Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Paperstable doom.This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not? Yousee, in regard to these Roundabout discourses, I neverknow whether they are to be merry or dismal. My hobbyhas the bit in his mouth; goes his own way; and sometimestrots through a park, and sometimes paces by acemetery. Two days since came the printer’s little emissary,with a note saying, “We are waiting for the RoundaboutPaper!” 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 thesehave we not had for years past! Well, year after year theseason comes. Come frost, come thaw, come snow, comerain, year after year my neighbor the parson has tomake his sermons. They are getting together the bonbons,iced cakes, Christmas trees at Fortnum and Mason’snow. The genii of the theatres are composing the Christmaspantomime, which our young folks will see andnote anon in their little diaries.And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse withan extract out of that great diary, the newspaper? Iread it but yesterday, and it has mingled with all mythoughts since then. Here are the two paragraphs, whichappeared following each other:—“Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has beenappointed to the post of Legislative Member of the Councilof the Governor-General.”“Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor-General for CentralIndia, died on the 29th of October, of bronchitis.”These two men, whose different fates are recorded intwo paragraphs and half a dozen lines of the same newspaper,were sisters’ sons. In one of the stories by thepresent writer, a man is described tottering “up thesteps of the ghaut,” having just parted with his child,whom he is despatching to England from India. I wrotethis, remembering in long, long distant days, such aghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta; and a day when, downthose steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came twochildren, whose mothers remained on the shore. One ofthose ladies was never to see her boy more; and he, too,is just dead in India, “of bronchitis, on the 29th Octo-168