Old Christmas Recalled - online book

Washington Irving's description of Old Christmas, Illustrated

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	THE CHRISTMAS DINNER	139
	prosperity and sunshine, and had flourished on to a hearty and florid old age; whilst the poor parson, on the contrary, had dried and withered away, among dusty tomes, in the silence and shadows of his study. Still there seemed to be a spark of almost extinguished fire, feebly glim­mering in the bottom of his soul; and as the Squire hinted at a sly story of the parson and a pretty milkmaid, whom they once met on the banks of the Isis, the old gentleman made an " alphabet of faces," which, as far as I could de­cipher his physi­ognomy, I verily believe was in-