I wandered through a street. Far above my head, from a high story, my grandmother's prophetic couplet floated down to me amid the shock of glasses, the rattle of dishes, and the merry laughter of girls. "Christmas comes, Christmas goes; But soon we all shall be of those Who come back--never!" "Here," thought I, "is a home, a hearth, with almond soup and a gilt-head, which I could buy for four dollars!" Just then a woman came up to me, begging. She had two children, one in her arms wrapped in her ravelled shawl, the other clinging to her hand. Both were crying; I thought the mother was crying too. IX. I do not know how I happen to be in this café. The clock strikes midnight, the hour when the Christ was born. I am here, alone, in a boisterous crowd. I have fallen to analyzing my life since I left my father's roof, and for the first time I am horror-stricken at the painful struggle of the poet in Madrid,--a struggle in which so much affection, so much peace, is sacrificed to a vain ambition. I have watched the bards of the nineteenth century writing the local; I have watched the Muse, scissors in hand, making clippings; I have seen men who in other ages would have written a national epic busily patching up editorials to rehabilitate a party and earn fifty dollars a month. Poor children of God! Poor poets! Antonio Trueba, to whom I dedicate this article, says,-- "I have found so many thorns on my journey that my heart aches, my soul aches!" And so much for my present Christmas Eve! Then I travel back, in thought, through the bygone years. I am surely missed at home to-night; and my mother shivers when the wind moans in the chimney, as though those moans were my dying sighs. And she says to the neighbors, "In such a year, when he was with us," or, "I wonder where he is now!" Ah, I cannot bear this! I wave you a farewell from my soul, dear ones! I am ambitious; I am an ingrate, a bad brother, a bad son! How can I explain it? A supernatural force leads me on, whispering, "Thou shalt be!" The voice of damnation that spoke to me in my very cradle. And what, pray, am I to be, poor wretch that I am? "Soon we all shall be of those Who come back--never!" Ah, I do not want to go! I shall not go! I have struggled too hard to fail. I shall return. I will triumph in life and in death. Is there to be no compensation for the infinite anguish of my soul? X. It is very late, and that couplet of the dead still rings in my brain,-- "Christmas comes, Christmas goes; But soon we all shall be of those Who come back--never!"