Christmas Penny Readings: Original Sketches for the Season

Who wouldn’t be poor
(Not I, I’m sure),
To enjoy such a feast for a copper?
Split open – butter’d —
Oh, joy ne’er utter’d!
And pepper’d – and – “what a whopper?”

Just look at the steam,
At the can’s bright gleam,
And look at the vendor cheery;
And hark to his cry,
Now low, now high,
Speaking feasts for the traveller weary.

Go pick yourself,
And spend your pelf,
Three pound for twopence – they ask it —
With eyes full winking;
And while you’re thinking,
The scale’s tipp’d into your basket.

And you who’d wive,
Pray, just look alive,
And before you declare each feeling,
Watch your little mouse
On her way through the house,
And catch her potato peeling.

You know of the cheese,
And Pimlico’s ease,
When he pick’d out a wife by the paring;
But a better plan
For an every-day man —
Though an innovation most daring —

Is to watch the play
Of the knife, and the way
That the coat of potato’s falling;
Just look out for waste,
And beware of haste,
For thrift’s not the meanest calling.

Kidney, regent, fluke,
Fit for earl or duke,
Or a banquet for Queen Victoria;
Own’d I but lyre,
I’d never tire,
Of singing to thy praise a “Gloria.”

May you mealy wax,
Never tried by tax,
Ever free from Aphis vastator.
Of fruits the king,
Its praise we’ll sing,
Potent, pot-boy, “potater!”

Chapter Sixteen

Spun Yarn

Uncle Joe came and spent Christmas with us last year; a fine, dry, mahogany-visaged old man-o’-war’s-man as ever hitched up his trousers, and called it, “hauling in slack.”

“Forty-five years’ boy and man, I’ve been a sailor,” he’d say; “rated AB, I am; and AB I hope to keep till I’m sewed up in my hammock and sent overboard; for none of your rotting in harbour for me, thanky.”

Uncle Joe ran away to sea when quite a boy, and he had served enough years in the Royal Navy to have been an admiral, but what with our scheme of promotion, and some want of ability on the old fellow’s part, he was a first-rate able seaman, but he never got a step farther. One can always picture him in his blue trousers and loose guernsey, with its wide turn-down collar, his cap set right back on his head, and the name of his ship on the band, in gilt letters, while his big clasp-knife hung by the white lanyard round his waist. Clean, neat, and active, the sinewy old chap came rolling in after my father; neck open, eyes bright, and face shining and good-humoured.

“Cold, cold, cold,” said my father, entering the room where we were clustered round the fire. “Freezes sharp; and, bless my heart, there’s a great ball of snow sticking to my boot,” saying which, the old gentleman, who had just been round the farmyard for the last time that night, went back into the passage and rubbed off the snow, while Uncle Joe, chuckling and laughing, walked up to the fireplace and scraped his shoes on the front bar, so that the pieces of hard snow began sputtering and cissing as they fell in the fire.

“Cold?” said Uncle Joe, filling his pipe, and then shutting his brass tobacco-box with a snap; “Cold? ’taint cold a bit, no more nor that’s hot,” and then, stooping down, he thrust a finger and thumb in between the bottom bars, caught hold of a piece of glowing coal and laid it upon the bowl of his pipe, which means soon ignited the tobacco within. “My hands are hard enough for anything,” he growled, taking the place made for him beside the fire, when he tucked his cap beneath the chair, and then took one leg upon his knee, and nursed it as he smoked for awhile in silence.

“Now, come, Christmas-night,” cried my father, “and you’re all as quiet as so many mice. What’s it to be, Joe – the old thing?”

“Well, yes,” growled my uncle; “I won’t say no to a tot o’ grog,” and then he smoked on abstractedly, while my father mixed for the wanderer whom he had not seen for five years.

“Wish to goodness I’d brought a hammock,” said my uncle, at last. “I did try whether I couldn’t lash the curtains together last night, but they’re too weak.”

“I should think so, indeed,” exclaimed my mother. “That chintz, too. How can you be so foolish, Joe?”

My uncle smoked on, apparently thinking with great disgust of the comfortably-furnished bedroom in which he had to sleep, as compared with the main-deck of his frigate.

“But ’taint cold,” he all at once burst out.

“Three or four degrees of frost, at all events,” said my father.

“Pooh; what’s that?” said my uncle. “That’s hot weather, that is. How should you like to sleep where yours and your mate’s breath all turns into a fall of snow, and comes tumbling on to you? How should you like to nibble your rum as if it was sugar-candy, and never touch nothing of iron for fear of burning your fingers like, and leaving all the skin behind? This ain’t cold.”

“Here, draw round close,” cried my father; “throw on another log or two, and Uncle Joe will spin you a yarn.”

The fire was replenished, and as the many-hued flames leaped and danced, and the sparks flew up the chimney, every face was lit up with the golden glow. The wind roared round the house, and sung in the chimney, but the red curtains were closely-drawn, the table was well spread with those creature comforts so oft seen at the genial season, and closing tightly in – chair against chair – we all watched for the next opening of Uncle Joe’s oracular lips. And we had not long to wait; for, taking his pipe out of his mouth, he began to point with the stem, describe circles, and flourish it oratorically, as he once more exclaimed —

“’Taint cold; not a bit! How should you like to spend Christmas up close aside the North Pole?”

No one answering with anything further than a shiver, the old tar went on: —

“I can’t spin yarns, I can’t, for I allus gets things in a tangle and can’t find the ends again, but I’ll tell you about going up after Sir John Franklin.”

“Hear, hear!” said my father, and Uncle Joe tasted his grog, and then winked very solemnly at my father, as much as to say “That’s it exact.”

“Little more rum?” hinted my father. Uncle Joe winked with his other eye and shook his head and went on: —