Christmas Eve has come at last, and the old plantation is in all its glory.  Carriage after carriage has deposited its freight of blooming girls and merry-eyed children at the broad, open hall-door.  There is not a vacant stall in the stables, nor an unoccupied bedroom among all the seventeen of the spacious mansion.  The broad dinner-table is set diagonally in the long dining-room, and to-morrow, at least, the guests will have to take two turns at filling its twenty seats, while the children go through the same manoeuvre in the pantry.  Where they will all sleep to-night is a mystery which none can unravel save the busy, hospitable “lady of the manor;” but it makes little difference, for there will be little sleeping done.  The day passes in riding-parties and rowing-parties and similar amusements, as each freely follows the bent of his inclination.  “Brass,” the negro fiddler, has been summoned, and “Newport” comes with his stirrup and steel for the “triangle” accompaniment, and the merry feet of the dancers are soon keeping time to the homely but inspiriting music.  The “German” and the “Boston” have not usurped the places of the old-time cotillon, quadrille and Virginia reel, and the dance is often varied by romping games of “Blindman’s Buff,” “Move-House” and “Stage-Coach,” in which old and young unite with equal zest.

But this is not the limit of the fun.  From time immemorial Christmas Eve has been licensed for the performance of all sorts of tricks, and demure little faces are flitting about convulsed by the effort to conceal the merry sense of mischief.  The stockings are duly hung for Saint Nicholas, and the holly, with its glossy leaves and scarlet berries, stands ready to be planted in the parlor, to bloom to-morrow into all kinds of rich flowers and gift-fruit.  At nine o’clock the work of arranging the Christmas tree begins.  The ladies retire, and after a quiet smoke by the roaring hall-fire the gentlemen follow suit.  To bed, but not to sleep.  Jack Parker is the first man ready, and bounces into the best bed to secure the softest place; but the bars have been skillfully removed, and he is the centre of a rather mixed pile on the floor.  I feel another, to be sure that all is right, and slip cozily between the sheets, but some graceless little wretch has placed a walking-cane “athwart-ships,” which nearly breaks my back.  None escape.  Some find their sheets strewed with chaff or cockle-burs, some find no sheets at all.  At midnight a fearful roar comes from the girls’ room, followed by pretty shrieks and terrible confusion; but it is only the old Cochin rooster, which was slyly shut up in the empty chimney-place before they retired, indulging in his first crow.