By an ancient bequest to the Company, we distributed, on the day before Christmas-day, to twenty-four poor people, a loaf of bread, a small log of wood, or bavin, as we call it, and the sum of two shillings and ten-pence to each person. The recipients were all old, decrepit men and women. There was an ancient regulation, still unrepealed, that they should all attend on the following court-day, at noon precisely, to "return thanks for the same;" though that performance of mechanical gratitude had been allowed to fall into disuse by a more philosophical generation. The first Christmas after Lucy came there, she begged me to let her distribute these gifts, and I consented. I stood at my little desk at the end of the hall, with my face resting upon my hands, watching her, and listening to her talking to the old people. Next to the pleasure of hearing her speak to little children, I delighted to hear her talk with the very aged folks. There was something in the contrast of the two extremes of life--the young and beautiful maiden, and the bent and wrinkled old people--that pleased me. She heard all their oft-repeated complaints, their dreary accounts of their agues and rheumatics, and consoled them as well as she could; and, with some of the very old, she took their brown and sinewy hands in hers, and led them down the steps. I did not know what ailed me that day. I stood dreaming and musing, till I seemed to have lost that instinctive dexterity with which we perform the simple operations of our daily life. Some accounts lay before me which I was anxious to cast, but several times I essayed, and seemed incapable of doing so. As the simple words of our daily language, which issue from our lips simultaneously with the thought, become vague and indistinct if we muse upon their origin, and repeat them several times to ourselves; so by dwelling long upon the idea of the work before me, it seemed to have become confused, and difficult to realize. I handed them over to my clerk, Tom Lawton, who sat opposite to me. Poor Tom Lawton! I thought I saw him looking anxiously at me, several times, when I raised my eyes. No being upon earth ever loved me more than he. It is true, I had done him some acts of kindness, but I had often done as much for others, who had forgotten it since; whereas his gratitude became a real affection for me, which never failed to show itself each day that he was with me. He was a fine young man, and a great favorite with the housekeeper, who said "she liked him because he was so good to his mother, just as she thought her poor son would have been if he had lived." Tom was fond of reading, and sometimes wrote verses, of which he made copies for his friends in a neat hand. He was a shrewd fellow in some things, but in others he was as simple as a child. His temper was the sweetest in the world--the children knew that. No diving into his coat-pocket ever ruffled him; no amount of pulling his hair could ever induce him to cry out.