“Our quartets? Well, now that you suggest it—H’m!” And he glanced around the room with a critical look. “We’ll ask Mr. Waldteufel next Friday. What on earth is that idiot giggling about?” [Illustration: SYMPHONY OF LIFE. MOVEMENT II. _Scherzo._ L. van Beethoven, _“Eroica” Symphony_. {The first page of the score of the second movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony is shown.}] SYMPHONY OF LIFE. MOVEMENT II. CHAPTER XXIII. It was just one week before Christmas,—that of 1860, the last Christmas of the olden time,—that Elmington—that Virginia—forever and forever—was to see—. But no matter; we did not know it then. The guests from Richmond were to arrive that evening. Everything was in readiness. The hickory logs, which alone my grandfather—and his father before him, for that matter—would burn during the holidays,—lighting the first noble pile on Christmas Eve,—the hickory logs were banked up, high and dry, in the wood-house. The stall-fed ox nodded over his trough; the broad-backed Southdowns, clustered together in a corner of their shed, basked in the sun and awaited a return of appetite; a remnant of sturdy porkers, left over from the November killing, that blinked at you from out their warm beds, and grunted when requested to rise, suggested sausage; while over on Charley’s farm, and under Aunt Sucky’s able management, aldermanic turkeys, and sleek, plump pullets, and ducks, quacking low from very fatness, and geese that had ceased to wrangle,—all thought themselves, like man before Copernicus, the centre of the universe. Then, in the little creek, too, which ebbed and flowed hard by, there lay bushels and bushels of oysters freshly taken from The River in front. These, too, were ready; while, in the cellar, suspended from hooks, there dangled, thanks to the industry of Charley and the Don, daily swelling bunches of partridges and rabbits, of woodcock and of wild fowl. And can you not detect the odor of apples issuing even from that locked door? There are great piles of them stowed away there; and cider, I suspect, is not lacking. And above, the storeroom showed shelves weighed down, since the arrival of the last steamer, with such things as Elmington could not supply. Boxes and bags and bundles gave forth the mellow fragrance of raisins, the cheerful rattle of nuts, the pungent savor of spices,—the promise of all things dear to the heart of the Virginia housewife. On every whiff floated mince-pie,—mince-pie embryonic, uncompounded; with every sniff there rose, like an exhalation before the imagination, visions of Plum-Pudding—of the Plum-Pudding of Old England,—twin-sister of Roast Beef,—and, with Roast Beef, inseparable attendant and indispensable bulwark of Constitutional Liberty. It was well.