CHAPTER XXVIII.
Ding-dong bell! ding-dong bell! The Christmas bells are ringing.
Christmas has come--Christmas as it appears on a Christmas card, white and hard, and beset with puffed-out, ruffled robins.

Only Nature is wise enough not to express the ironical wish that we may have a "merry one." For myself, I have but small opinion of Christmas as a time of jollity.
Solemn--_blessed_, if you will--but no, not jovial.

At no time do the dead so clamor to be remembered.

Even those that went a long time ago, the regret for whose departure has settled down to a tender, almost pleasant pain; whom at other times we go nigh to forget; even they cry out loud, "Think of us!" When all the family is gathered, when the fire burns quick and clear, and the church-bells ring out grave and sweet, neither will _they_ be left out.

But, on the other hand, to one who has paid his bills, and in whose family Death's cannon have as yet made no breaches, I do not see why it may not be a season of moderate, placid content.
Festivity! jollity! _never!_ I have paid my bills, and there are no gaps among my people.