Transcribed from the 1911 Chapman and Hall Christmas Storiesedition, Volume 1, ,
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A Christmas Tree | |
What Christmas is as we Grow Older | |
The Poor Relation’s Story | |
The Child’s Story | |
The Schoolboy’s Story | |
Nobody’s Story |
I have been looking on, thisevening, at a merry company of children assembled round thatpretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was plantedin the middle of a great round table, and towered high abovetheir heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude oflittle tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with brightobjects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind thegreen leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, atleast, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling frominnumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs,bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various otherarticles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, atWolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparationfor some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced littlemen, much more agreeable in appearance than many realmen—and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showedthem to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles and drums;there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes,sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; therewere trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-upgold and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in alldevices; there were guns, swords, and banners; there were witchesstanding in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes;there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers,smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; realfruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitationapples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, asa pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to anotherpretty child, her bosom friend, “There was everything, andmore.” This motley collection of odd objects,clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back thebright looks directed towards it from every side—some ofthe diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with thetable, and a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosomsof pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses—made a livelyrealisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking howall the trees that grow and all the things that come intoexistence on the earth, have their wild adornments at thatwell-remembered time.
Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in thehouse awake, my thoughts are dra