ence of the Season. Through these gates they passed, and up a stately avenue to the portico of a noble mansion.

"One of the country seats of Lord Bredanbourne," the Ghost explained.

"But why bring me to such a place, Spirit?" asked Scrooge, feeling slightly puzzled. "For really I can't recollect ever to have heard of his lordship."

"Have you so soon forgotten your fellow 'prentice, Dick Wilkins?" inquired the Spirit. "He married, as you are doubtless aware, the eldest Miss Fezziwig, and died Sir Richard Wilkins, having been knighted during his Lord Mayoralty by His Gracious Majesty, King William the Fourth."

"So he was," cried Scrooge, "Bless his heart! So he was! Dear, dear! And yet, even now, I don't quite

"His son, Gabriel," pursued the Phantom (who, by the way, was less reserved than any of its forerunners) "developed the warehousing connection of the firm of Fezziwig & Wilkins to such a prodigious extent that he eventually became a Baronet. The second Baronet, Sir Peveril, in return for important services rendered to his party, was raised to the Peerage under the title of Baron Bredanbourne."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Scrooge, rather impressed, "what services, Spirit?"

But the Phantom answered not. is very possible that it did know.

It not

"The Lord Bredanbourne of the period we are now in," it continued, "does nothing whatever but enjoy himself. He is at this particular moment entertaining a houseful of the smartest people in London for Christmas week." "Is he, though?" cried Scrooge, rubbing his hands with the delight of a boy. "What a feast he must be giving them, eh, Spirit? What a capital Turkey! What a wonderful Pudding! What bowls of seething Bishop! What

pyramids of oranges and piles of chestnuts! Do let us go inside and look on, Spirit! Just for an hour or so!"

"I fancy they will have finished feasting by this time," said the Spirit. "We shall probably find them all in the Long Drawing-room, playing-" "Forfeits,' I'll be bound!" said Scrooge, eagerly. "Oh, I must go in, and see the fun! Make haste, Spirit, make haste! Hallo here! Whoop!"

66

Unseen by any there, they entered that lofty and splendid room-but scarce had they done so, ere Scrooge's heart grew strangely chill within him.

The walls were decked with Christmas here and there, but yet resounded to no echoing ring of joyous Christmas laughter. Scrooge noted next that all these guests who sat, in groups of four, at little tables were so deep engrossed in studying the cards that fell-in such a solemn silence, too!-that they were blind and deaf to aught besides, unheeding holly-aye, and mistletoe! From time to time a hollow voice would cry, "I leave it!" Or one would quit his seat and wander round, like some uneasy soul that finds no rest, and then return, as powerless to resist the spell for long! Young girls there were, who, risking stakes that they could ill afford, doubled "No trumps," and paled as Dummy's hand, displayed, revealed the guarded King that doomed them to inevitable disaster!

"I suppose, Spirit," said Scrooge, "they'll have in the fiddles and begin to enjoy themselves presently, eh? They can't keep up this sort of thing much longer! can they?"

"They are enjoying themselves," replied the Phantom. "And they will keep it up till one or two in the morning, at least."

"Then I don't wish to see any more," said Scrooge. "Remove me, Spirit. Let me see my dear nephew's descendants keeping up this Festival in

the time-honored fashion with 'How, when, and where,' and 'Blind-man's buff.'"

Back to the town the Spirit led him next, and to a fine house in a terrace hard by the spot where Tyburn Tree once bore its ghastly fruit. There might have been a dozen people, old and young, in the solidly furnished drawing-room Scrooge and the Spirit visited next-but not one among them all was engaged in blind's-man buff! He saw the same small tables, with similar unsmiling parties of four seated at each-the very silence might have been the same! In one group Scrooge particularly noticed a grim hatchetfaced elderly gentleman who somehow rather reminded him of his former self. "Your great-nephew, Mr. Justice Merryweather," explained the Phantom; "he is more learned, though perhaps slightly less genial, than his EarlyVictorian father. That pallid young gentleman whose play he is just criticizing with such refreshing candor is his great-nephew by marriage, young Topper, who has lately been called to the Bar, and has a case-his first brief -coming on in his relative's court early next Hilary term. He has just remembered that circumstance." "Spirit, show me no more!" entreated Scrooge, "I cannot bear it. In mercy's name take me from this hideous travesty of Christmas cheer to some humbler home, where all the dear old customs are not quite forgot! Let us drop in upon the descendants of my worthy clerk, Bob Cratchit! For I tell you plainly, unless I smell roast goose and hot punch, and hear a toast proposed, if not a song, within the next few minutes, I have a feeling that I might relapse into the man that I was wont to be!"

The Phantom inclined its head . . . Their way led them past a row of spacious shops, above which Scrooge could read, in bold and glittering letters, the

To this suburb they repaired. But, as Scrooge passed through the stainedglass portal, his nostrils were not greeted by the savor for which he hungered, Mrs. De Crespigny-Cratchit being much too refined a woman to allow a roast goose to appear at her table, whether with or without such ungenteel appurtenances as sage and onions.

The party he found in the "Art" Drawing-room to the right of the hall were all in the most correct evening costume, and far too fashionable to be festive. They passed no punch around, proposed no toasts, nor sang a single song. On the contrary, they were engaged in precisely the same occupation as were the two parties at which Scrooge had previously assisted.

"Spirit, I can't stand it!" cried Scrooge. "In Heaven's name, what is this fell pursuit that, in the space of sixty-odd short years, will banish harmless mirth and jollity from every hearth alike?" . . . "They will call it 'Bridge,' the Spirit answered.

"Ghost of the Future," cried Scrooge, quite agonized, "I fear you more than any Spectre I have seen! You seem to delight to torture me! If there is any respectable home in the town on which this fearful blight has not yet fallen, show that home to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"

"I cannot do so," was the Phantom's sorrowful reply, "for I know of none!" "Then, for the love of Pity," Scrooge

implored it, "conduct me back to bedand let me wake, to feel all this is but a dreadful dream!"

This time his prayer was granted.

He positively frisked out of bed next morning. "Why, bless me, it's Boxing Day!" he shouted. "What ri

Punch.

diculous nonsense I've been dreaming! Christmas blighted, indeed! And by a too! thing called 'Bridge,' Pooh!! Stuff!!! That punch at my nephew's last night must have been stronger than I fancied!"

Usually political excitement is bad for the publishers, but, in spite of the pending campaign, the season just closed was a prosperous one for the London publishing houses. The demand for books increased. One of the most interesting features of the season was the of absence any as such "boom" for special books marked the season of 1904.

A statue of Charles Kingsley has been completed, and will shortly be set up at "the little white town" of Bideford which "all who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know." It was here, in the drawing-room of the Royal Hotel, with its walls of panelled oak and its fine ceiling adorned with foliage and cherubs, snakes and birds, that Kingsley wrote "Westward Ho!" He went to Bideford in 1854, and resided there some time owing to the ill-health of his wife.

Apropos of the distinction recently bestowed upon Sienkiewics, in the award of the Nobel prize for literature, The Academy remarks that the novelist in spite of his immense sales, is not, for a popular author, a rich man. The Russian Empire has not yet adhered to the Berne Convention, and Polish copy

rights can therefore be violated with impunity. The country seat, moreover, which his admiring compatriots lately presented to him in the neighborhood of Warsaw, is no source of income, but, on the contrary, costs him a great deal to keep up.

The supplement to their facsimile reproduction of the Shakespeare First Folio, which the delegates of the Clarendon Press published last month, consists of facsimile productions, in quarto form, of the earliest editions of that portion of Shakespeare's work which had no place in the First Folio: Pericles, and the volumes of poems"Venus and Adonis," "Lucrece," and "The Passionate Pilgrim." To each of the volumes Mr. Sidney Lee furnishes an elaborate introduction embodying the latest results of his researches into the literary history and bibliography of the works. The investigations cover a wide field.

Mr. John Masefield, author of much spirited sea verse, is to write a work on the New England pirates, from Teach to Avery and the pirates of Madagascar and the Bight of Benin. Among the pirates treated of will be Bartholomew Roberts, Capt. Misson, Capt. Tew, and female pirate Anne Bonny, Capt. Kidd,

and indeed the whole fellowship of ruffians, known to English readers through Capt. Johnston's entertaining but almost inaccessible work of the early eighteenth century.

Readers of The Living Age, who followed the charming story of "Peter's Mother" from week to week with growing interest, will be both amused and amazed at the following notice of the story, which appears in one of the most widely circulated of American religious papers:

One interesting thing about English fiction is the fact that more middleaged women figure as heroines in it than in the fiction of any other country. In order to be the star character in one of these novels, one should be married, stupid, and disposed to be gray-headed. Peter's Mother is an illustration to the point. And the author has resorted to that artifice for interesting her readers so common among novelists-that of hemming first one character in the story and then another between the two horns of some dilemma in morality so that, whichever way she chooses, she will commit a sin. To make good people do wrong is becoming the finest test we have these days of dramatic talent.

The traditional hasty reviewer gets no farther than the preface: in this instance, in the absence of a preface, he seems to have got no farther than the title, and, inferring therefrom a middle-aged heroine, to have evolved the rest of the story from his inner consciousness.

The Macmillan Company publishes two slender volumes of verse: "Alcestis and Other Poems," by Sara King Wily, and "The City," by Arthur Upson. The title poem in each is in the dramatic form, cast after the classical

models. But in each there are shorter lyrical bits, of considerable charm. Here is the "Envoy" to the "Alcestis":

Lightly I cast my wildflowers on the

sea

While the slow surges swelling turn and break

And sinking suck them down to depths unknown,

Unnoted specks in the tremendous gulf.

Some waif, afloat at chance of wind and wave,

May Time, that old and crabbed mariner

With cold slow fingers thrust uncertainly

Draw out, and weave within the coronal

That binds Athene's bright immortal brows.

And here is one of the group of sonnets with which Mr. Upson's volume closes:

They bear no laurels on their sunless brows,

Nor aught within their pale hands as they go;

They look as men accustomed to the slow

And level onward course 'neath drooping boughs.

Who may these be no trumpet doth arouse,

These of the dark processionals of woe,

Upraised, unblamed, but whom sad

Acheron's flow

Monotonously lulls to leaden drowse? These are the Failures. Clutched by circumstance,

They were-say not too weak!-too ready prey

To their own fear, whose fixèd gorgon glance

Made them as stone for aught of

great essay;

Or else they nodded when their Mas

ter-Chance

Wound his one signal, and went on

his way.