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; there were tambourines,

books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, 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, needle-cases, 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." This motley collection of odd objects, clustering on the tree like

magic fruit, and flashing back the bright looks directed towards it from every side--some

of the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and a few were

languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses--made a

lively realisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that

grow and all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their wild adornments

at that well-remembered time.

Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts

are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I

begin to consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree

of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.

Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling

walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy

brightness of its top-- for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to

grow downward towards the earth--I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!

All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among the green holly and red berries, is the Tumbler

with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't lie down, but whenever he was put upon the

floor, persisted in rolling his fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and brought

those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me--when I affected to laugh very much, but in my 

heart of hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close beside him is that infernal snuffbox,

out of which there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown, with an

obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide open, who was not to be endured on

any terms, but could not be put away either; for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified

state, to fly out of Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected. Nor is the frog

with cobbler's wax on his tail, far off; for there was no knowing where he wouldn't jump;

and when he flew over the candle, and came upon one's hand with that spotted back--red

on a green ground--he was horrible. The cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was

stood up against the candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the same branch, was

milder, and was beautiful; but I can't say as much for the larger cardboard man, who used

to be hung against the wall and pulled by a string; there was a sinister expression in that

nose of his; and when he got his legs round his neck (which he very often did), he was

ghastly, and not a creature to be alone with.

When did that dreadful Mask first look at me? Who put it on, and why was I so

frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life? It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is

even meant to be droll, why then were its stolid features so intolerable? Surely not

because it hid the wearer's face. An apron would have done as much; and though I should

have preferred even the apron away, it would not have been absolutely insupportable, like

the mask. Was it the immovability of the mask? The doll's face was immovable, but I was

not afraid of HER. Perhaps that fixed and set change coming over a real face, infused into

my quickened heart some remote suggestion and dread of the universal change that is to

come on every face, and make it still? Nothing reconciled me to it. No drummers, from

whom proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no regiment of

soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box, and fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and

lazy little set of lazy-tongs; no old woman, made of wires and a brown-paper

composition, cutting up a pie for two small children; could give me a permanent comfort,

for a long time. Nor was it any satisfaction to be shown the Mask, and see that it was

made of paper, or to have it locked up and be assured that no one wore it. The mere

recollection of that fixed face, the mere knowledge of its existence anywhere, was

sufficient to awake me in the night all perspiration and horror, with, "O I know it's

coming! O the mask!"

I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers--there he is! was made of,

then! His hide was real to the touch, I recollect. And the great black horse with the round

red spots all over him--the horse that I could even get upon--I never wondered what had

brought him to that strange condition, or thought that such a horse was not commonly

seen at Newmarket. The four horses of no colour, next to him, that went into the waggon

of cheeses, and could be taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of furtippet

for their tails, and other bits for their manes, and to stand on pegs instead of legs,

but it was not so when they were brought home for a Christmas present. They were all

right, then; neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests, as appears

to be the case now. The tinkling works of the music- cart, I DID find out, to be made of

quill tooth-picks and wire; and I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves,

perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost,

on the other, rather a weak-minded person--though good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, 

next him, made of little squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one

another, each developing a different picture, and the whole enlivened by small bells, was

a mighty marvel and a great delight.

Ah! The Doll's house!--of which I was not proprietor, but where I visited. I don't admire

the Houses of Parliament half so much as that stone-fronted mansion with real glass

windows, and door-steps, and a real balcony--greener than I ever see now, except at

watering places; and even they afford but a poor imitation. And though it DID open all at

once, the entire house-front (which was a blow, I admit, as cancelling the fiction of a

staircase), it was but to shut it up again, and I could believe. Even open, there were three

distinct rooms in it: a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly furnished, and best of all, a

kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire- irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils--

oh, the warming-pan!--and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to fry two

fish. What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble feasts wherein the set of wooden

platters figured, each with its own peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to

it, and garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss! Could all the

Temperance Societies of these later days, united, give me such a tea-drinking as I have

had through the means of yonder little set of blue crockery, which really would hold

liquid (it ran out of the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and which

made tea, nectar. And if the two legs of the ineffectual little sugar-tongs did tumble over

one another, and want purpose, like Punch's hands, what does it matter? And if I did once

shriek out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable company with consternation, by

reason of having drunk a little teaspoon, inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was

never the worse for it, except by a powder!

Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green roller and miniature

gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to hang. Thin books, in themselves, at first,

but many of them, and with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat

black letters to begin with! "A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Of course he was. He

was an apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his time, was A, and

so were most of his friends, except X, who had so little versatility, that I never knew him

to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe--like Y, who was always confined to a Yacht or a Yew

Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a Zebra or a Zany. But, now, the very tree itself

changes, and becomes a bean-stalk--the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack climbed to

the Giant's house! And now, those dreadfully interesting, double-headed giants, with their

clubs over their shoulders, begin to stride along the boughs in a perfect throng, dragging

knights and ladies home for dinner by the hair of their heads. And Jack--how noble, with

his sword of sharpness, and his shoes of swiftness! Again those old meditations come

upon me as I gaze up at him; and I debate within myself whether there was more than one

Jack (which I am loth to believe possible), or only one genuine original admirable Jack,

who achieved all the recorded exploits.

Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak, in which-- the tree making a

forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to

me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that

dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his 

appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my

first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known

perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in

the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who

was to be degraded. O the wonderful Noah's Ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in

a washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have their

legs well shaken down before they could be got in, even there- -and then, ten to one but

they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire

latch--but what was THAT against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than

the elephant: the lady-bird, the butterfly--all triumphs of art! Consider the goose, whose

feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent, that he usually tumbled

forward, and knocked down all the animal creation. Consider Noah and his family, like

idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the

tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string!

Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree--not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the

Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him and all Mother Bunch's wonders, without mention), but

an Eastern King with a glittering scimitar and turban. By Allah! two Eastern Kings, for I

see another, looking over his shoulder! Down upon the grass, at the tree's foot, lies the

full length of a coal-black Giant, stretched asleep, with his head in a lady's lap; and near

them is a glass box, fastened with four locks of shining steel, in which he keeps the lady

prisoner when he is awake. I see the four keys at his girdle now. The lady makes signs to

the two kings in the tree, who softly descend. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian

Nights.

Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me. All lamps are

wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little

earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw down

into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried

by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. Tarts are

made, according to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook

after he was set down in his drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas,

and in the habit of sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blindfold.

Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician,

and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will make the earth shake. All the dates

imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant

knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh

fruit, concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the

fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the apple purchased

(with two others) from the Sultan's gardener for three sequins, and which the tall black

slave stole from the child. All dogs are associated with the dog, really a transformed man,

who jumped upon the baker's counter, and put his paw on the piece of bad money. All

rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who was a ghoule, could only peck by grains,

because of her nightly feasts in the burial-place. My very rocking-horse,--there he is, with 

his nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!--should have a peg in his

neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden horse did with the Prince of

Persia, in the sight of all his father's Court.

Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper branches of my Christmas Tree,

I see this fairy light! When I wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter

mornings, the white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I

hear Dinarzade. "Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the

Young King of the Black Islands." Scheherazade replies, "If my lord the Sultan will

suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more

wonderful story yet." Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the

execution, and we all three breathe again.

At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the leaves- -it may be born of

turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie, or of these many fancies, jumbled with Robinson

Crusoe on his desert island, Philip Quarll among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton with

Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the Mask--or it may be the result of indigestion, assisted

by imagination and over-doctoring--a prodigious nightmare. It is so exceedingly

indistinct, that I don't know why it's frightful--but I know it is. I can only make out that it

is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to be planted on a vast

exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming

close to my eyes, and receding to an immeasurable distance. When it comes closest, it is

worse. In connection with it I descry remembrances of winter nights incredibly long; of

being sent early to bed, as a punishment for some small offence, and waking in two

hours, with a sensation of having been asleep two nights; of the laden hopelessness of

morning ever dawning; and the oppression of a weight of remorse.

And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of the ground, before a

vast green curtain. Now, a bell rings--a magic bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike

all other bells--and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of orangepeel

and oil. Anon, the magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green

curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins! The devoted dog of Montargis

avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous

Peasant with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take from this hour forth to my

bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many years

have passed since he and I have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed

surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my remembrance fresh and

unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto the end of time. Or now, I learn with bitter

tears how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down,

went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that

ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to have been let off. Comes

swift to comfort me, the Pantomime--stupendous Phenomenon!--when clowns are shot

from loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright constellation that it is; when

Harlequins, covered all over with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like amazing

fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my

grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!" or 

taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I sawed you do it!" when

Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being changed into Anything; and

"Nothing is, but thinking makes it so." Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the

dreary sensation-- often to return in after-life--of being unable, next day, to get back to

the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the bright atmosphere I have quitted;

of doting on the little Fairy, with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a

Fairy immortality along with her. Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as my eye

wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has never yet

stayed by me!

Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,--there it is, with its familiar proscenium, and

ladies in feathers, in the boxes!--and all its attendant occupation with paste and glue, and

gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth, or

the Exile of Siberia. In spite of a few besetting accidents and failures (particularly an

unreasonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, and some others, to become faint in

the legs, and double up, at exciting points of the drama), a teeming world of fancies so

suggestive and all-embracing, that, far below it on my Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty,

real Theatres in the day-time, adorned with these associations as with the freshest

garlands of the rarest flowers, and charming me yet.

But hark! The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What images do I

associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas Tree? Known

before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed.

An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted,

following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave

men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand;

again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of

people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a

sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship;

again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and

other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to

the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying

upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth

beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, "Forgive them, for they know not what

they do."

Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick.

School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool

impertinent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of

huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and

balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and the softened noise of shouts in

the evening air; the tree is still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home at Christmas-time,

there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven! ) while the World lasts; and they do! Yonder

they dance and play upon the branches of my Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my

heart dances and plays too! 

And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or

ought to come home, for a short holiday--the longer, the better--from the great boardingschool,

where we are for ever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.

As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when we

would; starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree!

Away into the winter prospect. There are many such upon the tree! On, by low-lying,

misty grounds, through fens and fogs, up long hills, winding dark as caverns between

thick plantations, almost shutting out the sparkling stars; so, out on broad heights, until

we stop at last, with sudden silence, at an avenue. The gate-bell has a deep, half-awful

sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on its hinges; and, as we drive up to a great

house, the glancing lights grow larger in the windows, and the opposing rows of trees

seem to fall solemnly back on either side, to give us place. At intervals, all day, a

frightened hare has shot across this whitened turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of deer

trampling the hard frost, has, for the minute, crushed the silence too. Their watchful eyes

beneath the fern may be shining now, if we could see them, like the icy dewdrops on the

leaves; but they are still, and all is still. And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees

falling back before us, and closing up again behind us, as if to forbid retreat, we come to

the house.

There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the

time, for we are telling Winter Stories-- Ghost Stories, or more shame for us--round the

Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it. But, no

matter for that. We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys

where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them

with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. We are a

middle-aged nobleman, and we make a generous supper with our host and hostess and

their guests--it being Christmas-time, and the old house full of company--and then we go

to bed. Our room is a very old room. It is hung with tapestry. We don't like the portrait of

a cavalier in green, over the fireplace. There are great black beams in the ceiling, and

there is a great black bedstead, supported at the foot by two great black figures, who seem

to have come off a couple of tombs in the old baronial church in the park, for our

particular accommodation. But, we are not a superstitious nobleman, and we don't mind.

Well! we dismiss our servant, lock the door, and sit before the fire in our dressing-gown,

musing about a great many things. At length we go to bed. Well! we can't sleep. We toss

and tumble, and can't sleep. The embers on the hearth burn fitfully and make the room

look ghostly. We can't help peeping out over the counterpane, at the two black figures

and the cavalier--that wicked- looking cavalier--in green. In the flickering light they seem

to advance and retire: which, though we are not by any means a superstitious nobleman,

is not agreeable. Well! we get nervous-- more and more nervous. We say "This is very

foolish, but we can't stand this; we'll pretend to be ill, and knock up somebody." Well! we

are just going to do it, when the locked door opens, and there comes in a young woman,

deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to the fire, and sits down in the chair we

have left there, wringing her hands. Then, we notice that her clothes are wet. Our tongue

cleaves to the roof of our mouth, and we can't speak; but, we observe her accurately. Her

clothes are wet; her long hair is dabbled with moist mud; she is dressed in the fashion of 

two hundred years ago; and she has at her girdle a bunch of rusty keys. Well! there she

sits, and we can't even faint, we are in such a state about it. Presently she gets up, and

tries all the locks in the room with the rusty keys, which won't fit one of them; then, she

fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in green, and says, in a low, terrible voice,

"The stags know it!" After that, she wrings her hands again, passes the bedside, and goes

out at the door. We hurry on our dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always travel with

pistols), and are following, when we find the door locked. We turn the key, look out into

the dark gallery; no one there. We wander away, and try to find our servant. Can't be

done. We pace the gallery till daybreak; then return to our deserted room, fall asleep, and

are awakened by our servant (nothing ever haunts him) and the shining sun. Well! we

make a wretched breakfast, and all the company say we look queer. After breakfast, we

go over the house with our host, and then we take him to the portrait of the cavalier in

green, and then it all comes out. He was false to a young housekeeper once attached to

that family, and famous for her beauty, who drowned herself in a pond, and whose body

was discovered, after a long time, because the stags refused to drink of the water. Since

which, it has been whispered that she traverses the house at midnight (but goes especially

to that room where the cavalier in green was wont to sleep), trying the old locks with the

rusty keys. Well! we tell our host of what we have seen, and a shade comes over his

features, and he begs it may be hushed up; and so it is. But, it's all true; and we said so,

before we died (we are dead now) to many responsible people.

There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries, and dismal statebedchambers,

and haunted wings shut up for many years, through which we may ramble,

with an agreeable creeping up our back, and encounter any number of ghosts, but (it is

worthy of remark perhaps) reducible to a very few general types and classes; for, ghosts

have little originality, and "walk" in a beaten track. Thus, it comes to pass, that a certain

room in a certain old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot

himself, has certain planks in the floor from which the blood will not be taken out. You

may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or plane and plane, as his father

did, or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his

great- grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be--no redder and no paler--no more

and no less--always just the same. Thus, in such another house there is a haunted door,

that never will keep open; or another door that never will keep shut, or a haunted sound

of a spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a sigh, or a horse's tramp, or

the rattling of a chain. Or else, there is a turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour, strikes

thirteen when the head of the family is going to die; or a shadowy, immovable black

carriage which at such a time is always seen by somebody, waiting near the great gates in

the stable-yard. Or thus, it came to pass how Lady Mary went to pay a visit at a large

wild house in the Scottish Highlands, and, being fatigued with her long journey, retired to

bed early, and innocently said, next morning, at the breakfast-table, "How odd, to have so

late a party last night, in this remote place, and not to tell me of it, before I went to bed!"

Then, every one asked Lady Mary what she meant? Then, Lady Mary replied, "Why, all

night long, the carriages were driving round and round the terrace, underneath my

window!" Then, the owner of the house turned pale, and so did his Lady, and Charles

Macdoodle of Macdoodle signed to Lady Mary to say no more, and every one was silent.

After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it was a tradition in the family 

that those rumbling carriages on the terrace betokened death. And so it proved, for, two

months afterwards, the Lady of the mansion died. And Lady Mary, who was a Maid of

Honour at Court, often told this story to the old Queen Charlotte; by this token that the

old King always said, "Eh, eh? What, what? Ghosts, ghosts? No such thing, no such

thing!" And never left off saying so, until he went to bed.

Or, a friend of somebody's whom most of us know, when he was a young man at college,

had a particular friend, with whom he made the compact that, if it were possible for the

Spirit to return to this earth after its separation from the body, he of the twain who first

died, should reappear to the other. In course of time, this compact was forgotten by our

friend; the two young men having progressed in life, and taken diverging paths that were

wide asunder. But, one night, many years afterwards, our friend being in the North of

England, and staying for the night in an inn, on the Yorkshire Moors, happened to look

out of bed; and there, in the moonlight, leaning on a bureau near the window, steadfastly

regarding him, saw his old college friend! The appearance being solemnly addressed,

replied, in a kind of whisper, but very audibly, "Do not come near me. I am dead. I am

here to redeem my promise. I come from another world, but may not disclose its secrets!"

Then, the whole form becoming paler, melted, as it were, into the moonlight, and faded

away.

Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of the picturesque Elizabethan house, so

famous in our neighbourhood. You have heard about her? No! Why, SHE went out one

summer evening at twilight, when she was a beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age, to

gather flowers in the garden; and presently came running, terrified, into the hall to her

father, saying, "Oh, dear father, I have met myself!" He took her in his arms, and told her

it was fancy, but she said, "Oh no! I met myself in the broad walk, and I was pale and

gathering withered flowers, and I turned my head, and held them up!" And, that night,

she died; and a picture of her story was begun, though never finished, and they say it is

somewhere in the house to this day, with its face to the wall.

Or, the uncle of my brother's wife was riding home on horseback, one mellow evening at

sunset, when, in a green lane close to his own house, he saw a man standing before him,

in the very centre of a narrow way. "Why does that man in the cloak stand there!" he

thought. "Does he want me to ride over him?" But the figure never moved. He felt a

strange sensation at seeing it so still, but slackened his trot and rode forward. When he

was so close to it, as almost to touch it with his stirrup, his horse shied, and the figure

glided up the bank, in a curious, unearthly manner--backward, and without seeming to

use its feet--and was gone. The uncle of my brother's wife, exclaiming, "Good Heaven!

It's my cousin Harry, from Bombay!" put spurs to his horse, which was suddenly in a

profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange behaviour, dashed round to the front of his

house. There, he saw the same figure, just passing in at the long French window of the

drawing-room, opening on the ground. He threw his bridle to a servant, and hastened in

after it. His sister was sitting there, alone. "Alice, where's my cousin Harry?" "Your

cousin Harry, John?" "Yes. From Bombay. I met him in the lane just now, and saw him

enter here, this instant." Not a creature had been seen by any one; and in that hour and

minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin died in India. 

Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who died at ninety- nine, and retained her

faculties to the last, who really did see the Orphan Boy; a story which has often been

incorrectly told, but, of which the real truth is this--because it is, in fact, a story belonging

to our family--and she was a connexion of our family. When she was about forty years of

age, and still an uncommonly fine woman (her lover died young, which was the reason

why she never married, though she had many offers), she went to stay at a place in Kent,

which her brother, an Indian-Merchant, had newly bought. There was a story that this

place had once been held in trust by the guardian of a young boy; who was himself the

next heir, and who killed the young boy by harsh and cruel treatment. She knew nothing

of that. It has been said that there was a Cage in her bedroom in which the guardian used

to put the boy. There was no such thing. There was only a closet. She went to bed, made

no alarm whatever in the night, and in the morning said composedly to her maid when

she came in, "Who is the pretty forlorn-looking child who has been peeping out of that

closet all night?" The maid replied by giving a loud scream, and instantly decamping. She

was surprised; but she was a woman of remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed

herself and went downstairs, and closeted herself with her brother. "Now, Walter," she

said, "I have been disturbed all night by a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been

constantly peeping out of that closet in my room, which I can't open. This is some trick."

"I am afraid not, Charlotte," said he, "for it is the legend of the house. It is the Orphan

Boy. What did he do?" "He opened the door softly," said she, "and peeped out.

Sometimes, he came a step or two into the room. Then, I called to him, to encourage him,

and he shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the door." "The closet has no

communication, Charlotte," said her brother, "with any other part of the house, and it's

nailed up." This was undeniably true, and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to get

it open, for examination. Then, she was satisfied that she had seen the Orphan Boy. But,

the wild and terrible part of the story is, that he was also seen by three of her brother's

sons, in succession, who all died young. On the occasion of each child being taken ill, he

came home in a heat, twelve hours before, and said, Oh, Mamma, he had been playing

under a particular oak-tree, in a certain meadow, with a strange boy--a pretty, forlornlooking

boy, who was very timid, and made signs! From fatal experience, the parents

came to know that this was the Orphan Boy, and that the course of that child whom he

chose for his little playmate was surely run.

Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit up alone to wait for the Spectre--

where we are shown into a room, made comparatively cheerful for our reception--where

we glance round at the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire--where

we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired, after

laying down a fresh store of wood upon the hearth, and setting forth on the small table

such supper-cheer as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine- -

where the reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after another, like so many peals

of sullen thunder--and where, about the small hours of the night, we come into the

knowledge of divers supernatural mysteries. Legion is the name of the haunted German

students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the schoolboy in the

corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off the footstool he has chosen for his

seat, when the door accidentally blows open. Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our

Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all down the boughs! 

Among the later toys and fancies hanging there--as idle often and less pure--be the

images once associated with the sweet old Waits, the softened music in the night, ever

unalterable! Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant

figure of my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the

season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof, be the star of all the

Christian World! A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are

dark to me as yet, and let me look once more! I know there are blank spaces on thy

branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled; from which they are

departed. But, far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow's Son; and God

is good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O may I,

with a grey head, turn a child's heart to that figure yet, and a child's trustfulness and

confidence!

Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness.

And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of

the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear

a whisper going through the leaves. "This, in commemoration of the law of love and

kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!"