"MY DEAR CHILDREN,--For to both of you I address myself. An idea, which for so old a fellow as myself you will allow somewhat to be deserving the praise of brightness, has just struck my mind, and I proceed to act upon it. Are you Yorkshireman enough to know the article (an excellent one it is) entitled a Christmas, or sometimes a goose or a turkey pie? Its composition is this. Take first the smallest of eatable birds, as a snipe, for instance, then put it within its next neighbour of the feathered race, I mean in point of size, the woodcock, insert the two into a teal, the teal into a duck, the duck and Co. into a fowl, the fowl into a goose, the goose and Co. into a turkey. In imitation of this laudable precedent, I propose, though with a variation, as our Speaker would say, in the order of our proceeding, that this large sheet which I have selected for the purpose should contain the united epistles of all the family circle, from the fullest grown if not largest in dimensions, myself, to the most diminutive, little William.[61] As the thought is my own, I will begin the execution of it, and if any vacant space should remain, I will fill it, just as any orifices left vacant in said pie are supplied by the pouring in of the jelly. But I begin to be ashamed of this jocoseness when I call to mind on what day I am writing--the day which, combined with the succeeding one, the 1st of January, I consider, except perhaps my birthday, as the most important of the whole year. For a long period (as long as I lived in the neighbourhood of the Lock, or rather not far from it) I used to receive the Sacrament, which was always administered there on New Year's Day. And the heart must be hard and cold, which that sacred ordinance in such a relation, would not soften and warm into religious sensibility and tenderness. I was naturally led into looking backwards to the past days of my life, and forward to the future; led to consider in what pleasant places my lines were fallen, how goodly was my heritage, that the bounds of my life should be fixed in that little spot, in which, of the whole earth, there has been the greatest measure of temporal comforts, and of spiritual privileges. That it should be also in the eighteenth century, for where should I have been, a small, weakly man, had I been born either among our painted or skin-clothed ancestors, or in almost any other before or after it? As they would have begun by exposing me, there need be no more inquiry as to the sequel of the piece. Next take my station in life, neither so high as naturally to intoxicate me, nor so low as to excite to envy or degradation. Take then the other particulars of my condition, both personal and circumstantial. But I need go no farther, but leave it to you to supply the rest. And you will likewise, I doubt not, pursue the same mental process in your own instance also, and find, as may well be the case, that the retrospect and prospect afford abundant matter for