That cap, and the battered worn-out sickly frame beneath (if I would have the goodness to notice them) were all that were left of a spruce, rosy-cheeked, glittering young ensign of infantry. He was brought up by an old maiden aunt, who spent her savings to buy him a commission in the army. He went from Slowchester Grammar School, to Fastchester Barracks. He was to live on his pay. He gambled a year’s pay away in an evening. He made thousand guinea bets, and lost them. So the old _denouement_ of the old story came round as usual. The silver dressing-case, got on credit—pawned for ready money; the credit-horses sold; more credit-horses bought; importunate creditors in the barrack-yard; a letter from the colonel; sale of his commission; himself sold up; then Mr. Aminadab, Mr. Blowman, Burdon’s Hotel, Insolvent Court, a year’s remand; and, an after life embittered by the consciousness of wasted time and talents, and wantonly-neglected opportunities. My informant pointed out many duplicates of the gentleman in the dressing-gown. Also, divers Government clerks, who had attempted to imitate the nobs in a small way, and had only succeeded to the extent of sharing the same prison; a mild gray-headed old gentleman who always managed to get committed for contempt of court; and the one inevitable baronet of a debtor’s prison, who is traditionally supposed to have eight thousand a year, and to stop in prison because he likes it—though, to say the truth, this baronet looked, to me, as if he didn’t like it at all. I was sick of all these, and of every thing else in Whitecross-street, before nine o’clock, when I was at liberty to retire to my cold ward. So ended my Christmas-day—my first, and, I hope and believe, my last Christmas-day in prison. Next morning my welcome friend arrived and set me free. I paid the gate-fees, and I gave the turnkeys a crown, and I gave the prisoners unbounded beer. I kept New Year’s day in company with a pretty cousin with glossy black hair, who was to have dined with me on Christmas-day, and who took such pity on me that she shortly became Mrs. Prupper. Our eldest boy was born, by a curious coincidence, next Christmas-day—which I kept very jovially, with the doctor, after it was all over, and we _didn’t_ christen him Whitecross. WHAT CHRISTMAS IS, AS WE GROW OLDER. BY CHARLES DICKENS. Time was, with most of us, when Christmas-day encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped every thing and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.