rs hidden
'Neath his curls of living gold;
And he asks them, "Is she coming?"
But ere any one can speak,
The white arms of her twin brother
Are once more about her neck.

Then they all come round her greeting;
But she might have well denied
That her beautiful young sister
Is the poor pale child that died;
And the careful look hath vanished
From her father's tearless face,
And she does not know her mother
Till she feels the old embrace.

Oh, from that ecstatic dreaming
Must she ever wake again,
To the cold and cheerless contrast----
To a life of lonely pain?
But her Maker's sternest servant
To her side on tiptoe stept;
Told his message in a whisper,----
And she stirred not as she slept!

Now the Christmas morn was breaking
With a dim, uncertain hue,
And the chilling breeze of morning
Came the broken window through;
And the hair upon her forehead,
Was it lifted by the blast,
Or the brushing wings of Seraphs,
With their burden as they pass'd?

All the festive bells were chiming
To the myriad hearts below;
But that deep sleep still hung heavy
On the sleeper's thoughtful brow.
To her quiet face the dream-light
Had a lingering glory given;
But the child _herself_ was keeping
Her Christmas-day in Heaven!

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE. BY CHARLES DICKENS.

I have kept (among a store of jovial, genial, heart-stirring returns of
the season) some very dismal Christmasses. I have kept Christmas in
Constantinople, at a horrible Pera hotel, where I attempted the
manufacture of a plum-pudding from the maccaroni-soup they served me for
dinner, mingled with some Zante currants, and a box of figs I had brought
from Smyrna; and where I sat, until very late at night, endeavoring to
persuade myself that it was cold and "Christmassy" (though it wasn't),
drinking Levant wine, and listening to the howling of the dogs outside,
mingled with the clank of a portable fire-engine, which some soldiers were
carrying to one of those extensive conflagrations which never happen in
Constantinople oftener than three times a day. I have kept Christmas on
board a Boulogne packet, in company with a basin, several despair-stricken
females, and a damp steward; who, to all our inquiries whether we should
be "in soon," had the one unvarying answer of "pretty near," to give. I
have kept Christmas, when a boy, at a French boarding-school, where they
gave me nothing but lentils an