e chestnut up the wooden steps and into
the club-room, and rearing him on the dining-table. Then came a
leaping-match over a ten-railed fence, resulting in the barking of
some shins and the demolition of sundry panels of rail. Joe Keating,
the wildest rider I ever knew, had emptied his tumbler too often, and
insisted on running his horse home through the woods. An hour after
he was overtaken trudging along the road, perfectly sober, with the
saddle on his shoulders and the bridle over his arm.

"Why, Joe, where's your horse?"

"Dead!" was the laconic reply.

Sure enough. He had run full against a huge pine, and the horse had
gone down with a broken skull. He never tried it again.

Christmas Eve has come at last, and the old plantation is in all its
glory. Carriage after carriage has deposited its freight of blooming
girls and merry-eyed children at the broad, open hall-door. There is
not a vacant stall in the stables, nor an unoccupied bedroom among all
the seventeen of the spacious mansion. The broad dinner-table is
set diagonally in the long dining-room, and to-morrow, at least, the
guests will have to take two turns at filling its twenty seats, while
the children go through the same manoeuvre in the pantry. Where they
will all sleep to-night is a mystery which none can unravel save the
busy, hospitable "lady of the manor;" but it makes little
difference, for there will be little sleeping done. The day passes
in riding-parties and rowing-parties and similar amusements, as
each freely follows the bent of his inclination. "Brass," the negro
fiddler, has been summoned, and "Newport" comes with his stirrup and
steel for the "triangle" accompaniment, and the merry feet of the
dancers are soon keeping time to the homely but inspiriting music. The
"German" and the "Boston" have not usurped the places of the old-time
cotillon, quadrille and Virginia reel, and the dance is often varied
by romping games of "Blindman's Buff," "Move-House" and "Stage-Coach,"
in which old and young unite with equal zest.

But this is not the limit of the fun. From time immemorial Christmas
Eve has been licensed for the performance of all sorts of tricks,
and demure little faces are flitting about convulsed by the effort to
conceal the merry sense of mischief. The stockings are duly hung for
Saint Nicholas, and the holly, with its glossy leaves and scarlet
berries, stands ready to be planted in the parlor, to bloom to-morrow
into all kinds of