It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.

The sun—the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man—burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray. It lighted up the room where the murdered woman lay.

Around and around the house the leaves fall thick - but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow.

The years glide by silently.

You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!

Approach me again, you — you — you Heep of infamy," gasped Mr. Micawber, " and if your head is human, I'll break it.

My Uriah,' said Mrs. Heep, 'has looked forward to this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall ever be,' said Mrs. Heep.