The song might have been intended in compliment to
the fair Julia, for so I found his partner was called,
or it might not; she, however, was certainly unconscious
of any such application, for she never looked at the
singer, but kept her eyes cast upon the floor.
Her face was suffused, it is true, with a beautiful
blush, and there was a gentle heaving of the bosom,
but all that was doubtless caused by the exercise
of the dance; indeed, so great was her indifference,
that she was amusing herself with plucking to pieces
a choice bouquet of hothouse flowers, and by the time
the song was concluded, the nosegay lay in ruins on
the floor.
The party now broke up for the night with the kind-hearted
old custom of shaking hands. As I passed through
the hall, on the way to my chamber, the dying embers
of the Yule-clog still sent forth a dusky glow; and
had it not been the season when “no spirit dares
stir abroad,” I should have been half tempted
to steal from my room at midnight, and peep whether
the fairies might not be at their revels about the
hearth.
My chamber was in the old part of the mansion, the
ponderous furniture of which might have been fabricated
in the days of the giants. The room was panelled
with cornices of heavy carved work, in which flowers
and grotesque faces were strangely intermingled; and
a row of black looking portraits stared mournfully
at me from the walls. The bed was of rich though
faded damask, with a lofty tester, and stood in a niche
opposite a bow window. I had scarcely got into
bed when a strain of music seemed to break forth in
the air just below the window. I listened, and
found it proceeded from a band, which I concluded
to be the waits from some neighbouring village.
They went round the house, playing under the windows.
I drew aside the curtains, to hear them more distinctly.
The moonbeams fell through the upper part of the casement,
partially lighting up the antiquated apartment.
The sounds, as they receded, became more soft and
aerial, and seemed to accord with quiet and moonlight.
I listened and listened—they became more
and more tender and remote, and, as they gradually
died away, my head sank upon the pillow and I fell
asleep.
Christmas Day
Dark and dull night, flie hence away,
And give the honour to this day That Sees
December turn’d to May. . . .
. . . . . Why does the chilling
winter’s morne Smile like a field beset
with corn? Or smell like to a meade new-shorne,
Thus on the sudden?—Come and see The
cause why things thus fragrant be.
—Herrick.
When I awoke the next morning, it seemed as if all
the events of the preceding evening had been a dream,
and nothing but the identity of the ancient chamber
convinced me of their reality. While I lay musing
on my pillow, I heard the sound of little feet pattering
outside of the door, and a whispering consultation.
Presently a choir of small voices chanted forth an
old Christmas carol, the burden of which was:
