We remained for some moments silent. Absorbed in the story, we had left the candles unsnuffed, the fire had sunk low in the grate, and the gloomy appearance of the now shadowy room, in unison with the melancholy expression of my companion's countenance, was calculated to increase the effect produced by his remarkable narrative; and so far from offering any remark upon what I had heard, I sat in silent wonderment looking at him, bewildered and astonished. Was he labouring under some strange hallucination? Was all that I had been listening to but the offspring of some vivid dream? A dream it could not be; there were circumstances connected with his narrative which showed such supposition to be ungrounded. There was, indeed, an appearance of fearful reality about it. I was about to interrogate him further on the subject, when he rose from his seat to bid me good night. "I drive before breakfast to Cambridge," he said, "and therefore tomorrow shall not see you; probably we may not meet again for some time. I do not wish the account I have given you to-night to be repeated to others; but to one person, beside yourself, have I ever related the circumstance; nor should I have been induced to communicate it to you, had it not been to show you, that the ridicule which you cast upon the faith which believes in spiritual visitations, is unjust. Having done so, I have only to request that you will never again mention the circumstance as connected with me, for I assure you that I suffer enough without having to endure the inquiries of an unfeeling curiosity which would, in such case, beset me." "You may rely upon me," I replied, whilst returning the cordial grasp of his hand. "That which I have heard from you this night will, at all events, cause me to be more guarded for the future in my remarks upon such matters, and if I cannot begin to believe, will cease to ridicule. Good night." I soon after retired to my bed, and for long I lay cogitating on, and recalling the incidents of the strange narrative I had been listening to, and the cock had thrice done salutation to the morn ere I fell asleep, dreaming a strange medley, in which ghosts, goblins, and my late companion, conspicuously figured. Having given the story as it was related to me, I must leave the reader to form his own conclusions. Whether or not the spirit seer had been deceived by a dream, I will not attempt to decide. All that I can add is, that although desirous of again seeing the narrator, to have further conversation on the subject with him, we have never since met. He is, I believe, however, still on the "road," and, I have no doubt, he smiles with something akin to scorn whenever he listens to one, as he listened to me, speaking irreverently and contemptuously of all believers in visits from the spirit world. 29 CHRISTMAS. BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS. Fill the bright goblet, spread the festive board; If the loud laugh disguise convulsive throe, “AUNT, dear aunt, it only wants a few days to Christmas; I am so glad! Do, pray, pray let us have a merry one. It is my FIRST in England, remember; and mamma told me, before I left India, how delightful you used to make them." "Did she? Did your mamma actually allude to our FORMER happy Christmases?" Oh! many, many times, and with such regret, that she cried bitterly when speaking of them; and more particularly, when describing your amiable assiduity, your indefatigable exertions on those occasions-she sobbed like a child then, aunt, she did indeed." "Was your father present then?" "Oh, no! and if he ever happened to enter the room, she would change the subject instantly, and smile, as if she had not been so sorrowful just previously. I suppose she did not wish him to know she regretted her dear home, as he was obliged to reside abroad. Poor mamma! she often cried; generally about Christmas time the most, however; so do, there is a sweet, kind aunt, let me see what there really is in YOUR Christmases, to cause my far-away mother to deplore the loss of them so sadly." What a train of melancholy reflections did this simple request awaken in my mind! How rapidly did memory review the past! How boldly, in the brilliant foreground of the present, stood forth the images, long buried beneath the ruins of oblivion! How again, for the moment, I became light-hearted and hopeful; how again, loving and trustful! How frequently had I anticipated Christmas with equal sanguine enthusiasmhow frequently had I entreated that it might be a merry one-how frequently had I found it so! But now, but now, for the woful difference! Still, as I gazed with inexpressible emotion on the upraised and beaming face of my young niece, radiant in the glowing light of a newly-stirred fire, and eloquent in the strongly appealing expectation it is so barbarous to disappoint, I determined that my own secret and vainly-fostered sorrow should not mar her pleasure; I resolved that she should find the approaching season as joyous as she anticipated, if in MY power to render it so. Her time will assuredly arrive too, I thought, when that now bounding heart will be down-weighed by the anguish of the remembrance, that for her joy hath departed from the earth; for to each is a due portion of suffering most righteously meted out by that unerring Hand which steadily balances the scales of human destiny, to make us wise unto salvation by affliction! Yet, yet, compel her not to grieve on the spring-dawn of existence; check not her spirit's flight into the cloudless skies of girlhood's brief horizon; its buoyant wings will all too soon be beaten and battered by the tempest-blast of the winter-storm of womanhood, and be folded over a bosom tried to the uttermost, but still, O God! purified by trial! What, however, to that giddy child of thirteen would be the startling pictures I could draw of that desolation which doth truly desolate? How could she be convinced, in her glorious hopefulness, of the despair which maketh this world a charnel-house indeed? How could she, with her heart brimful of gladness, be made to feel, or even comprehend, the vast void the immense emptiness, which time, treachery, and death have created in mine the hollow grave-pits, over which not even the sands of the desert sweep, to level them for the next simoon of agony to lay waste? How could she school that laughing eye, familiar only with the beauty and brightness of the present, to behold, as in a vision, a vision of the grim future, the pale and sheeted of the tomb, occupying, like the ghosts of multiplied Banquos, the vacant places at the festive-board, on the Christmas-day they were wont to hail with a solemn delight, at those annual family gatherings, which enfold in the uniting embrace of fraternal love the wide-scattered and the missed? How could she bring her thoughts, wandering in the pursuit of happiness, to pause in their mid-career, to meditate on that period when they will only ponder on, only long for the Divine invitation, "Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest ?" How could she consider it aught save the most egregious exaggeration, to be assured that the heart now so odorous, so adorned with the blooming and fragrant flowers of hope, will ere long be only perfumed, only embellished by the rank and verdant luxuriance of the sepulchre? No, no, no! far from me be the cruel design to blight the buds of promise ere they blow! Far from me be the unkind attempt to allow the chill of my heart to fall cold upon hers, to nip its expanding flowers in the ratheness of their bloom! She shall have a merry Christmas; such a Christmas as is meet for youth and innocence, assisted by all its lovely emblems of joyous dance, lively song, and mistletoe-bush; and once more I will endeavour to smile with them that smile-nay, I WILL smile, for shall I not have reason, broken in spirit although I am, in being permitted by a benign Providence still to minister to the felicity of others; still in having their confidence, that I CAN render them happy, it being but the most culpable indulgence of selfishness after all to allow regret for the dead to make us indifferent to the pleasures of the living; or suffer the active duties yet incumbent on us so long as we remain below, to yield to the passive anguish for those it has pleased the Almighty to remove above, it seeming, by so doing, "to sorrow without hope for those who sleep?" Far be from me the ungenerous idea of seizing on the peculiar, the hallowed season of universal Christian festivity, to grieve the more visibly and intensely in the presence of the young and inexperienced, rendering them sorrowful from sympathy, and not from suffering; for, to the aged and reflective, no particular period need be set apart for mourning, each day being but the anniversary of some funereal woe, some death-severings, some heart-offerings to God, of earth's most priceless treasuresHe demanding and exacting the morning and evening sacrifice of the very firstlings of the flock of our most cherished affections-the precious kindred-the hoarded hopes-the garnered love-the cultivated talentsthe years we would fain retain, yet which "perish as a tale that is told." In the soft breath of spring-the balmy zephyr of summer-in the plaintive sigh of autumn-and in the hyperborean blast of winter, mingles the iterated cadence of the requiem-hymn of some inurned felicitysome departed hope-some buried illusion, trusted in to the last as a sacred reality. Yet, yet, in mercy is our heart so robbed, our soul so stripped, to wean us from a scene which we could not otherwise quit without a more than mortal pang. How ready am I "to go hence and be no more seen!" How do I long to lay down the burden of life, and rest from my labours! How do I thirst for the living waters to quench the fever of disappointment, and allay the ragings of despair! How do I long-yet, nevertheless, "Thy will and not mine be done, O Lord!" Thou hast afflicted, but still sustained; thou hast bowed, but not broken the poor fragile reed, swayed to and fro by the winds of Thy wrath; for Thou didst temper that wind to my feebleness, and lifted my head above the tempest; making me feel its power, that I might learn to "remember my Creator in the days of my youth." And how necessary was the lesson, alas! How arrogant I was in my glorious happiness! How did I forget, that where "much is given, MUCH also is required!" How did I live only for myself, my love, my hopes, and how were they all taken from me, leaving me solitary as a childless widow in my desolation! Nothing could be happier than my early home; nothing brighter than the opening of my existence; nothing more full of promise than the noon of my womanhood. Blest with kind and gentle parents, who could AFFORD time to be affectionate, from the ease and affluence of their circumstances; I, and an only sister, grew up together without one thought, one care, one difference of feeling or opinion, until we reached the respective ages of seventeen and eighteen-Jessie being only one year younger than myself-when, as was natural, we formed attachments, which rather diverted our attention from each other, yet without creating either rivalry or jealousy; and, for once," the course of true love" did, indeed, appear to "run smooth;" the objects which inspired our affections seemed so every way worthy of them, that not one human being suggested a single objection, imagined a shadow of opposition; all, on the contrary, were enraptured with the prospect of our certain happiness. Jessie's intended was the clergyman of our native village; a young man of profound learning, and profounder humility; handsome, amiable, and warm-hearted to the last degree. Mine was in the army, but apparently equally as amiable, and I knew him to be as handsome and devoted to me as Charles Leslie was to my sister. After a year, that glided away as a day, so sweetly tranquil was its unruffled current, it was fixed that we should both be married on the week following the Christmas we were preparing to celebrate with our accustomed joyfulness. The relatives, near and remote, of the two bridegrooms arrived in due time; our wedding-dresses, and my travelling ones, came from London, as I and my husband were to leave for India soon after the important event, while Jessie was only to remove to the parsonage. All was bustle, flutter, congratulation, and bashful and anxious delight throughout the whole household. My mother thought of my departure, and then she would kiss me and weep; and then she remembered that her younger darling would abide by her still, and then she would kiss her and smile; kiss her more fervently, smile more radiantly, for the gloom that my going cast over her spirit. On the Christmas morning-the LAST I, at least, was to spend at home, in England, perhaps, for years to come-Mr. Leslie walked over from the parsonage, as was agreed on the overnight, to escort Jessie to church; Mr. Graham, my lover, staying in the house with us, my mother wishing that all so dear to her should assemble together around the sacramental table on that day. 22 Breakfast had long been announced, but still we did not care to commence it, for Jessie had not yet left her room. Twice my mother rose up to go and see what detained her, and yet, without knowing why, sank again into her chair, with a pallid cheek and fainting heart; then I essayed to move, but my limbs trembled so, I could not stir from the table, beneath which my knees were knocking together convulsively. What was this mysterious, this intuitive instinct of dread, which pervaded the heart an instant before so totally ignorant of fear? What was it which sealed every lip in silent consternation-tied the tongue so voluble a moment previously, in the trifling details which so interest the unincumbered mind? Could it be because a spoiled and petted girl had overslept herself? No, no; oh! no, it was not Jessie's absence alone which occasioned this painful confusion; Mr. Graham was also missing from the circle. Suspense becoming intolerable to my mother, and awakening a fretful impatience in my father, I volunteered to go in quest of the fugitives, that is, to get away from all those eyes, reading as it were my too terrible suspicions. I reached Jessie's room, as I thought alone; I paused at the door, not to listen, my own heart's beat preventing that, but to gain a moment's respite to nerve myself for the trial-to steel my soul for the truth. "Open the door; for the love of mercy, Alice, open the door; shemust be ill," exclaimed Charles Leslie, who had, with the whole group, followed me up-stairs. I DID,-and was scarcely surprised to find it perfectly untenanted as we hurried into the room. "Hush! she sleeps," said the deluded Charles, seeing the windowblinds yet drawn down. "Sweet be thy morning dreams my innocent love! Let us go away. Softly! angels are watching over her now!" "She sleeps not-has not slept this night; see, the bed has never been disturbed, the pillow pressed by her cheek." 66 "O my God! my God! what CAN it mean?" cried the distracted young man. "What can it mean, indeed? Why, that she is gone, and Graham is her companion, Leslie !" "Gone! Gone where? Gone for what?" "For disgrace, perhaps; or, at all events, for repentance.” "Oh! oh! oh!" This was no idle surmise, no rash conjecture. Jessie was gone-gone without making a sign-gone, without one word of farewell-one word of remorse. Not a vestige remained to tell of the recent presence of the lovely and the lost; all, all was heartlessly carried away by her; all, all save only the half-faded bouquet she had worn on the preceding evening, which, lying crushed and trampled on at the foot of the dressing-table, caught the eye of Charles, who snatched it up with the desperate eagerness of one who has found "hid treasure," and resolved to retain his prize; for he thrust it far, far into his bosom, and placed his hand over it with a solemn and affecting care. My mother stood stunned, and looking on abstractedly, like one not particularly interested in the tragic scene. My father, who had returned from Graham's room, bowed his head in sorrowful shame; for he had found it also VACANT. And I, and I, the most oppressed, the most injured, sought, however, to arouse that dreaming mother, sought to comfort and encourage that abashed father, sought to console that outraged and stricken lover; but they were insensible to this great effort of self-abnegationungrateful for this almost divine attempt to speak peace to others with a |