PUNCHINELLO

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD, By ORPHEUS C. KERR, Continued in this Number.

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The

MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.

AN ADAPTATION.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.

CHAPTER XIV.

CLOVES FOR THREE.

Christmas Eve in Bumsteadville. Christmas Eve all over the world, but especially where the English language is spoken. No sooner does the first facetious star wink upon this Eve, than all the English-speaking millions of this Boston-crowned earth begin casting off their hatreds, meannesses, uncharities, and Carlyleisms, as a garment, and, in a beautiful spirit of no objections to anybody, proceed to think what can be done for the poor in the way of sincerely wishing them well. The princely merchant, in his counting-room, involuntarily experiences the softening, humanizing influence of the hour, and, in tones tremulous with unwonted emotion, privately directs his Chief-Clerk to tell all the other clerks, that, on this night of all the round year, they may, before leaving the store at 10 o'clock, take almost any article from that slightly damaged auction-stock down in the front cellar, at actual cost-price. This, they are to understand, implies their Employer's hearty wish of a Merry Christmas to them; and is a sign that, in the grand spirit of the festal season, he can even forget and forgive those unnatural leaner entry-clerks who are always whining for more than their allotted $7 a week. The President of the great railroad corporation, in the very middle of a growling fit over the extra cost involved in purchasing his last Legislature, (owing to the fact that some of its Members had been elected upon a fusion of Radical-Reform and Honest-Workingman's Tickets,) is suddenly and mysteriously impressed with the recollection that this is Christmas Eve. "Why, bless my soul, so it is!" he cries, springing up from his littered rosewood desk like a boy. "Here, you General Superintendent out there in the office!" sings he, cheerily, "send some one down to Washington Market this instant, to find out whether or not any of those luscious anatomical western turkies that I saw in the barrels this morning are left yet. If the commercial hotels down-town haven't taken them all, buy every remaining barrel at once! Not a man nor boy in this Company's service shall go home to-night without his Christmas dinner in his hand! Lively, now, Mr. JONES! and just oblige me by picking out one of the birds for yourself, if you can find one at all less blue than the rest. It's Christmas Eve, sir; and upon my word I'm really sorry our boys have to work to-morrow as usual. Ah! it's hard to be poor, JONES! A merry Christmas to us all. Here's my carriage come for me." And even in returning to their homes from their daily avocations, on Christmas Eve, how the most grasping, penurious souls of men will soften to the world's unfortunate! Who is this poor old lady, looking as though she might be somebody's grandmother, sitting here by the wayside, shivering, on such an Eve as this? No home to go?—Relations all dead?—Eaten nothing in two days?—Walked all the way from the Woman's Rights Bureau in Boston?—Dear me! can there be so much suffering on Christmas Eve? I must do something for her, or my own good dinner to-morrow will be a reproach to me. "Here! Policeman! just take this poor old lady to the Station-House, and give her a good warm home there until morning. There! cheer-up, Aunty; you're all right now. This gentleman in the uniform has promised to take care of you. Merry Christmas!"—Or, when at home, and that extremely bony lad, in the thin summer coat, chatters to you, from the snow on the front-stoop, about the courage he has taken from Christmas Eve to ask you for enough to get a meal and a night's-lodging—how differently from your ordinary style does a something soft in your breast impel you to treat him. "No work to be obtained?" you say, in a light tone, to cheer him up. "Of course there's none here, my young friend. All the work here at the East is for foreigners, in order that they may be used at election-time. As for you, an American boy, why don't you go to h— I mean to the West. Go West, young man! Buy a good, stout farming outfit, two or three serviceable horses, or mules, a portable house made in sections, a few cattle, a case of fever medicine—and then go out to the far West upon Government-land. You'd better go to one of the hotels for to-night, and then purchase Mr. GREELEY'S 'What I Know About Farming,' and start as soon as the snow permits in the morning. Here are ten cents for you. Merry Christmas!"—Thus to honor the natal Festival of Him—the Unselfish incarnate, the Divinely insighted—Who said unto the lip-server: Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the Poor, and follow Me; and from Whom the lip-server, having great possessions, went away exceeding sorrowful!

Three men are to meet at dinner in the Bumsteadian apartments on this Christmas Eve. How has each one passed the day?

MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, in his room in Gospeler's Gulch, reads Southern tragedies in an old copy of the New Orleans Picayune, until two o'clock, when he hastily tears up all his soiled paper collars, packs a few things into a travelling satchel, and, with the latter slung over his shoulder, and a Kehoe's Indian club in his right hand, is met in the hall by his tutor, the Gospeler.

"What are you doing with that club, Mr. MONTGOMERY?" asks the Reverend OCTAVIUS, hastily stepping back into a corner.

"I've bought it to exercise with in the open air," answers the young Southerner, playfully denting the wall just over his tutor's head with it "After this dinner with Mr. DROOD, at BUMSTEAD'S, I reckon I shall start on a walking match, and I've procured the club for exercise as I go. Thus:" He twirls it high in the air, grazes Mr. SIMPSON'S nearer ear, hits his own head accidentally, and breaks the glass in the hat-stand.

"I see! I see!" says the Gospeler, rather hurriedly. "Perhaps you had better be entirely alone, and in the open country, when you take that exercise."

Rubbing his skull quite dismally, the prospective pedestrian goes straightway to the porch of the Alms-House, and there waits until his sister comes down in her bonnet and joins him.

"MAGNOLIA," he remarks, hastening to be the first to speak, in order to have any conversational chance at all with her, "it is