Thus older grew the year, and fuller got the Diary--Mr. Brown graphically recounting the doings and disasters of "December 28_th_, _Friday_.--Unpropitious, fatal, Friday! I never knew it lucky save once, and then it _was_--I let the Albert. 'Christmas comes but once a year,' with a train of nasty bills, not to be bilk'd; and sorry consolation is it thinking you 'paid at the time,' when the receipt is not to be found. Miss-Fortune, that never came single, now visits with a large family of little pests--out of season and uninvited!--Here is Needy, the pianist, who, one would think, had married her; for he has children enough to fill a charity school. Needy, of No. 9, Brown Terrace, has absconded without paying the rent--sending the key, and L12. 10_s._, instead of L14., with a shabby excuse about hoping to be able to make up the difference some day:--this is the return for showing compassion to a poor devil!--I ought to have known, when I took the cottage-piano for last quarter, though Spohf did say it was a six-and-three-quarters, worth three times the money!--I am a good-natured fool, and ought, in justice to my family, to be a little more selfish--these mean professionals estimating their rubbish far beyond all reason!--My spirits are damped--and so are we all, for the water-pipes that that rascal Plummer fixed, at the low contract, have burst with this evening's thaw, and were discovered just as the water was coming in; having played, I know not how long, a fountain in the bathroom, tumbling down the stairs like the falls of the Niagara, obliging us to insert tobacco-pipes all over the drawing-room ceiling, to drain the inundation:--it has spoilt the watered paper, stained the aquatint of the Aqueduct, and 'Wellington at Waterloo,' done for the water-gilding, and saturated the 'Momentous Question;' the 'Heart's Misgivings' is a sop; and the water-colour of the 'Flood' is washed away. Alphonso is sitting up in goloshes to empty the pots, and I doubt much if I shall sleep over the dropping-well." [Illustration] How Mr. Brown slept we do not know, but can imagine, for here is the Diurnal Record, made up in bed:--"December 29_th_, _Saturday_.--Dreamed Victoria Villa turned into a hydropathic establishment--that I was being frozen, thawed, and suffocated; did wake, this day, with an enlarged cheek--the influenza compelling me to keep my bed, bathe my chilblains, and anoint my nose; I take slops internally, and wear a heart upon the outside of my chest. The kind, considerate Captain called, smoking a cigar, that made me cough, and think his visit a visitation." [Illustration: COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON.]