mas quite as correct as an equal amount of cold would have been at home, and, on the principle of extremes meeting, I daresay that if we had stayed longer the hotter the Christmas the more "old-fashioned" we should have begun to call it. One's ideas, however, of a merry Christmas are not so easily shifted; these require the contrast of sharp weather out of doors with light and warmth within, besides which mirth is so inseparable from activity that the sun-heat in repressing the last goes far to extinguish the first.
Considerable excitement was caused us upon a more than ordinarily hot Christmas Eve, by our cow managing to tumble down the side of a steep bank into the river, where, in about 30 feet of water and only her head above the surface, she was surveyed with perplexity by our own household, and by some sympathizing neighbours. The depth of water into which she had fallen no doubt saved her from breaking her legs, but as it was impossible for her to be got up again into the field by the same road by which she had descended, owing to the perpendicular nature of the bank, we were at a loss what to do. The height from the water was more than twenty feet, and though one of our kind friends tried to cut a sort of staircase for her, up which he thought she might manage to climb, she attempted the ascent in vain; she could neither clamber up herself nor could we drag her up by ropes, so she remained swimming about in the pool, which was nearly half a mile in length. At last a native made a ball of his few clothes, tied them on his head, and with a rope in his hand, swam out after poor "Mooley," who seemed rather to enjoy her bath. When once the rope
