I have kept (among a store of jovial, genial, heart-stirring returns of the season) some very dismal Christmasses. I have kept Christmas in Constantinople, at a horrible Pera hotel, where I attempted the manufacture of a plum-pudding from the maccaroni-soup they served me for dinner, mingled with some Zante currants, and a box of figs I had brought from Smyrna; and where I sat, until very late at night, endeavoring to persuade myself that it was cold and “Christmassy” (though it wasn’t), drinking Levant wine, and listening to the howling of the dogs outside, mingled with the clank of a portable fire-engine, which some soldiers were carrying to one of those extensive conflagrations which never happen in Constantinople oftener than three times a day. I have kept Christmas on board a Boulogne packet, in company with a basin, several despair-stricken females, and a damp steward; who, to all our inquiries whether we should be “in soon,” had the one unvarying answer of “pretty near,” to give. I have kept Christmas, when a boy, at a French boarding-school, where they gave me nothing but lentils and _bouilli_ for dinner, on the auspicious day itself. I have kept Christmas by the bed-side of a sick friend, and wished him the compliments of the season in his physic-bottles (had they contained another six months’ life, poor soul!) I have kept Christmas at rich men’s tables, where I have been uncomfortable; and once in a cobbler’s shop, where I was excessively convivial. I have spent one Christmas in prison. Start not, urbane reader! I was not sent there for larceny, nor for misdemeanor: but for debt. It was Christmas-eve; and I—my name is Prupper—was taking my walks abroad. I walked through the crowded Strand, elate, hilarious, benignant, for the feast was prepared, and the guests were bidden. Such a turkey I had ordered! Not the prize one with the ribbons—I mistrusted that; but a plump, tender, white-breasted bird, a king of turkeys. It was to be boiled with oyster-sauce; and the rest of the Christmas dinner was to consist of that noble sirloin of roast beef, and that immortal cod’s head and shoulders! I had bought the materials for the pudding, too, some half-hour previously: the plums and the currants, the citron and the allspice, the flour and the eggs. I was happy. Onward, by the bright grocers’ shops, thronged with pudding-purchasers! Onward, by the book-sellers’, though lingering, it may be, for a moment, by the gorgeous Christmas books, with their bright binding, and brighter pictures. Onward, by the pastry cooks’! Onward, elate, hilarious, and benignant, until, just as I stopped by a poulterer’s shop, to admire the finest capon that ever London or Christmas saw, a hand was laid on my shoulder! “Before our sovereign lady the Queen”—“by the grace of God, greeting”—“that you take the body of Thomas Prupper, and him safely keep”—“and for so doing, this shall be your warrant.”