Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1888-12-29
UP A LADDER,

In spite of all that is said concerning time
hallowed customs of Christmas as they are cell
ebrated In our native land, there are many
thousands Of persons who basely agree in look
ing upon the ancient festival as q disturbing
and uprooting Of their daily habits If not in the
actual light of an unmitigated nuisance. This
Is, no doubt, very wrong, and mot at all what
should be expected of us as members of q
Christian community, and yet so, alas, ii un-
fortunately is regarded by many of us.
There was q certain young man who toiled
for his daily bread, ''from ten to four" as the
satirist hath it, in the offices of that most
the blessed season which poets and moralists
have alike immortalized appeared to be too
severe trial to be endured in the accustomed
fashion. And because he was young, and there
fore both obstinate and selfish. as many young
persons are wont be, he made up HIS mind that
he would not do as others of his kind did, and
as he himself had hitherto been accustomed to
do. e., return to the bosom of his expect
ant family for the Christmas vacation-but
would shut himself up in his London lodgings
for the four days Of enforced idleness. read yell
low French novels, smoke innumerable pipes,
go to the pantomime on boxing night, and dine
in peace and solitary grandeur off roast NUT
ton and deviled kidneys Gf SO he listed every
night Of the festive season, at his club.
Ernest Redforth, such was this miguided
years of age, or he might have known better
than to have flown thus into the face of de-
corum and propriety), was SO convinced Of the
practicability as well the wisdom of this
resolution, that, when the jovial festival drew
appreciably near, he sat down and wrote to his
old mother in Hampshire, and informed her
that he was going to stay in town for Christ
mas this year.
"For what is the good Of going home to be
insufferably bored!" he argued with himself. as
he folded up and directed his letter with q gay
and jaunty air. 'The governor is always as
cross as two sticks, the mater has poor peoples
blankets and flannel petticoats on the brain,
the girls are church-decorating and flirting
with the curate from morning till night this
frost won't give for a month, SO no chance Of a
days hunting, and now the governor has let
all the shooting there's not single thing fel-
low can do. should only moon about and
wish myself in town, and out of all the hum
bug that goes on about merry Christmases and
family effusion! I'll stop where ann
But he reckOned without his host. By re-
turn of post came such pile of letters as he
had never received before in one day from the
parental roof. They were pitched in every
possible and conceivable key. Anger, re-
proach, entreaty! Everything that was posi-
BILE to be said by pens upon paper was poured
forth upon him by his excited relatives. How
could he be SO heartless and unnatural? they
wrote. How desert them thus cruelty at the one
time of all the year which it most behooves all
families to cling together? What would their
Christmas be without him?-a yawning blank!
What might not have happened to scatter the
family between this Christmas and the next?-
who could tell! How would he feel if his aged
parents were to be by then Wondering in the
family vault?-the most narrowing repentance!
Would he ever be able to forgive himself again?
&C., &C., &c. And so the end of it was that
poor Ernest had to give up his little dream of
peace and pleasantness, and to knock under.
as many better man has done before him, to
the exigencies of that British juggernaut of
fate to which most of us are doomed more or
less to succumb-the Christmas family gather
ing.
He groaned a good deal over his defeat. but
when the day arrived he packed his portman-
teau, putting up the presents he had thought
himself bound to come armed with-a pate de
foie gras for his father, sealskin bag for his
mother, and sundry lesser gifts for his sisters
upon which, he told himself, he need never
have spent his hard-earned money unless it had
been this cruel, exacting all-absorbing seasons
and he went down meekly and in profoundest
melancholy by an afternoon train to the small
station of Fossett in Hampshire.
Now this is not tale with moral intended
to extol virtue and to villify any departure
from the beaten tracks of duty and Of goodness;
very far from it. And yet in regard to what
befell Ernest Redforth in consequence of his
dutiful arrival among his affectionate relations
upon that particular Christmas a moral might
very well be drawn that would fifty serve as an
incentive to all other light-minded gentlemen
such as he to do what is considered the right
thing upon the 25th of December, rather than
that which in the bottom of their unregenerate
hearts they prefer to do.
There was nothing new or out of the COM
mon going on at Fossett Hall when the only
son and heir of the house made his appearance
at the front door of it. His mother as he had
foreseen, was cutting out coarse flannel into
shirts and petticoats and tying them ND into
bundles for her pet poor people; his father ap-
peared in the doorway of his study with hand
full of bills in his left hand and in his face re-
Election of the CONSERVATION with which he has
been docketing and auditing the family ex-
penditure; and presently his sisters little
drab-colored women, who had outgrown
their youth, but were still called 1.-The
girls" by force of habit came in from
the church hard by, with stained hands
smelling Of laurel leaves and torn with holly
thorns, to welcome him. They were all very
glad to see him, and made an affectionate fuss
over him, as good parents and sisters are wont
to do over the nice-looking son of the house.
and they magnanimously forbore to cast it in
his teeth that he had not wanted to come.
which was to say the least, highly creditable to
them. But when the little fuss had subsidized.
and his father had gone back to his bills, his
mother to her flannel and his sisters to their
church decorations then Ernest began to feel
that he had nothing on earth to do at home.
and that he really would have been much
FOssett Hall was a comfortable old house.
but there were no evidences of wealth about
IT. In these days squires are not rich men, and
MIR. Redforth had hard work to keep up his
property at all upon failing rents and bad har.
vests He had let off all the shooting and had
had to take many of the farms at great loss
into his own hands. There were no horses to
speak OF in the large roomy stables where Ern-
est betook himself with pipe soon after his
arrival; only the two fat carriage horses the
pony that went to the station, and an old hunter
which did all sorts of odd Jobs, and had only
not been sold because he was very old and
what is called "dickey" upon his fore-Iegs-
had been blistered and fired, and was slightly
touched IN the wind into the bargain. He had
been hne horse once, and could do an easy
day after the hounds now and again STILL but
the frost was foot deep in the ground now,
ana no chance even OF this solace for our friend
Ernest
Presently, for want Of something to do. he
stroiled down to the church, thinking he would
see how his sisters were getting on. and
whether Ellen, the youngest and most COM
panionable Of the three, would feel disposed to
leave her pious labor and come for a little
walk with him instead.
de walked in at the open church door un-
noticed. 1t was an ugly whitewashed struct-
ure, with heavy galleries running between the
round Norman pillars, and great dark oaken
beams, stained and blackened with age, reach
ing across the roof. church that might with
care and money have been restored into some
thing handsome and interesting but in its ne
elected condition was marvel of unmitigated
ugliness.
At present it was not only ugly, but desper-
aseiy unt,dy; Great heaps Of evergreens
n hal RIIA tnI II.