FullReads

Now I know that the idea of dulness or discomfort at Christmas is a very improper one, particularly in a story. We all know how every little boy in a story-book spends the Christmas holidays. First, there is the large hamper of good things sent by grandpapa, which is as inexhaustible as Fortunatus’s purse, and contains everything, from a Norfolk turkey to grapes from the grandpaternal vinery. There is the friend who gives a guinea to each member of the family, and sees who will spend it best. There are the godpapas and godmammas, who might almost be fairy sponsors from the number of expensive gifts that they bring upon the scene. The uncles and aunts are also liberal.

One night is devoted to a magic-lantern (which has a perfect focus), another to the pantomime, a third to a celebrated conjurer, a fourth to a Christmas tree and juvenile ball.

The happy youth makes himself sufficiently ill with plum-pudding, to testify to the reader how good it was, and how much there was of it; but recovers in time to fall a victim to the negus and trifle at supper for the same reason. He is neither fatigued with late hours, nor surfeited with sweets; or if he is, we do not hear of it.

But as this is a strictly candid history, I will at once confess the truth, on behalf of my hero and his brothers and sisters. They had spent the morning in decorating the old church, in pricking holly about the house, and in making a mistletoe bush. Then in the afternoon they had tasted the Christmas soup, and seen it given out; they had put a finishing touch to the snowman by crowning him with holly, and had dragged the yule-logs home from the carpenter’s. And now, the early tea being over, Paterfamilias had gone to finish his sermon for to-morrow; his friend was shut up in his room; and Materfamilias was in hers, with one of those painful headaches which even Christmas will not always keep away. So the ten children were left to amuse themselves, and they found it rather a difficult matter.

“Here’s a nice Christmas!” said our hero. He had turned his youngest brother out of the arm-chair, and was now lying in it with his legs over the side. “Here’s a nice Christmas! A fellow might just as well be at school. I wonder what Adolphus Brown would think of being cooped up with a lot of children like this! It’s his party to-night, and he’s to have champagne and ices. I wish I were an only son.”

“Thank you,” said a chorus of voices from the floor. They were all sprawling about on the hearth-rug, pushing and struggling like so many kittens in a sack, and every now and then with a grumbled remonstrance:–

“Don’t, Jack! you’re treading on me.”

“You needn’t take all the fire, Tom.”

“Keep your legs to yourself, Benjamin.”

“It wasn’t I,” etc., with occasionally the feebler cry of a small sister,–

“Oh! you boys are so rough.”

“And what are you girls, I wonder?” inquired the proprietor of the arm-chair, with cutting irony. “Whiney piney, whiney piney. I wish there were no such things as brothers and sisters!”

“You wish WHAT?” said a voice from the shadow by the door, as deep and impressive as that of the ghost in Hamlet.

The ten sprang up; but when the figure came into the firelight, they saw that it was no ghost, but Paterfamilias’s old college friend, who spent most of his time abroad, and who, having no home or relatives of his own, had come to spend Christmas at his friend’s vicarage. “You wish what?” he repeated.

“Well, brothers and sisters are a bore,” was the reply. “One or two would be all very well; but just look, here are ten of us; and it just spoils everything. Whatever one does, the rest must do; whatever there is, the rest must share; whereas, if a fellow was an only son, he would have the whole–and by all the rules of arithmetic, one is better than a tenth.”