Christmas Penny Readings: Original Sketches for the Season

It carves out a furrow
Of churning wreck;
While, as if at its beck,
The foam-capped streams
Loose the Ice-king’s beams,
And each crystal fragment, with wild weird gleams,
Now sinks – now rises,
As each stream still prises,
Till the loosen’d river in fury rolls
Away through the valley; while icy scrolls
Are swept from the bank, where the snow lay heavy,
And snow-drift and ice joins the West’s rude levy;
Which at barrier scouts,
At each rock mound shouts;
Sweeping along towards the land of the plain,
Tingeing the waters with many a stain;
Foaming along in an eddying sweep,
And gliding in speed where the flood ploughs deep,
Rooting the reeds from their hold on the bank,
And widening its track where the marsh lies dank.

Away tears the river
With an earthquake’s speed,
Over the snow-cover’d lowland mead,
Laughing aloud at each reckless deed,
As the stricken farmers the ruin heed,
Whirling along on its bosom the reed
And the sharp, jagg’d ice and the harmless bead,
With the unchained course of a wild-born steed,
Till the hills where it passes quiver.

Away and away, and still onward away,
And there’s ruin and havoc in lowland this day;
For the waters brown
In their rage tear down,
Menacing shipping and threatening the town;
They’ve beat down the weir,
And dash’d at each pier,
And swept o’er the bank to the widespread mere,
Whose icy sheet,
As though torn by heat,
Has fallen in fragments where torrents meet;
While now for the bridge,
There’s an icy ridge
On the river’s breast,
Swept along by the West,
Whose might shall the strong beams and deep piles wrest,
Till the bridge goes down,
By the flooded town,
Where the lowing kine and the penn’d flocks drown.

But the damm’d stream rages,
For naught assuages
Its thirst for ruin;
And again undoing
The toil of years,
It hurries along till the rocks it wears.

And now there’s a crash and a mighty rattle
As a stalwart mound gives the river battle;
And soon engaging,
The waves leap raging,
Where the mound is gash’d,
By the churn’d ice dash’d,
While from out of the dam,
With the force of a ram,
Comes each huge, strong beam,
On the breast of the stream,
With the speed of an arrow,
Where the banks are narrow;
But the rocky face
Stays the furied race,
As round it the waters in madness enlace;
Lashing and tearing
With rage unsparing,
To beat down the stay
In the deadly fray;
And then, for more ruin, to hurry away;
But the hill stouthearted
The water has parted,
And away in a sever’d stream they tear
Like famish’d lions fresh from their lair,
Devouring, destroying, and bearing away
Each barrier, bank, or each timber’d stay;
Till they slacken their race by the sandy verge
Of the parent sea, whose wild, restless surge
Lashes the shore.
Towards her breast leap the rivers in eager guise,
Lost in the billows that hurrying rise
To welcome the treasures they pour.

Chapter Ten

A Horror of Horrors

“Very, very glad to see you, my boy,” said my friend Broxby, as I reached his house quite late on Christmas-eve, when he introduced me to his wife, a most amiable woman of an extremely pleasing countenance; to Major and Mrs Major Carruthers, a very pimply-faced gentleman, with a languishing wife troubled with an obliquity of vision, which worried me greatly that evening from her eye seeming to be gazing upon me, while its owner wore a perpetual smile upon her lip. Mrs Major Carruthers’ brother was also there, a young man, like myself, of a poetic turn, and troubled with headaches, besides several others, ladies and gentlemen, who occupied divers relative distances in connection with my friend Broxby and his charming wife.

“Why you’re as nervous and bashful as ever, my boy,” said Broxby, in his rough, good-natured way, and I tried to laugh it off, particularly as it was said before so many people in the well-lit drawing-room; but even before the fearful shock my nerves received I always was of a terribly nervous temperament, a temperament which makes me extremely susceptible.

As I am now forty I have given up all hopes of ever getting the better of it, even as I have felt compelled to give up the expectation of whiskers, curling hair, and – well no, not yet, for, as the poet says, “We may be happy yet,” and some fond, loving breast may yet throb for me in the future. I may add that my hair is fair, my face slightly freckled, and that I have a slight lisp, but it is so slight that you do not notice it when you get used to me.