, and all the house its iron fist, and quaffed its foaming beaker, is dreaming of the fête day on the morand wore its lady's glove in its casque, row. Let us sally forth and enrich ourand when it was thrust from its horse by selves with spoil, and live a life of ease lance or axe it lay struggling on its iron amidst the rich man's unancestral timber. back unable to rise and fight again. Maiden- At Christmas there shall be renewals of the hood and intrigue had pleasant times and brave old past. The bells shall ring across sad, working strange devices in tapestry, the snow. The torch shall light up the ambling on bell-decked steeds, listening to skaters as they skim the ice-bound river. minstrel lays, and making love. It Open house to all; the yule-log blazing was always leap-year in the good old on the hearth, the boar's head smoking on days. The man was engaged in the the board. We will invite Mr. Toole down romantic business of heroism; in return the from London, and all his merry companions. woman offered the tribute of her admiration | They shall enact a comedy unto us and make and love. Marriage being her object, she us joyful with jest and song. And when the asked for the knightly hand in wedlock; and wassail bowl hath circulated well about there are instances of feudal romance where the board, and Night sleeps in her deepest the hero was abducted by the heroine. Talk shadows, then we will change the farce to of the liberty of woman in the nineteenth tragedy. We will ask Mr. Irving to be our century, not even Mr. Forsyth claims for the guest and recite to us the legend of the sex such mighty privileges as the right to "Bells ;" and the choir boys from the Chapel woo and not be wooed-the custom to ask Royal shall chant a Christmas madrigal bewhom she listeth in marriage. Imagine a neath the grey old towers; and we will talk bashful bachelor-capitalist being accosted of Scrooge and Marley, and the ghosts of on his way to the City by some pretty girl, undiscovered murders, and the midnight who of course loves him for the beauties horrors that beset the beds of the richest of his mind, the grace of his person, forc- men in England who decline to share their ing him into some convenient church, and money with the indolent poor. Come on, going home with him a married man. my lads of the moon! The helmeted officer Modern society has not sufficient strength of the night is lying in wait for the Boniface of character to permit a social change like who closeth not his house at the lawthis; but men were men in the good old appointed time, or making daring capture days. Their heads were hard; their of some helpless inebriate. Forward brave hearts were soft. They knew how to hearts, while the watchman is engaged elsereceive the homage of a lovely woman, and where-on to wealth and happiness in the when to take the pretty hand she offered, fashion of the olden days, singing beneath and when to box the pretty ears if the full your breath the pirate lays of Gilbert in his blue eyes wandered after metal more tuneful minstrel's most delightful measures! attractive. Hurrah for the good old days! If you were insolvent you did not fall into the hands of the Jews; they fell into yours. Under pressure they brought forth their gold and silver, for they were rich from time immemorial. In the local absence of the dear old ill-treated race, you sallied forth on your gallant steed, attended by your faithful followers, and seized upon your neighbour's castle; and having cut off the tyrant's head, you made merry with his wine, ate his venison pasty, carried off his prettiest women and returned to receive the caresses of your household. Brave old days! Come on, my merry men, I know a castle by the Thames with wealth galore. The owner taketh And now, gentle patient reader, you are in a proper state of mind for story-telling. Stir the fire, then, and let us talk of direful tragedies and of sheeted ghosts. Wheel round your easy chair, and let us recall other winter evenings that have been cheered by Grimm and Andersen, by Scott and Hawthorne, by Scheherazade and by Dickens. Are all the children of the household here? For this is their own especial time, this festival of Christmas. Their eager faces and listening eyes shall help you to conjure up again your own young life, and bring to the Christmas story the Christmas interest of its golden prime. Ah! those sweet past days! Those days of innocence and peace! Those days of your first love, your first tender passion! How one looks into the fire at Christmas, to picture there the never-to-beforgotten faces, with a vague wonder if we shall meet them in that other world beyond the mountains of Pisgah! It is well with you if you can live again in the hopes and fears and simple joys of the children whom the Master looked on with tender eyes, bidding his disciples suffer them to come unto Him, "for of such is the kingdom of heaven!" Tell you a story? Bless you, I have none to tell. But you shall turn over these pages, and find here more than mere suggestions of tragedy and romance, of love and hate, of comedy and pleasant days. And it shall go hard with you if you cannot, of your own volition, sit in the ingle-nook and make some stories for yourself, stories of might-havebeens and stories that have come to pass. Surely it is good, this halting-place on life's journey, where in youth we desire to pause and count up our treasures in the present and to come; where in old age we pause only to look back; for the voices that may be still all the other long months of the year speak to us again at Christmas-time from the vacant chairs. Even the most prosaic of mortals have stories to tell that need be no tax on the imagination, sitting by the Christmas fire. The reality of them needs no inspiration of Fancy. It is memory only that needs awakening, and the mistletoe has a key to almost every secret storehouse of the mind; for, cynic though you may have become with experience of many years, Christmas was good to you in your youth. One of the falsities of the present day is to decry sentiment. But let us not, you and I who sit by the fire to have this gossip of the shop, enter into controversy. It has been wisely said that "every man who would have peace must be content to let the world go on in its folly." Under the pressure of earnest advisers, who desired him to correct the abuses of the Church, Leo X. pointed to a crucifix and exclaimed, “Behold the fate of Reformers!" What a story that was to write, the history of His life and mission, with its tragic end on Calvary! It is an antidote to one's own sorrows, at this time, sitting by vacant chairs, to remember His cross and passion. And when you and I sit down to coin our imagination into romance of love and war or every-day life, let us not forget the responsibility that this great lesson lays upon our work. So shall the world be the better for our fables; and when our last Christmas comes, we shall lay aside the pen without regretting a word it has written, or a thought it may unconsciously have furnished with wings for a flight through the everlasting ages. I'm sitting alone at my window, SONG. Could they feel but my heart's full beating, Could they know how my pulses burn,Their coldness would warm to pity; 'They would stay in their flight and turn, And bring me one sweet, fond message But still as I sit at my window They hover unheeding by. Their breath but the night-wind's sigh. CHAPTER I. "Maman!—oh, mon père !-venez quick It is a child's clear treble voice that rings through the night, affrighted itself, terrifying to those that hear. "There's Claire at her tricks again. Upon my word, it's too bad to have one's rest broken by her silly dreams like this." It is Claire's mother who utters this complaint in a sleepy and querulous tone, and then, with an impatient sigh, she turns over on her side again to continue her slumbers. Claire's father has heard all, but he says nothing: presently he slips out of bed hastily, noiselessly, wraps himself in his dressing-gown and steals quietly over the uncarpeted floor to the small chamber adjoining. It is more like a cupboard than a room, and what space there is, is occupied by the cot in which a golden-haired child is kneeling, her hands clasped in entreaty, her large dark eyes wide open, in evident alarm. “Oh, my father!" she cries, flinging herself into the eagerly extended arms of him who enters. "Tell me-pray, tell me— what it is ce vieux monsieur commands me to do now?" Her language is the prettiest mixture of pure French and broken English. The mother she fears is English, the father she adores is French. "Little one, my poor little one!" he says soothingly; and, for greater comfort, he lifts her out of her bed and folds her closely in his arms. "You believe your poor little Claire, do you not, my father?" she questions eagerly. "It is not fancies-it is not caprice. It is all true-quite true. I have seen a lady with the old gentleman this time, and she had diamonds, shining sparkling jewels, on her neck and her arms. Indeed, she was more grand, but not as pretty, as the queen in the opera. "It is the theatre that fills her poor little | head with these fancies, of course; she really must not go again," mutters Claire's father anxiously; and then he wonders who will look after the child while her mother is attending the choral rehearsals at the opera, and he is engaged at his business. Will you be tranquil now? will you go to sleep nicely, my darling ?" he asks, kissing the little face, which is still blanched with fear. "I cannot go to sleep until I have told you all, my father," she says. "If you know it, I shall be at rest; but if you will not hear it, then I must think, think about it all the night long, and when you take the candle away I can sleep never more." "Allons!" he says smilingly, and far more interested than he wishes her to know. "Ce vieux monsieur came to my bed again, father; he stood there where you stand now, and he said: 'Viens !'" Does he always speak French, child ?" "Always," she answers promptly. "And he wears a fine white wig, a hat with three corners and gold upon it, and a great star shining upon his velvet coat, here on his heart. It is just like the star the nobil signor wore in the opera. And he has a face, very old and very white; but his black eyes looked kind-kind and triste, you know; and when he said 'Come!' I felt afraid Maman would scold me, and still I did go." She pauses, and lays a caressing hand upon her father's face. "When one is asleep, father, and in what you call a dream, one does things which one would not do when one is awake and sage— is it not?" She looks anxiously into his face. "And where did you go, Claire ?" he asks gravely. He is much impressed by the solemnity of the small narrator. "Ce vieux monsieur led me through many streets which I have not seen before--streets so full of people. I think they were angry people; they looked wild, and they shouted and screamed. Many of the men wore red caps on their heads, and the women had big B |