A most mournful Christmas found her still growing whiter and weaker, and nearer her End. At this ordinarily joyful season of the year, it was her commendable custom to give great alms away to the poor,--among whom at all times she was a very Dorcas,--bestowing not only gifts of money to the clergy for division among the needy, but sending also a dole of a hundred shillings to the poor prisoners in the Marshalsea, as many to Ludgate, and the Gatehouse, and the Fleet,--surely prisons for debt were as plentiful as blackberries when I was young!--and giving away besides large store of bread, meat, and blankets at her own door in Hanover Square: a custom then pleasantly common among people of quality, but now--when your parish Overseer, forsooth, eats up the very marrow of the poor--fallen sadly into disuse. They are for ever striking Poor's Rates against householders, and will not take clipped money; whereas in my day Private Charity, and a King's Letter in aid from the pulpit now and then, were enough; and, for my part, I would sooner see a poor rogue soundly firked at the post, and then comforted with a bellyful of bread and cheese and beer by the constable, and so passed on to his belongings, than that he should be clapped up in a workhouse, to pick oakum and suck his paws like a bear, while Master Overseer gets tun-stomached over shoulder of veal and burnt brandy at vestry-dinners. For it is well-known, to the shame of Authority, that these things all come out of the Poor Rate. Ere my Grandmother was brought so low, she would sit in state on almsgiving morning, which was the day after Christmas; and the more decent of her bedesmen and bedeswomen would be admitted to her presence to pay their duty, and drink her health in a cup of warm ale on the staircase. Also the little children from Lady Viellcastel's charity-school would be brought to her by their governante to have cakes and new groats given to them, and to sing one of those sweet tender Christmas hymns which surely fall upon a man's heart like sweet-scented balsam on a wound. And the beadle of St. George's would bring a great bowpot of such hues as Christmas would lend itself to, and have a bottle of wine and a bright broad guinea for his fee; while his Reverence the rector would attend with a suitable present,--such as a satin work-bag or a Good Book, the cover broidered by his daughters,--and, when he sat at meat, find a bank-bill under his platter, which was always of silver. And I warrant you his Reverence's eyes twinkled as much at the bill as at the plum-porridge, and that he feigned not to see Father Ruddlestone, if perchance he met that foreign person on the staircase, or in the store-office where Mistress Nancy Talmash kept many a toothsome cordial and heart-warming strong water.