the neighbor’s pigs and hens out of I ever saw.  If its increase was small its temptations were smaller, and that is no little recommendation in this world of temptations.  But, as a general thing, everything has grown, except our house.  That little cottage, over which Polly presides with grace enough to adorn a palace, is still small outside and smaller inside; and if it has an air of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms are cozy and sunny by day and cheerful by night, and it is bursting with books, and not unattractive with modest pictures on the walls, which we think do well enough until my uncle—­(but never mind my uncle, now),—­and if, in the long winter evenings, when the largest lamp is lit, and the chestnuts glow in embers, and the kid turns on the spit, and the house-plants are green and flowering, and the ivy glistens in the firelight, and Polly sits with that contented, far-away look in her eyes that I like to see, her fingers busy upon one of those cruel mysteries which have delighted the sex since Penelope, and I read in one of my fascinating law-books, or perhaps regale ourselves with a taste of Montaigne,—­if all this is true, there are times when the cottage seems small; though I can never find that Polly thinks so, except when she sometimes says that she does not know where she should bestow her uncle in it, if he should suddenly come back from India.

There it is, again.  I sometimes think that my wife believes her uncle in India to be as large as two ordinary men; and if her ideas of him are any gauge of the reality, there is no place in the town large enough for him except the Town Hall.  She probably expects him to come with his bungalow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and his elephants, and his retinue of servants, and his principalities, and his powers, and his ha—­(no, not that), and his chowchow, and his—­I scarcely know what besides.

Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking cold night, a placid, calm, swingeing cold night.

Out-doors had gone into a general state of crystallization.  The snow-fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on, and lay sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy, and all the crystals on the trees and bushes hung glistening, as if ready, at a breath of air, to break out into metallic ringing, like a million silver joy-bells.  I mentioned the conceit to Polly, as we stood at the window, and she said it reminded her of Jean Paul.  She is a woman of most remarkable discernment.

Christmas is a great festival at our house in a small way.  Among the many delightful customs we did not inherit from our Pilgrim Fathers, there is none so pleasant as that of giving presents at this season.  It is the most exciting time of the year.  No one is too rich to receive something, and no one too poor to give a trifle.  And in the act of giving and receiving these tokens of regard, all the world is kin for once, and brighter for this transient glow