offers, to take any necessary part in what may be going on, I am able,
as it were, to sit quietly alone, and look down upon life from a
second-floor window, delighting myself with my own speculations, and
weaving the various threads I gather, into webs of varying kind and
quality. Yet, as I have already said in another form, I am not the
last to rush down stairs and into the street, upon occasion of an
accident or a row in it, or a conflagration next door. I may just
mention, too, that having many years ago formed the Swedenborgian
resolution of never growing old, I am as yet able to flatter myself
that I am likely to keep it.

In proof of this, if further garrulity about myself can be pardoned, I
may state that every year, as Christmas approaches, I begin to grow
young again. At least I judge so from the fact that a strange,
mysterious pleasure, well known to me by this time, though little
understood and very varied, begins to glow in my mind with the first
hint, come from what quarter it may, whether from the church service,
or a bookseller's window, that the day of all the year is at hand--is
climbing up from the under-world. I enjoy it like a child. I buy the
Christmas number of every periodical I can lay my hands on, especially
those that have pictures in them; and although I am not very fond of
plum-pudding, I anticipate with satisfaction the roast beef and the
old port that ought always to accompany it. And above all things, I
delight in listening to stories, and sometimes in telling them.

It amuses me to find what a welcome nobody I am amongst young people;
for they think I take no heed of them, and don't know what they are
doing; when, all the time, I even know what they are thinking. They
would wonder to know how often I feel exactly as they do; only I think
the feeling is a more earnest and beautiful thing to me than it can be