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throned on a flowery rise,
One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled.
    Well, not exactly.
    This was a man, and he was sitting in one of the squatter chairs leaning against the slabs, and a curious looking figure he was to see in such a situation. I knew him at once; he was the Genius of Christmas. There he was, holly wreath, white beard, laughing countenance, and all the attributes complete.
    I said, “Good day, old man —how are you?” for I felt astonishingly bold somehow. He was reading in a large book, the print of which seemed possessed with life, and to be constantly moving and changing; but when I made this remark he raised his head, and gazed at me with “a countenance more in sorrow than in anger,” but did not speak.
    “I know who you are,” I went on; “you’re the Genius of Christmas.”
    “I am,” he said.
    “And you’re going to show me all manner of pictures and scenes of human life, and I shall awake by-and-by and find that it has all been a dream; and I shall be very good and charitable all the rest of my life.”
    “Not you,” said the Spirit; “you couldn’t be charitable if you tried.”
    “Spirit,” I said, “that’s very hard, why could I not be charitable if I tried?”
    “When you couldn’t show mercy to a poor old ghost who’s been harped upon, and written about, and carolled over,—there, I’ll say no more; but man’s inhumanity to me makes a Christmas Spirit mourn.”
    “Spirit,” I said, “you mistake, surely, I who esteem and venerate the Christmas season.”
    “You do, do you? Now, answer me truly, were you not trying to compose a Christmas tale as you lay in that hammock?”
    “I confess it, I was.”
    “And you say you venerate me; pretty veneration I call that, but I’ll be revenged. I’ll stand it no longer. I’ll read Christmas poetry to you for the next three hundred and sixty-five days.”
    “Spirit, do not judge me unheard; be calm.”
    “Be calm! Who could be calm under such provocation? Listen! We are seven,—that’s Wordsworth isn’t it,—never mind, as I said before, we are seven; seven spirits, one for each day in the week. I’m Saturday. When Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, as it does this year, I have to attend to it. Now every leap year one of us has to do double duty, and as next year is a leap year I am told off for the extra day’s work; but there is a chance for any of us to get out of this extra work, thus,” —he went on as though quoting from some rule or regulation, —“If a Spirit when in the execution of its duty, can find a place upon earth inhabited by Christian, or supposedly Christian people, where no Christmas Literature is to be found upon Christmas Day, he shall be able to claim exemption from extra duty on leap-year, and the Spirit following him shall do his work.”
    “Spend your Christmas here,” I cried, starting from the hammock. “Search the house from garret to basement (it was only a two-roomed hut), and see if you can find a Christmas magazine or paper.”
    “That Christmas story,” the Spirit sternly replied, “That Christmas story, which shall never see the light, by its mere presence in your idiotic skull has spoilt my chance of a holiday, and I wanted to put Sunday into it”—the long faced sanctimonious hypocrite. “But I will be revenged, revenged!”
    “Spirit,” I cried, casting myself at its feet and clutching its robe, “have mercy; I am not strong-nerved. I could not bear to be transported to regions of ice and snow, and see poor people kind and generous to one another, and pretty girls playing at blindman’s-buff, and all the many signs you would show me—have mercy!”
    “Can you ask it knowing that during the whole of the past year I have wandered to and fro seeking for a place wherein to rest on this twenty fifth day of December? I marked this spot, noted the dense stolidity, not to say stupidity, visible in your face, and I said here is a place where I shall be safe; nicely