For years and years now I have watched the seasons come and go around Dreamthorp, and each in its turn interests me as if I saw it for the first time.  But the other week it seems that I saw the grain ripen; then by day a motley crew of reapers were in the fields, and at night a big red moon looked down upon the stocks of oats and barley; then in mighty wains the plenteous harvest came swaying home, leaving a largess on the roads for every bird; then the round, yellow, comfortable-looking stacks stood around the farm-houses, hiding them to the chimneys; then the woods reddened, the beech hedges became russet, and every puff of wind made rustle the withered leaves; then the sunset came before the early dark, and in the east lay banks of bleak pink vapour, which are ever a prophecy of cold; then out of a low dingy heaven came all day, thick and silent, the whirling snow,—­and so by exquisite succession of sight and sound have I been taken from the top of the year to the bottom of it, from midsummer, with its unreaped harvests, to the night on which I am sitting here—­Christmas, 1862.

Sitting here, I incontinently find myself holding a levee of departed Christmas nights.  Silently, and without special call, into my study of imagination come these apparitions, clad in snowy mantles, brooched and gemmed with frosts.  Their numbers I do not care to count, for I know they are the numbers of my years.  The visages of two or three are sad enough, but on the whole ’tis a congregation of jolly ghosts.  The nostrils of my memory are assailed by a faint odour of plum-pudding and burnt brandy.  I hear a sound as of light music, a whisk of women’s dresses whirled round in dance, a click as of glasses pledged by friends.  Before one of these apparitions is a mound, as of a new-made grave, on which the snow is lying.  I know, I know!  Drape thyself not in white like the others, but in mourning stole of crape; and instead of dance music, let there haunt around thee the service for the dead!  I know that sprig of Mistletoe, O Spirit in the midst!  Under it I swung the girl I loved—­girl no more now than I am a boy—­and kissed her spite of blush and pretty shriek.  And thee, too, with fragrant trencher in hand, over which blue tongues of flame are playing, do I know—­most ancient apparition of them all.  I remember thy reigning night.  Back to very days of childhood am I taken by the ghostly raisins simmering in a ghostly brandy flame.  Where now the merry boys and girls that thrust their fingers in thy blaze?  And now, when I think of it, thee also would I drape in black raiment, around thee also would I make the burial service murmur.