But Christmas is when we cuts loose and just naturally out-todos all previous todos. All day long folks is dropping in to sample the available refreshments and most of 'em likes the sample so well they camps right there till far into the night. I mingles up a big glass reservoir full of egg-nog, which it seems to give 'special satisfaction to one and all. The way these here guests of ours bails it up you'd think they was in a sinking skiff half a mile from shore. As he ladles out the first batch Mr. Dallas states that this here egg-nog is made according to a recipe which has been handed down in his family since right after the Revolutionizing War. But when she's took the second helping, Miss O'Brien, who's got a mighty peart way about her of saying things, allows that it shore must be older even than that--she says she's willing to bet it had a good deal to do with bringing on the revolution. Of all the crowd that Mr. Dallas is in with, I likes her the best. She's got a powerful high temper and is prone to flare up when matters don't go to suit her; but it seems like to me she ain't devoting so much of her time as some of the others is to seeing what she can get for nothing. Sometimes I catches her looking at Mr. Dallas like as if she's sort of sorry for him on account of some reason or other. But to look at him on this Christmas Day, doing his entertainingest best, you'd think nothing had ever bothered him and that nothing ever would. As long as that egg-nog holds out he's bound and determined the party shall be a success. Which it is! But Mr. Bellows he ain't got no storage room for egg-nogs. Seemingly he figures that all them eggs and that rich cream and sugar and stuff will take up space which is needed for chambering the hard liquor. He just sets off in a corner with a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of squirtwater handy by, curing his drought, or striving to. He may not be such very good company but one thing they've got to say for him--he's a man of regular habits. You may not like the habits, but they certainly is regular. I hears Mrs. Gaylord saying once that Mr. Bellows can hold any given number of drinks, sort of pressing her voice down on the word "given." She don't need to say it twice, neither, so far as I personally is concerned. I got her the first time.