My carol would not be closed without my Christmas wishes. And therefore a merry Christmas-tide to all gentle people, and a blotting out of all enmities on Christmas morn. A merry Christmas to all, saints and sinners. A merry Christmas to Aurelia and Celeste basking in the sunshine, and to Bridget in the shade. A merry Christmas to my enemy, whom I forgive, and to my friend, in whose heart I live. A merry Christmas to all children whose little lips will syllable the sweet utterances of childhood. A merry Christmas to the homeless, and the outcasts, and the Pariahs--God help them. A merry Christmas to my creditors, and many returns of the same. A merry Christmas and a full wassail bowl to all good fellows. A merry Christmas to the TRIBUNE and all its readers, and, Mr. Editor, a merry Christmas to you upon your tripod, and may your stockings be well filled.
And "Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, and good will to men."
The closing of the year offers some epistolary temptations which it is hard to resist. One fiend says "write;" the other says "don't."
One fiend shows me the admirable things I might say, as, for instance: The old man going out sadly, and the young man coming in gleefully. This, done up with allusions to biers and shrouds and angels and roses, would be a stunner.
Again, I could make a strong point out of the hour-glass, with the grains of sand slipping through, skilfully keeping up the interest until I got to the last grain, which I could manipulate up to a thrilling denouement.
And then what a touching picture I might draw of 1867 frozen on his bier, his crown tumbled off and his sceptre broken; and what a bacchanalian revelry I might paint in introducing the birth of 1868.
And again, I might draw a strong draft on the tears of tender readers by recalling recollections of the Old year and casting the horoscope of the New.
And think of the magnificent material I might have to use in doing all this: the dark shores of Eternity, the waves of Styx, old Charon, all the cheerful paraphernalia of the undertaker, and the appliances of the _accoucheur_, which would form the _piece de resistance_, not to speak of the garnitures of regrets, tears, sighs, resolutions, prophesies, flowers, cherubs, broken harp-strings and other properties which might be mixed in indiscriminately, and with a sort of blue-fire effect, which would be telling.