Unexpectedly brought back to the stern realities of life by a great affliction, I wished to destroy every link that connected me with the six years I had thrown away. It was at this period that Strakosch wrote to me, offering an engagement for a tour of concerts through the United States. I hesitated an instant; one sad look was cast upon the vanished days, I breathed a regret, and--signed. The dream was over; I was saved; but who could say, if, in the rescue, youth and poetry had not perished? Poetry and youth are of a volatile mood,--they are butterflies. Shut them up in a cage, and they will dash their delicate wings to pieces against its bars. Endeavor to direct them as they soar, and you cramp their flight, you deprive them of their audacity,--two qualities which are often to be met with in inexperience, and the loss of which--am I wrong in saying so?--is not always compensated by maturity of talent. THE CHIMNEY-CORNER. III. LITTLE FOXES.--PART II. It was that Christmas-day that did it; I'm quite convinced of that; and the way it was is what I am going to tell you. You see, among the various family customs of us Crowfields, the observance of all sorts of _fêtes_ and festivals has always been a matter of prime regard; and among all the festivals of the round ripe year, none is so joyous and honored among us as Christmas. Let no one upon this, prick up the ears of Archaeology, and tell us that by the latest calculations of chronologists our ivy-grown and holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum,--that it has been demonstrated, by all sorts of signs and tables, that the august event it celebrates did not take place on the 25th of December. Supposing it be so, what have we to do with that? If so awful, so joyous an event ever took place on our earth, it is surely worth commemoration. It is the _event_ we celebrate, not the _time_. And if all Christians for eighteen hundred years, while warring and wrangling on a thousand other points, have agreed to give this one 25th of December to peace and good-will, who is he that shall gainsay them, and for an historic scruple turn his back on the friendly greetings of all Christendom? Such a man is capable of rewriting Milton's Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and Hopkins. In our house, however, Christmas has always been a high day, a day whose expectation has held waking all the little eyes in our bird's nest, when as yet there were only little ones there, each sleeping with one eye open, hoping to be the happy first to wish the merry Christmas and grasp the wonderful stocking.