1830.] My Christmas Dinner ! 135 



and rounds of beef. I wandered about like Lear I had given up all ! 

 I felt myself grated against the world like a nutmeg. It grew dark . 

 I sustained a still gloomier shock. Every chance seemed to have ex- 

 pired, and every body seemed to have a delightful engagement for the 

 next day. I alone was disengaged I felt like the Last Man ! To-mor- 

 row appeared to have already commenced its career ; mankind had 

 anticipated the future ; " and coming mince-pies cast their shadows 

 before." 



In this state of desolation and dismay I called I could not help it- 

 at the house to which I had so fondly anticipated an invitation and a 

 welcome. My protest must here however be recorded, that though I 

 called in the hope of being asked, it was my fixed determination not to 

 avail myself of so protracted a piece of politeness. No : my triumph 

 would have been to have annihilated them with an engagement made in 

 September, payable three months after date, With these feelings I gave 

 an agitated knock they were stoning the plums, and did not imme- 

 diately attend. I rung how unlike a dinner bell it sounded ! A girl 

 at length made her appearance, and, with a mouthful of citron, informed 

 me that the family had gone to spend their Christmas-eve in Portland- 

 place. I rushed down the steps, I hardly knew whither. My first im- 

 pulse was to go to some wharf and inquire what vessels were starting 

 for America. But it was a cold night I went home and threw myself 

 on my miserable couch. In other words, I went to bed. 



I dozed and dreamed away the hours till daybreak. Sometimes I 

 fancied myself seated in a roaring circle, roasting chestnuts at a blazing 

 log; at others, that I had fallen into the Serpentine while skaiting, 

 and that the Humane Society were piling upon me a Pelion, or rather a 

 Vesuvius of blankets. I awoke a little refreshed. Alas ! it was the 

 twenty-fifth of the month it was Christmas-day ! Let the reader, if 

 he possess the imagination of Milton, conceive my sensations. 



I swallowed an atom of dry toast nothing could calm the fever of my 

 soul. I stirred the fire and read Zimmerman alternately. Even reason 

 the last remedy one has recourse to in such cases came at length to 

 my relief : I argued myself into a philosophic fit. But, unluckily, just 

 as the Lethean tide within me was at its height, my landlady broke in 

 upon my lethargy, and chased away by a single word all the little sprites 

 and pleasures that were acting as my physicians, and prescribing balm 

 for my wounds. She paid me the usual compliments, and then " Do 

 you dine at home to-day, Sir ?" abruptly inquired she. Here was a 

 question. No Spanish inquisitor ever inflicted such' complete dismay 

 in so short a sentence. Had she given me a Sphynx to expound, a 

 Gordian tangle to untwist ; had she set me a lesson in algebra, or asked 

 me the way to Brobdignag ; had she desired me to sliew her the North 

 Pole, or the meaning of a melodrama ; any or all of these I might have 

 accomplished. But to request me to define my dinner* to inquire into 

 its latitude to compel me to fathom that sea of appetite which 

 I now felt rushing through my frame to ask me to dive into futurity, 

 and become the prophet of pies and preserves ! My heart died within 

 me at the impossibility of a reply. 



She had repeated the question before I could collect my senses around 

 me. Then, for the first time, it occurred to me that, in the event of my 

 having no engagement abroad, my landlady meant to invite me ! 

 " There will at least be the two daughters," I whispered to myself; " and 

 after all, Lucy Matthews is a charming girl, and touches the harp divinely. 



