I go to town almost daily, starting at about
eleven, and reaching Southport again at a little past live; by which time
it is quite dark, and continues so till nearly eight in the morning.
Christmas time has been marked by few characteristics. For a week or two
previous to Christmas day, the newspapers contained rich details
respecting market-stalls and butchers' shops,--what magnificent carcasses
of prize oxen and sheep they displayed. . . . .
The Christmas Waits came to us on Christmas eve, and on the day itself,
in the shape of little parties of boys or girls, singing wretched
doggerel rhymes, and going away well pleased with the guerdon of a penny
or two. Last evening came two or three older choristers at pretty near
bedtime, and sang some carols at our door. They were psalm tunes,
however. Everybody with whom we have had to do, in any manner of
service, expects a Christmas-box; but, in most cases, a shilling is quite
a satisfactory amount. We have had holly and mistletoe stuck up on the
gas-fixtures and elsewhere about the house.
On the mantel-piece in the coroner's court the other day, I saw corked
and labelled phials, which it may be presumed contained samples of
poisons that have brought some poor wretches to their deaths, either by
murder or suicide. This court might be wrought into a very good and
pregnant description, with its grimy gloom illuminated by a conical
skylight, constructed to throw daylight down on corpses; its greasy
Testament covered over with millions of perjured kisses; the coroner
himself, whose life is fed on all kinds of unnatural death; its
subordinate officials, who go about scenting murder, and might be
supposed to have caught the scent in their own garments; its stupid,
brutish juries, settling round corpses like flies; its criminals, whose
guilt is brought face to face with them here, in closer contact than at
the subsequent trial.
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