The skirmishers have evidently suffered disaster; for the firing becomes more and more distant, and at length dies from your hearing.  You are favored with a call from the improvident little boy, who requests you to grant him the privilege of collecting such of his unexploded fire-crackers as may be in your front yard, giving you, at the same time, the interesting information that they are to be made into “spit-devils.”  You are overwhelmed by a profound bow from the grocer’s lad as he passes your window, and you invite him in and beg that he will honor you by accepting half a dollar and a handful of doughnuts:—­the lady in the merino morning-wrapper has provided a cake-basket full for the occasion.  You are also waited on by the milkman, who, you are glad to see, is really flesh and blood, and not, as you have sometimes supposed, an unearthly bell-ringer who visited this sublunary sphere only at five A.M., and then for the sole purpose of disturbing your morning nap.  You are also complimented by the wood-man and wood-sawyer, an English sailor with a wooden leg, who once nearly swamped you in a tornado of nautical interjections, on your presenting him a new pea-jacket.  And then comes the German fruit-woman, whose first customer you have the distinguished honor to be, and who, in consequence, has taken breakfast in your kitchen for the last ten years.  You remember that on one occasion she spoke of her little boy, named Heinderich, who was suffering with his teeth; and when you hope that Heinderich is better, you are surprised to learn that he is quite a large boy, going to the public school, and that the lady in the merino morning-wrapper has just sent him a new cap.

The heaping pile of doughnuts gradually lessens, until finally there is not one left.  The last dish is evidently taken from the china-closet, and the whole house is filled with that portentous stillness which causes the mothers of mischievous offspring so much trepidation.

You expect to see the merino morning-wrapper reconnoitering the movements of your own sweet pledges of affection; but she doesn’t:  you can only hear the ticking of the little French clock on the mantle-piece, and the spluttering of the coal as it bursts into a gassy flame between the bars of the grate, and you almost imagine Christmas has passed.  You are deceived; for by-and-by you hear your children’s footsteps as they skip over the garden-walk, and the sound of their ringing laughter as they rush in out of the cold, and their clamor rises louder and gladder and more jubilant than ever.  Grandpa!  Who does not know him, with his joyous face and hearty morning greeting?  How resplendent he looks in his broadcloth suit, his gold-headed cane and great blue overcoat!  What quantities of almonds and raisins, of oranges and sweetmeats, those overcoat-pockets contain!  What child ever lived who did not believe grandpa’s pocket a cornucopia for all juvenile desires?  The day passes on.  The turkey never