portion of the last evening of the old year
in arranging my affairs. I addressed a
pathetic letter, and a goldfinch, to the
youngest Miss Clickitt but one (to be
delivered into her own hands by my friend,
in case I should fall), and I wrote another
letter for my mother, and made a disposition
of my property: which consisted of
books, some coloured engravings of Bamfylde
Moore Carew, Mrs. Shipton, and others, in a
florid style of art, and a rather choice collection
of marbles. While engaged in these last
duties, I suffered the keenest anguish, and
wept abundantly. The combat was to begin
with fists, but was to end any how. Dark
presentiments overshadowed my mind,
because I had heard, on reliable authority, that
Paynter (whose father was pay-master of
some regiment stationed in the sea-port
where the conflict impended), had a dirk and
meant the worst. I had no other arms,
myself, than a blank cartridge, of which
ammunition we used to get driblets from the
soldiers when they practised, by following
them up with tobacco, and bribing them with
pipes-full screwed in old copies, to pretend to
load and not to do it. This cartridge my
friend and second had specially recommended
me, on the combat's assuming a mortal
appearance, to explode on the fell Paynter:
which I, with some indefinite view of blowing
that gentleman up, had undertaken
to do, though the engineering details of the
operation were not at all adjusted. We
met in a sequestered trench, among the
fortifications. Paynter had access to some old
military stores, and appeared on the ground
in the regulation cap of a full-grown
Private of the Second Royal Veteran Battalion.—
I see the boy now, coming from among
the stinging-nettles in an angle of the trench,
and making my blood run cold by his terrible
appearance. Preliminaries were arranged,
and we were to begin the struggle—this
again was my express stipulation—on the
word being given, " The youngest Miss
Clickitt but one! " At this crisis, a
difference of opinion arose between the seconds,
touching the exact construction of that
article in the code of honor which prohibits
"hitting below the waistcoat;" and I rather
think it arose from my second's having
manoeuvred the whole of my waistcoat into
the neighbourhood of my chin. However
it arose, expressions were used which Paynter,
who I found had a very delicate sense of
honor, could not permit to pass. He
immediately dropped his guard, and appealed to
me whether it was not our duty most
reluctantly to forego our own gratification
until the two gentlemen in attendance on us
had established their honor? I warmly
assented; I did more; I immediately took my
friend aside, and lent him the cartridge. But,
so unworthy of our confidence were those
seconds that they declined, in spite alike of
our encouragements and our indignant
remonstrances, to engage. This made it plain
both to Paynter and myself, that we had but
one painful course to take; which was, to
leave them ("with loathing," Paynter said,
and I highly approved), and go away arm in
arm. He gave me to understand as we went
along that he too was a victim of the perfidy
of the youngest Miss Clickitt but one, and I
became exceedingly fond of him before we
parted.

And here is another New Year's Day coming
back, under the influence of the Wand
which is better than Harlequin's! What
New Year.'s Day is this? This is the New
Year's Day of the annual gathering of later
times at Boles's. Mr. Boles lives in a high,
bleak, Down-country, where the wind never
leaves off whistling all the year round, unless
it takes to roaring. Mr. Boles has chimney-
corners in his house, as big as other people's
rooms; Mr. Boles's larder is as the larder of
an amiable giant, and Mr. Boles's kitchen
corresponds thereto. In Mr. Boles's boudoirs sits
Miss Boles: a blessed creature: a Divinity.
In Mr. Boles's bed-chambers, is a ghost. In
Mr. Boles's house, in short, is everything
desirable—and under Mr. Boles's house, is Mr.
Boles's cellar. So many are the New Year's
Days I have passed at Mr. Boles's, that I
have won my way, like an enlisted Son of the
vanished French Republic one and indivisible,
through a regular series of promotions:
beginning with the non-commissioned
bedrooms, passing through the subaltern
bedrooms, ascending in the scale until, on the
New Year's Day now obedient to the Wand,
I inhabit the Field-Marshal bed-room. But,
where is Mr. Boles, now I have risen so high
in the service? Alack! I go out, now-a-days,
into the windy snow-drift, or the windy frost,
or windy rain, or windy sunshine—of a
certainty into the windy weather, let it be what
else it may—to look at Mr. Boles's tomb in
the little churchyard: where, while the avenue
of elms is gustily tossed and troubled, like
Life, the one dark yew-tree in the shadow of
the bell-tower is solemnly at rest, like Death.
And Miss Boles? She, too, is departed,
though only into the world of matrons, not of
shadows; and she is my hostess now; and she
is a blessed creature (in the byegone sense of
making the ground she walks on, worshipful),
no more; and I have outlived my passion for
her, and I perceive her appetite to be
healthy, and her nose to be red. What
of that? Are the seasons to stop for
me? There are Boleses coming on,
though under the different name into
which the blessed creature gone for ever,
(if she ever really came) sunk her own.
In the old Boles boudoirs, there are still
blessed creatures and divinities—to somebody,
though not to me. If I suspect that
the present non-commissioned officers and
subalterns don't love as I did when I held
those ranks, are not half as unselfishly faithful
as I was not half as tenderly devoted as I