Classic Christmas Stories by Frank Galgay

consideration, thought she should imitate the elite of
     society, a circumstance which changed the programme to an earlier hour, the
     happy pair spending the hours of excitement in some nice part of the country,
     the bride swooning at a more convenient moment. Early in the year 1850 a safe in
     the Colonial Building was broken and the contents extracted therefrom. The
     following day a party of one Sergeant and twelve men were ordered to said house
     to allow no person to look at the empty box. A constable remarked that some
     small foot prints could be seen, and that some messengers about the house should
     be examined. A gentleman, whom some may yet remember, was then messenger—Mr.
     Cooney— who immediately asked the speaker, “Did you say that for a slur? You’re
     a fellow of that description.” Many remarkable events took place during the
     fifties. There was the Burns Anniversary—a grand affair—although eclipsed
     in 1900; and during the reign of Sir A. Bannerman, some may yet remember when a
     son of Mars, in his poetical effusions encroached upon the great circumference
     of the outer garments of the fair sex, which they duly answered in the then
     dailies. I remember some lines—
Put on your gloves, lay down your pen,
    And buckle on your sword again,
    Gang hame and drill your sodger men;
    And do not mind remarking us—
    Your ankles red and stocking blue.
    In that we will surely please ourselves,
    And cestes, too, in spite of you.
    At the time in question Grub Street was in the zenith of its glory, and some
     may still remember when it culminated in and around the gubernacity. Of those
     who sat at dinner at the time mentioned, only three survive, all others having
     long since gone over to the great majority. At the expiration of another
     fifty-two years I will, D. V., write a Christmas article on the Railway
     Deal.

An Exile’s Memories of Home
    by John M. Byrnes, Boston
    C
HRISTMAS EVE, ACCOMPANIED BY a stormof unusual
     severity. The wind beginning with a low crooning sound, gradually increases to a
     furious shriek, and then dropping into a despairing moan—like the cry of a human
     being from whom all hope has fled—goes rushing along dark and gloomy streets and
     forbidden-looking courts and alleys, driving before it, in its mad rush,
     millions of blinding white snow-flakes, and causing the ramshackle tenements to
     rock and sway on their uncertain foundations. Snow, hail and sleet mingle
     together, covering the outside world, pattering and dashing against the window
     panes, as if jealous of the warmth and comfort displayed through their dripping
     surfaces. It is a night that serves to heighten one’s appreciation for the
     comforts of one’s fireside, and settling back in the depths of my cosy
     arm-chair, I listen to the howling of the storm, and feel thankful that “my lot
     has fallen in pleasant places, ” while so many others, more deserving than I,
     “have not whereon to lay their heads.”
    The fire-light dances upon the walls, causing fantastic shadows to flit to and
     fro, and the flickering embers in the grate seem, to my contemplative mind, to
     form pictures of scenes that are now almost forgotten memories. Suddenly the
     storm ceases for a moment, and the sound of bells, ushering in the Christmas
     morn, comes floating in upon the frosty air; the mellow tones, which seem to
     echo the joyous refrain of a Celestial choir pour, withan
     indescribable sweetness, into my soul, and there steals over my senses, like the
     dawn of a summer day over the rugged mountain tops, a feeling of ecstacy, tinged
     with sadness, which causes the unwilling tears to spring to my eyes. Hosts of
     memories rise up before me and pass in familiar review; memories of a past, dim
     and almost forgotten in the hurly burly of a life passed in a great busy city;
     memories of Christmas times and Christmas scenes in another land—a land made
     holy to me by happy