To these, the striking of the Cathedral
clock, and the cawing of the rooks from the Cathedral tower, are
like voices of their nursery time. To such as these, it has
happened in their dying hours afar off, that they have imagined
their chamber-floor to be strewn with the autumnal leaves fallen
from the elm-trees in the Close: so have the rustling sounds and
fresh scents of their earliest impressions revived when the circle
of their lives was very nearly traced, and the beginning and the
end were drawing close together.
Seasonable tokens are about. Red berries shine here and there in
the lattices of Minor Canon Corner; Mr. and Mrs. Tope are daintily
sticking sprigs of holly into the carvings and sconces of the
Cathedral stalls, as if they were sticking them into the coat-
button-holes of the Dean and Chapter. Lavish profusion is in the
shops: particularly in the articles of currants, raisins, spices,
candied peel, and moist sugar. An unusual air of gallantry and
dissipation is abroad; evinced in an immense bunch of mistletoe
hanging in the greengrocer's shop doorway, and a poor little
Twelfth Cake, culminating in the figure of a Harlequin--such a very
poor little Twelfth Cake, that one would rather called it a Twenty-
fourth Cake or a Forty-eighth Cake--to be raffled for at the
pastrycook's, terms one shilling per member. Public amusements are
not wanting. The Wax-Work which made so deep an impression on the
reflective mind of the Emperor of China is to be seen by particular
desire during Christmas Week only, on the premises of the bankrupt
livery-stable-keeper up the lane; and a new grand comic Christmas
pantomime is to be produced at the Theatre: the latter heralded by
the portrait of Signor Jacksonini the clown, saying 'How do you do
to-morrow?' quite as large as life, and almost as miserably.
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