The Oil And Wine Of Merry Meeting.

The Dance, Like Most Dances After Supper, Was A Merry One; Some Of The Older Folks Joined In It, And The Squire Himself Figured Down Several Couple With A Partner, With Whom He Affirmed He Had Danced At Every Christmas For Nearly Half A Century.

A Father May Turn His Back On His Child, Brothers And Sisters May Become Inveterate Enemies, Husbands May Desert Their Wives, Wives Their Husbands. But A Mother's Love Endures Through All.

There Is Nothing In England That Exercises A More Delightful Spell Over My Imagination Than The Lingerings Of The Holiday Customs And Rural Games Of Former Times. They Recall The Pictures My Fancy Used To Draw In The May Morning Of Life, When As Yet I Only Knew The World Through Books, And Believed It To Be All That Poets Had Painted It; And They Bring With Them The Flavour Of Those Honest Days Of Yore, In Which, Perhaps With Equal Fallacy, I Am Apt To Think The World Was More Home-bred, Social, And Joyous Than At Present.

Some Minds Seem Almost To Create Themselves, Springing Up Under Every Disadvantage And Working Their Solitary But Irresistible Way Through A Thousand Obstacles.

It Was The Policy Of The Good Old Gentleman To Make His Children Feel That Home Was The Happiest Place In The World; And I Value This Delicious Home-feeling As One Of The Choicest Gifts A Parent Can Bestow.