"Well, father, I don't believe the Browns are a bit better off than we
are; and yet, when I spent the day with young Brown, we cooked all sorts
of messes in the afternoon; and he wasted twice as much rum and brandy
and lemons in his trash as I should want to make good punch of. He was
quite surprised, too, when I told him that our mince-pies were kept shut
up in the larder, and only brought out at meal-times, and then just one
apiece; he said they had mince-pies always going, and he got one
whenever he liked. Old Brown never blows up about that sort of thing; he
likes Adolphus to enjoy himself in the holidays, particularly at
Christmas."
The speaker was a boy--if I may be allowed to use the word in speaking
of an individual whose jackets had for some time past been resigned to a
younger member of his family, and who daily, in the privacy of his own
apartment, examined his soft cheeks by the aid of his sisters'
"back-hair glass." He was a handsome boy, too; tall, and like
David--"ruddy, and of a fair countenance;" and his face, though clouded
then, bore the expression of general amiability. He was the eldest son
in a large young family, and was being educated at one of the best
public schools. He did not, it must be confessed, think either small
beer or small beans of himself; and as to the beer and beans that his
family thought of him, I think it was pale ale and kidney-beans at
least.
When the lords of the creation of all ages can find nothing else to do,
they generally take to eating and drinking; and so it came to pass that
our hero had set his mind upon brewing a jorum of punch, and sipping it
with an accompaniment of mince-pies; and Paterfamilias had not been
quietly settled to his writing for half an hour, when he was disturbed
by an application for the necessary ingredients. These he had refused,
quietly explaining that he could not afford to waste his French brandy,
etc., in school-boy cookery, and ending with, "You see the reason, my
dear boy?"
To which the dear boy replied as above, and concluded with the
disrespectful (not to say ungrateful) hint, "Old Brown never blows up
about that sort of thing; he likes Adolphus to enjoy himself in the
holidays."
Whereupon Paterfamilias made answer, in the mildly deprecating tone in
which the elder sometimes do answer the younger in these topsy-turvy
days:--
"That's quite a different case. Don't you see, my boy, that Adolphus
Brown is an only son, and you have nine brothers and sisters? If you
have punch and mince-meat to play with, there is no reason why Tom
should not have it, and James, and Edward, and William, and Benjamin,
and Jack. And then there are your sisters. Twice the amount of the
Browns' mince-meat would not serve you. The Christmas bills, too, are
very heavy, and I have a great many calls on my purse; and you must be
reasonable. Don't you see?"
"Well, father----" began the boy; but his father interrupted him. He
knew the unvarying beginning of a long grumble, and dreading the
argument, cut it short.
"I have decided. You must amuse yourself some other way. And just
remember that young Brown's is quite another case. He is an only son."
Whereupon Paterfamilias went off to his study and his sermon; and his
son, like the Princess in Andersen's story of the swineherd, was left
outside to sing,--
_"O dearest Augustine,
All's clean gone away!"_
Not that he did say that--that was the princess's song--what he said
was,--
"_I wish I were an only son!_"
This was rather a vain wish, for round the dining-room fire (where he
soon joined them) were gathered his nine brothers and sisters, who, to
say the truth, were not looking much more lively and cheerful than he.
And yet (of all days in the year on which to be doleful and
dissatisfied!) this was Christmas Eve.
Now I know that the idea of dulness or discomfort at Christmas is a very
improper one, particularly in a story. We all know how every little boy
in a story-book spends the Christmas holidays. First, there is the large
hamper of good things sent by grandpapa, which is as inexhaustible as
Fortunatus's purse, and contains everything, from a Norfolk turkey to
grapes from the grandpaternal vinery. There is the friend who gives a
guinea to each member of the family, and sees who will spend it best.
There are the godpapas and godmammas, who might almost be fairy sponsors
from the number of expensive gifts that they bring upon the scene. The
uncles and aunts are also liberal.
One night is devoted to a magic-lantern (which has a perfect focus),
another to the pantomime, a third to a celebrated conjurer, a fourth to
a Christmas tree and juvenile ball.
The happy youth makes himself sufficiently ill with plum-pudding, to
testify to the reader how good it was, and how much there was of it; but
recovers in time to fall a victim to the negus and trifle at supper for
the same reason. He is neither fatigued with late hours, nor surfeited
with sweets; or if he is, we do not hear of it.
But as this is a strictly candid history, I will at once confess the
truth, on behalf of my hero and his brothers and sisters. They had spent
the morning in decorating the old church, in pricking holly about the
house, and in making a mistletoe bush. Then in the afternoon they had
tasted the Christmas soup, and seen it given out; they had put a
finishing touch to the snowman by crowning him with holly, and had
dragged the yule-logs home from the carpenter's. And now, the early tea
being over, Paterfamilias had gone to finish his sermon for to-morrow;
his friend was shut up in his room; and Materfamilias was in hers, with
one of those painful headaches which even Christmas will not always keep
away. So the ten children were left to amuse themselves, and they found
it rather a difficult matter.
"Here's a nice Christmas!" said our hero. He had turned his youngest
brother out of the arm-chair, and was now lying in it with his legs
over the side. "Here's a nice Christmas! A fellow might just as well be
at school. I wonder what Adolphus Brown would think of being cooped up
with a lot of children like this! It's his party to-night, and he's to
have champagne and ices. I wish I were an only son."
"Thank you," said a chorus of voices from the floor. They were all
sprawling about on the hearth-rug, pushing and struggling like so many
kittens in a sack, and every now and then with a grumbled
remonstrance:--
"Don't, Jack! you're treading on me."
"You needn't take all the fire, Tom."
"Keep your legs to yourself, Benjamin."
"It wasn't I," etc., with occasionally the feebler cry of a small
sister,--
"Oh! you boys are so rough."
"And what are you girls, I wonder?" inquired the proprietor of the
arm-chair, with cutting irony. "Whiney piney, whiney piney. I wish there
were no such things as brothers and sisters!"
"You _wish_ WHAT?" said a voice from the shadow by the door, as deep and
impressive as that of the ghost in Hamlet.
The ten sprang up; but when the figure came into the firelight, they saw
that it was no ghost, but Paterfamilias's old college friend, who spent
most of his time abroad, and who, having no home or relatives of his
own, had come to spend Christmas at his friend's vicarage. "You wish
_what_?" he repeated.
"Well, brothers and sisters are a bore," was the reply. "One or two
would be all very well; but just look, here are ten of us; and it just
spoils everything. Whatever one does, the rest must do; whatever there
is, the rest must share; whereas, if a fellow was an only son, he would
have the whole--and by all the rules of arithmetic, one is better than a
tenth."
"And by the same rules, ten is better than one," said the friend.
"Sold again!" sang out Master Jack from the floor, and went head over
heels against the fender.
His brother boxed his ears with great promptitude; and went on--"Well, I
don't care; confess, sir; isn't it rather a nuisance?"
Paterfamilias's friend looked very grave, and said quietly, "I don't
think I am able to judge. I never had brother or sister but one, and he
was drowned at sea. Whatever I have had, I have had the whole of, and
would have given it away willingly for some one to give it to. I
remember that I got a lot of sticks at last, and cut heads and faces to
all of them, and carved names on their sides, and called them my
brothers and sisters. If you want to know what I thought a nice number
for a fellow to have, I can only say that I remember carving
twenty-five. I used to stick them in the ground and talk to them. I have
been only, and lonely, and alone, all my life, and have never felt the
nuisance you speak of."
"I know what would be very nice," insinuated one of the sisters.
"What?"
"If you wouldn't mind telling us a very short story till supper-time."
"Well, what sort of a story is it to be?"
"Any sort," said Richard; "only not too true, if you please. I don't
like stories like tracts. There was an usher at a school I was at, and
he used to read tracts about good boys and bad boys to the fellows on
Sunday afternoon. He always took out the real names, and put in the
names of the fellows instead. Those who had done well in the week, he
put in as good ones, and those who hadn't as the bad. He didn't like me,
and I was always put in as a bad boy, and I came to so many untimely
ends, I got sick of it. I was hanged twice, and transported once for
sheep stealing; I committed suicide one week, and broke into the bank
the next; I ruined three families, became a hopeless drunkard, and broke
the hearts of my twelve distinct parents. I used to beg him to let me
be reformed next week; but he said he never would till I did my Cæsar
better. So, if you please, we'll have a story that can't be true."
"Very well," said the friend, laughing; "but if it isn't true, may I put
you in? All the best writers, you know, draw their characters from their
friends, nowadays. May I put you in?"
"Oh, certainly!" said Richard, placing himself in front of the fire,
putting his feet on the hob, and stroking his curls with an air which
seemed to imply that whatever he was put into would be highly favored.
The rest struggled, and pushed, and squeezed themselves into more modest
but equally comfortable quarters; and after a few moments of thought,
Paterfamilias's friend commenced the story of