For all that, I could not strike the clew. It seems a very easy thing, does it not, to concoct a passable enough Christmas story out of the ample materials with which Mr. Culpepper had so lavishly supplied me? Just try; sit down and write a good, short, brisk Christmas story, out of all the time-honored materials, and judge for yourself what an easy task it is, O sapient critic! a line from whose practised pen stabs to death a year of hopes, and projects, and labor. Strange to say, my immediate project dissolved and faded out of my mind, as I plodded homewards along the great thoroughfare I had trodden so serenely in the morning. The little Christmas story gave place to something new, something larger, something vague, indefinable, and mighty. A great realm of fiction unfolded itself before me--a realm all my own, a fairy island in a summer sea, peopled with Calibans and dainty Ariels, Mirandas and Ferdinands, and a thousand unseen creatures, waiting only for the wave of my magic wand to be summoned into the beauty of life, to bring sweet songs down from the clouds of heaven, and whisperings of spirits far away that the earth had never yet heard. A mist sprang up around me as I walked, and through it peered a thousand eyes, and from it came and went a thousand shapeless forms, whose outlines I could half discern, but hold not. I could not bid them stay until I grasped them. Something was wanting, a touch only, a magic word, but I could not find it. A charm was on me, and more potent than I. It was there, working, working, working, but I could not master it. I walked along in a dream. Men in throngs passed me by in what seemed a strange and awful silence. If they spoke, never a word heard I. Carriages and vehicles of every description I felt rolling, rolling past; but their wheels were strangely muffled, for never a sound fell on my ear. The fair, bright city of the morning was filled now with silent shadows, moving like ghosts in a troubled dream. Lights sprang up out of the mist as I passed along, but they seemed to shine upon me alone. Intensely conscious of my own existence, I had only a numb feeling of other life around me. At last I found myself at Mrs. Jinks’ door. I took a letter from her hand, and seated at length in my own room, with familiar objects around me, the shadows seemed to lift, and I was brought back to the subject of my proposed night’s work.