er, where it was and is a statute holiday, Christmas
was universally celebrated. Essentially it was a children's day and
one of family reunions, and in those days when travelling was
expensive and tedious, this meant more than it does to-day. The
visitors received a joyous welcome, not a sort of empty every-day
one. Plum pudding, roast beef, and mince pies and nuts were the order
of the day, for beverage various kinds of drinks. Holly and mistletoe
and evergreens obtained in nearly every house; in fact it was a
joyous day from morn till night. Games of various kinds were played.
Toys for children, rudimentary toys and picture books, cheap, and
such as the too knowing children of to-day would turn up their little
noses at, and my goodness! the fun of the mistletoe and mulberry
tree! Spreading of course from British Columbia, but in sober earnest
to the immortal Charles Dickens' works, particularly the Pickwick
Club and the annual "Christmas Stories."

The holly now, as in England, generally used, is not indigenous, but
grown from introduced seed chiefly. The berried holly is now in great
demand all along the Pacific shores, and American purchasers
are eager to buy it. Curiously, it grows well in Victoria and
neighborhood, but fails as it grows south. Mistletoe, a parasite,
used of old in the mystic rites of the Druids, does not grow here,
but a species thereof comes from the States, which serves its usual
purpose, in spite of all moral reformers and the scientific maxims
of the dangers of bacteria (bacteria of love) incurred in and by
osculation. Who cares about this kind of danger when under the
mistletoe at Christmas--the fun and pleasure of obtaining it or at
"blindman's buff," and the pretended wish and effort not to be
caught. None of this in Victoria in 1850. How soon after?

Oh, the merry days when we were young! Turkeys were rare, but Dr.
Trimble had a turkey which he kept on his premises on Broad Street.
Daily he and Mrs. Trimble would visit his treasure, who with his
fantail erect and feathers vibrating and with a gobble-gobble and
proud step would show his pleasure at the meeting, but the doctor and
wife, although admiring and loving the proud and handsome bird, had
murderous thoughts in their "innards," and declared he would be a
splendid bird by Christmas for dinner, so in due course they invited
some half dozen friends to eat the turkey on Christmas Day. A few
days before Christmas, the doctor and wife, o