I Shall leave to Alice's descriptive powers Mrs. Wilson's triumph on Christmas-day. With all her mild and sympathizing qualities she would nevertheless have been an object of terror, had a poor Hindoo heard her tale of the slaughtered poultry, and her secret of making them fat and fair. Such is opinion, Lucy! But leaving this disquisition to wiser heads than my own, and honestly confessing myself implicated in the crime of conniving at the shedding of innocent blood, I will proceed to inform you that I am deserted for a _plum-cake_, which will not be eaten till Twelfth-day at Durham, and which Mrs. Heartley and her train annually assist _to cut up_. I am, however, proof against all discontents. The Bay of Biscay continues open notwithstanding a Dutchman with skaits might go from hence to you in a strait line, in an hour or two. The weather has been celestial here during the frost. It gives to me aerial lightness, and I defy the intense coldness of the atmosphere. Wisely, however, reflecting that I had not the sylph's wing, I attired myself in my habit yesterday morning, and with my snow-shoes and India-shawl, I scudded away to the village, in order to see dame Dobs's fire-side. A bright sun, and the wind at my heels, sent me forward with a blithsome heart. I found her hearth blazing, and the good old woman so cottoned up with _Mary's_ comforts, that even the rheumatism is kept in check. She was quite amazed how I could "brave such deadly cold weather; and yet I looked like _a full-blown rose_, and so cheerful! But that did not amaze her, for in warming other people's hearts my own would always be gay." On leaving her cottage the whim took me to visit some friends of _my own_; and cheered by a few benedictions, and as many welcomes, I resolved to return home, by taking the circuit of the mill. Now, knowing that the finest description of a frost-piece that the most poetical imagination ever composed, would not please Mary, at least so well as one of my long stories, I will spare myself the disgrace of being censured as the dullest of mortals in this art; and the shame of feeling, that this is probably one reason for my yawning over descriptive subjects, except with a crayon at my fingers' ends. But we have all our several gifts; _holding forth_ is, unquestionably, mine, and I will begin my story by an exordium for Mary's edification. My text is drawn from my recollection of one of Quarles's emblems. You may, if your less retentive memory need it, still borrow the book from Deborah; and with the pictures recall the days when the restless Rachel stood for hours quietly listening to her expounding histories of them. One of these ingenious devices, if I be not mistaken, exhibits a youth borne on the wing of Hope, Fancy, and Desire, to an elevation remote from his safe abode. Careless of the approaching storm he still advances in his heedless career, till nature, exhausted, prompts him to pause.