"The father soon arrived. The Doctor took him into another room, and after explaining the whole cause of his son's illness, begged him to save the honour of his family and the life of his son. The father, with tears in his eyes, gave him a thousand thanks, said he would step to his banker and bring the money. While the father was gone Dr. Barrowby went to his patient, and told him everything would be settled in a few minutes to his ease and satisfaction; that his father was gone to his banker for the money, and would soon return with peace and forgiveness, and never mention or even think of it more. What is very extraordinary, the Doctor told me that, in a few minutes after he communicated this news to his patient, upon feeling of his pulse, without the help of any medicine, he was quite another creature. The father returned with notes to the amount of L200, which he put into his son's hands. They wept, kissed, embraced. The son soon recovered, and lived to be a very eminent merchant. "Dr. Barrowby never told me the name; but the story he mentioned often in the green-room of Drury Lane Theatre; and after telling it one night when I was standing by, he said to me, 'You have done some good in your profession--more, perhaps, than many a clergyman who preached last Sunday,' for the patient told the Doctor the play raised such horror and contrition in his soul that he would, if it would please God to raise a friend to extricate him out of that distress, dedicate, the rest of his life to religion and virtue. Though I never knew his name or saw him, to my knowledge, I had, for nine or ten years, at my benefit a note sealed up, with ten guineas, and these words--'_A tribute of gratitude from one who was highly obliged, and saved from ruin, by seeing Mr. Ross's performance of Barnwell._'" CHAPTER XXII Profusion of Food at Christ-tide--Old English Fare--Hospitality--Proclamations for People to spend Christ-tide at their Country Places--Roast Beef--Boar's Head--Boar's Head Carol--Custom at Queen's Coll. Oxon.--Brawn--Christmas Pie--Goose Pie--Plum Pudding--Plum Porridge--Anecdotes of Plum Pudding--Large one--Mince Pies--Hackin--Folk-lore--Gifts at Christ-tide--Yule Doughs--Cop-a-loaf--Snap-dragon. If any exception can be taken to Christ-tide in England, it is to the enormous amount of flesh, fowl, etc., consumed. To a sensitive mind, the butchers' shops, gorged with the flesh of fat beeves, or the poulterers, with their hecatombs of turkeys, are repulsive, to say the least. It is the remains of a coarse barbarism, which shows but little signs of dying out. Profusion of food at this season is traditional, and has been handed down from generation to generation. A Christmas dinner must, if possible, be every one's portion, down to the pauper in the workhouse, and even the prisoner in the gaol. Tusser, who, though he could write--