Benevolent.

Aldin, They Went Round the House, Playing Under the Windows, 1910

I was in a continual excitement from the varied scenes of whim and innocent gayety passing before me. It was inspiring to see wild-eyed frolic and warm-hearted hospitality breaking out from among the chills and glooms of winter, and old age throwing off his apathy and catching once more the freshness of youthful enjoyment. I felt also an interest in the scene from the consideration that these fleeting customs were posting fast into oblivion, and that this was perhaps the only family in England in which the whole of them was still punctiliously observed. There was a quaintness, too, mingled with all this revelry that gave it a peculiar zest: it was suited to the time and place; and as the old manor-house almost reeled with mirth and wassail, it seemed echoing back the joviality of long departed years.

Sir John Hawkins, speaking of the dance called the Pavon,

from pavo, a peacock, says, “It is a grave and majestic

dance; the method of dancing it anciently was by gentlemen

dressed with caps and swords, by those of the long robe in

their gowns, by the peers in their mantles, and by the

ladies in gowns with long trains, the motion whereof, in

dancing, resembled that of a peacock.”—History of Music.

+ At the time of the first publication of this paper the

picture of an old-fashioned Christmas in the country was

pronounced by some as out of date. The author had afterwards

an opportunity of witnessing almost all the customs above

described, existing in unexpected vigor in the skirts of

Derbyshire and Yorkshire, where he passed the Christmas

holidays. The reader will find some notice of them in the

author’s account of his sojourn at Newstead Abbey.

But enough of Christmas and its gambols; it is time for me to pause in this garrulity. Methinks I hear the questions asked by my graver readers, “To what purpose is all this? how is the world to be made wiser by this talk?” Alas! is there not wisdom enough extant for the instruction of the world? And if not, are there not thousands of abler pens laboring for its improvement? It is so much pleasanter to please than to instruct—to play the companion rather than the preceptor.

What, after all, is the mite of wisdom that I could throw into the mass of knowledge! or how am I sure that my sagest deductions may be safe guides for the opinions of others? But in writing to amuse, if I fail the only evil is in my own disappointment. If, however, I can by any lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow; if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good-humor with his fellow-beings and himself—surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain.

From "Christmas Dinner", found in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, by Washington Irving