Christmas Stories

From 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 rosy-cheeked 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. . . .