coast by scores of kegs; in short, the activity in the rural housekeepers's department is now at its height. But at this busy season, during these Christmas preparations, the female Vatel is supported and cheered by a sort of holiday feeling which pervades the whole house; there is a dawn of the kindliness and good-will belonging to Christmas perceptible in kitchen and pantry; the eggs are beaten more briskly, the sugar and butter are stirred more readily, the mince-meat is chopped more heartily than on any other occasion during the year. A pleasant reflection this, and one upon which it is sometimes necessary to fall back for consolation when the pies are a little burnt in the baking, and the turkey proves rather tough after boiling.
But the larder, though an important item, is very far from being the only object of attention in these Christmas tasks. Greens are put up in some houses. Santa Claus must also be looked after. His pouch and pack must be well filled for the little people. Hoary heads, wise and gray, are just now considering the merits of this or that nursery-book; weighing sugar-plums and candies; examining puppets and toys. Dolls are being dressed by the score, not only your wax and paste-board beauties, such as may be seen in every toy-shop window, but also other members of the doll family which are wholly of domestic manufacture, such as those huge babies of cotton and linen, almost as large as the live baby in the cradle, with pretty painted faces, and soft, supple limbs. These “rag-babies,” as they are sometimes called in the nursery—Moppets, as we are instructed to name them by great dictionaries—are always pets with little mammas; no other dolls are loved so dearly and so constantly as these. Look at some motherly little creature as she pets and fondles this her chief
