The morning call., 1891-03-24
UP A LADDER.

UP A IADUhF6,
In spite of all that is said concerning time
hallowed customs of Christmas as they are
celebrated in our native land there are many
thousands of persons who basely agree in
looking upon the ancient festival as dis
turbing and uprooting of their daily habits.
if not in the actual light Of an unmtigated
nuisance. This is, no doubt, very wrong,
and not at all what should be expected OF US
as members of Chris tian community, and
yet so, alas, it unfortunately is regarded by
many of us.
There was a certain young man. who
toiled for his daily bread from 10 to T." as
the satrist hath it, in the offices of that
most august institution. the Foreign Office,
to whom the blessed season which poets and
and moralists have alike immortalzed ap-
peared to be too severe a trial to be endured
in the accustomed fashion. And because he
was young and therefore both obstinate and
selfish, as many young persons are wont 10
be, he made up his mind that lie would not
do as others of his kind did and as he him.
self had hitherto been accustomed to do
i. e., return to the bosom of his expectant
family for the Christmas vacatiOn-but
would shut himself up in his London l0dg-
ings for the few days of his enforced idle
ness, read yellow French novels smoke in
Vulnerable pipes, so to the pantOmime on
boxing night and dine in peace and solitary
grandeur off roast mutton and deVlled KID
neyS Of so he listed every night OF the teS-
tive season at his club.
Ernest RedfOrth, such was the misguided
youths name (he was only Internationally
years of age, or he might have known better
than to have flown thus into the face OF de-
corum and proprietv). was so convinced OF
the practi ability as well as the wisdom OF
this resolution. that, when the JoYlal 1estl-
val drew appreciably near, he sat down ana
wrote to his old mother in Hampshire, and
informed her that he was going to stay In
town for Christmas 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 let
ter with a gay and jaunty air. 1.-The Gov
ern or is always as cross as two sticks, the
mater has poor peoples blankets and ttan-
mel petticoats on the brain, the girls are
misunderstanding aud flirting with the
curate from morning till night, this frost
won't give for month, so no chance OF
days hunting, and now the Governor has
let all the shooting there's not single
thing fellow can do. l should only moon
about and wish myself in town, g nd out of
all the humbug that goes on about merry
ChristmaSeS and family eHuSlon! III stop
where | am"
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,
reproach, entreaty! Everything that was
possible to be said by pens upon paper was
poured forth upon him by his excited rela-
tiyeS. 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 himP- "a yawning blank!
What might not happen to scatter the
family between this Christmas and the
next ?-who could tell! How would he 1eel
il his aged parents were to be by then
moldering in the family vaultP-the most
narrowing repentance! Would he ever be
able to forgive himself again? etc, etc. etc.
And so the end Of it was that poor Ernest
had to give up his little dream of peace and
pIeasantneSs, 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
gathering.
He groaned a good deal over his defeat,
but when the day arrived he packed his
portmanteau, putting up the presents he
had thought himself bound to come armed
with-a pate de foe gras Tor 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 season; 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 in
tended to eXtO virtue and to villify any de-
| parture from the beaten tracks Of duty and
| of goodness; very far from 1T. And yet III
| 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
| on the 10Th 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 appear
ance at the front door of it. His mother, as
he had foreseen, was cutting out coarse
! flannel into shirts and pet:icoats, and tying
| them up into bundles for her pet poor peo-
| pie, his father appeared in the doorway OF
| his study with handful of bills in his left
| hand, and in bis face reflection OF the con-
sternation with which he has been docket
ing aud auditing the family expenditure;
| and presently his siSterS-little dTab-colored
women, who had outgrown their youth. but
were still called "the girl" 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 atfectionate fuss over him, as good
| parents and sisters are wont to do over the
| ice-leoking son of the house. and they mag
unanimously foTbOde 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 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 hap
pier by himself up in town.
| Fossett Hall was a comfortable old house,
| but there was no evidence of wealth about
it, In these days squlres are not rich men.
and Mr.. Redforth had hard work to keep
up his property at all upon failing rents and
bad harvests He had let off all the shoot
ing, and had to take many of the farms at a
great loss into his own hands. There were
no horses to speak of in the large roomy
stables where Ernest betook himself with a
| 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 forc-legs-had
been blstered and fired, and was slightly
touched in the wind into the bargain. He
had been fine horse once, and could do an
easy day after the hounds now and again
still, but the frost was a foot deep in the
ground now, and no chance even Of this
solace for our friend Ernest.
Presently, for want of something to do,
he stroled down to the church, thinking he
would see how his sisters were getting on,
and whether Ellen, the youngest and most
companonable of the three, would feel dis
posed to leave her plous labor and come for
little walk with him instead.
He walked in at the open church door I'M
noticed 1t was an ugly whtewashed struc-
ture, with heavy galleries running between
the round Norman pillars and great dark
oaken Deams. stained and blackened with
age reaching across the roof. A church
that might with care and money have been
restored into something handsome and in
teresting, but, in its neglected condition,
was marvel of unmitigated uglin ess.
At present it was not only ugly. but des-
perately untidy Great heaps OF evergleens
INSTRUCTED the aisle, trails of half-fnished
wreaths, yards of scarlet flannel flecked
with cottonwood texts. imperfectly put to-
gether, holly berries gummed into sacred
devices, aud everlasting, tied UP in bundles,
were laid along the passage up the nave or