A CHRISTMAS TREE
I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children
assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was
planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their
heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and
everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosycheeked
dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches
(with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up)
dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables,
chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles
of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton),
perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy
housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more
agreeable in appearance than many real men--and no wonder, for their
heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were
fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paintboxes,
sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there
were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and
jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns,
swords, and banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings of
pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were teetotums, humming-tops, needlecases,
pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders;
real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears,
and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me,
delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, "There
was everything, and more."