East is for foreigners, in order that they may be used at election-time.
As for you, an American boy, why don't you go to h-- I mean to the West.
_Go West_, young man! Buy a good, stout farming outfit, two or three
serviceable horses, or mules, a portable house made in sections, a few
cattle, a case of fever medicine--and then go out to the far West upon
Government-land. You'd better go to one of the hotels for to-night, and
then purchase Mr. GREELEY'S 'What I Know About Farming,' and start as
soon as the snow permits in the morning. Here are ten cents for you.
Merry Christmas!"--Thus to honor the natal Festival of Him--the
Unselfish incarnate, the Divinely insighted--Who said unto the
lip-server: Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the Poor, and follow
Me; and from Whom the lip-server, having great possessions, went away
exceeding sorrowful!

Three men are to meet at dinner in the Bumsteadian apartments on this
Christmas Eve. How has each one passed the day?

MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, in his room in Gospeler's Gulch, reads Southern
tragedies in an old copy of the _New Orleans Picayune,_ until two
o'clock, when he hastily tears up all his soiled paper collars, packs a
few things into a travelling satchel, and, with the latter slung over
his shoulder, and a Kehoe's Indian club in his right hand, is met in the
hall by his tutor, the Gospeler.

"What are you doing with that club, Mr. MONTGOMERY?" asks the Reverend
OCTAVIUS, hastily stepping back into a corner.

"I've bought it to exercise with in the open air," answers the young
Southerner, playfully denting the wall just over his tutor's head with
it "After this dinner with Mr. DROOD, at BUMSTEAD'S, I reckon I shall