In this past year’s diary is there any dismal day noted in which you have lost a friend?  In mine there is.  I do not mean by death.  Those who are gone, you have.  Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always.  They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room:  and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.  As I am in this cheerful mood, I will tell you a fine and touching story of a doctor which I heard lately.  About two years since there was, in our or some other city, a famous doctor, into whose consulting-room crowds came daily, so that they might be healed.  Now this doctor had a suspicion that there was something vitally wrong with himself, and he went to consult another famous physician at Dublin, or it may be at Edinburgh.  And he of Edinburgh punched his comrade’s sides; and listened at his heart and lungs; and felt his pulse, I suppose; and looked at his tongue; and when he had done, Doctor London said to Doctor Edinburgh, “Doctor, how long have I to live?” And Doctor Edinburgh said to Doctor London, “Doctor, you may last a year.”

Then Doctor London came home, knowing that what Doctor Edinburgh said was true.  And he made up his accounts, with man and heaven, I trust.  And he visited his patients as usual.  And he went about healing, and cheering, and soothing and doctoring; and thousands of sick people were benefited by him.  And he said not a word to his family at home; but lived amongst them cheerful and tender, and calm, and loving; though he knew the night was at hand when he should see them and work no more.

And it was winter time, and they came and told him that some man at a distance—­very sick, but very rich—­wanted him; and, though Doctor London knew that he was himself at death’s door, he went to the sick man; for he knew the large fee would be good for his children after him.  And he died; and his family never knew until he was gone, that he had been long aware of the inevitable doom.

This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not?  You see, in regard to these Roundabout discourses, I never know whether they are to be merry or dismal.  My hobby has the bit in his mouth; goes his own way; and sometimes trots through a park, and sometimes paces by a cemetery.  Two days since came the printer’s little emissary, with a note saying, “We are waiting for the Roundabout Paper!” A Roundabout Paper about what or whom?  How stale it has become, that printed jollity about Christmas!  Carols, and wassail-bowls, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule-logs de commande—­what heaps of these have we not had for years past!  Well, year after year the season comes.  Come frost, come thaw, come snow, come rain, year after year my neighbor the parson has to make his sermons.  They are getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at Fortnum and Mason’s now.  The genii of the theatres are composing the Christmas pantomime, which our young folks will see and note anon in their little diaries.