My Christmas dinner consisted of the usual diet, and after eating it I went for another brief tramp in the yard. The officers seemed to relax their usual rigor, and many of the prisoners exchanged greetings. "How did yer like the figgy duff?" "Did the beef stick in yer ribs?" Such were the flowers of conversation. From the talk I overheard, I gathered that under the old management, while Holloway Gaol was the City Prison, all the inmates had a "blow-out" on Christmas Day, in the shape of beef, vegetables, plum-pudding, and a pint of beer. Some of the old hands, who remembered those happy days, bitterly bewailed the decay of prison hospitality. Their lamentations were worthy of a Conservative orator at a rural meeting. The present was a poor thing compared with the past, and they sighed for "the tender grace of a day that is dead." After exercise I went to chapel. Parson Plaford preached a seasonable sermon, which would have been more heartily relished on a full stomach. He told us what a blessed time Christmas was, and that people did well to be joyful on the anniversary of their Savior's birth. Before dismissing us with his blessing to our "little rooms," which was his habitual euphemism for our cells, he remarked that he could not wish us a happy Christmas in our unhappy condition, but he would wish us a peaceful Christmas; and he ventured to promise us that boon if, after leaving chapel, we fell on our knees and besought pardon for our sins. Most of the prisoners received this advice with a grin, for their cell floors were black-leaded, and genuflexions in their "little rooms" gave them too much knee-cap to their trousers. At six o'clock I had my third instalment of Christmas fare, the last mouthfuls being consumed to the accompaniment of church bells. The neighboring Bethels were announcing their evening performance, and the sound penetrated into my cell. True believers were wending their way to church, while the heretic, who had dared to deride their creed and denounce their hypocrisy, was regaling himself on dry bread in one of their dungeons. The bells rang out against each other with a wild glee as I paced my narrow floor. They seemed mad with intoxication of victory; they mocked me with a bacchanalian frenzy of triumph. Yet I smiled grimly, for their clamor was no more than the ancient fool's shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Great Christ has had his day since, but he in turn is dead; dead in man's intellect, dead in man's heart, dead in man's life; a mere phantom, flitting about the aisles of churches, where priestly mummers go through the rites of a phantom creed.