the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire--where
we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty
daughter have retired, after laying down a fresh store of wood upon
the hearth, and setting forth on the small table such supper-cheer
as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine--
where the reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after
another, like so many peals of sullen thunder--and where, about the
small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of divers
supernatural mysteries. Legion is the name of the haunted German
students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the
schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off
the footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally
blows open. Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our
Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all
down the boughs!

Among the later toys and fancies hanging there--as idle often and
less pure--be the images once associated with the sweet old Waits,
the softened music in the night, ever unalterable! Encircled by the
social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of
my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and
suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested
above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World! A
moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark
to me as yet, and let me look once more! I know there are blank
spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and
smiled; from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the
raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow's Son; and God is good! If
Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O
may I, with a grey head, turn a child's heart to that figure yet,