rty thickens. Sir Adam
and Colonel Ferguson dined.

_December_ 30.--Wrote and wrought hard, then went out a drive with Mr.
and Mrs. Percival; and went round by the lake. If my days of good
fortune should ever return I will lay out some pretty rides at
Abbotsford.

Last day of an eventful year; much evil and some good; but especially
the courage to endure what Fortune sends without becoming a pipe for her
fingers.[437]

It is _not_ the last day of the year, but to-morrow being Sunday we hold
our festival of neighbours to-day instead. The Fergusons came _en
masse_, and we had all the usual appliances of mirth and good cheer. Yet
our party, like the chariot-wheels of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, dragged
heavily.

Some of the party grow old and infirm; others thought of the absence of
the hostess, whose reception of her guests was always kind. We did as
well as we could, however.

"It's useless to murmur and pout--
There's no good in making ado;
'Tis well the old year is out,
And time to begin a new."

_December_ 31.--It must be allowed that the regular recurrence of annual
festivals among the same individuals has, as life advances, something in
it that is melancholy. We meet on such occasions like the survivors of
some perilous expedition, wounded and weakened ourselves, and looking
through the diminished ranks of those who remain, while we think of
those who are no more. Or they are like the feasts of the Caribs, in
which they held that the pale and speechless phantoms of the deceased
appeared and mingled with the living. Yet where shall we fly from vain
repining? Or why should we give up the comfort of seeing our friends,
because they can no longer be to us, or we to them, what we once were to
each other?

FOOTNOTES:

[420] During the winter of 1826-7 Sir Walter suffered great pain (enough
to have disturbed effectually any other man's labours, whether official
or literary) from successive attacks of rheumatism, which seems to have
been fixed on him by the wet sheets of one of his French inns; and his
Diary contains, besides, various indications that his constitution was
already shaking under the fatigue to which he had subjected it.
Formerly, however great the quantity of work he put through his hands,
his evenings were almost all reserved for the light reading of an
elbow-chair, or the enjoyment of his family and friends. Now he seemed
to grudge every minute that was not spent at his desk. The li