But when would that be? One morning people came and cleared out the lumber room. The trunks were taken away. The Tree, too, was dragged out of the corner. They threw him on the floor; but one of the servants picked him up and 5 carried him downstairs. Once more he beheld the light of day.

"Now life begins again!" thought the Tree. He felt the fresh air and the warm sunbeams-he was out in the yard. All happened so quickly that the Tree quite forgot to look at himself, there was so much to look at all around. The yard joined 10 a garden. Everything was so fresh and blooming. The roses were so bright and sweet-smelling. The lime trees were in fuli blossom, and the swallows flew backwards and forwards, twittering.

"I shall live! I shall live!" He was filled with joy and hope. 15 He tried to spread out his branches; but, alas! they were all dried and yellow. He was thrown down on a heap of weeds and nettles.

The star of gold tinsel that had been left on his crown now looked bright in the sunshine. Some children were playing in 20 the yard; they were the same children who had danced round the Tree. One of the youngest of them saw the gold star, and ran to tear it off.

"Look at this, still tied to the ugly old Christmas Tree!" cried he, trampling upon the branches until they broke under 25 his feet.

The Tree looked on the flowers of the garden, now blooming in all the freshness of their beauty. He looked upon himself, and he wished with all his heart that he had been left to wither in the dark corner of the lumber room. He called to mind his 30 happy forest life and the merry Christmas Eve.

"Past, all past!" said the poor Tree. "If I had but been happy, as I might have been! Past, all past!"

The servant came and cut the Tree into small pieces. She then heaped them up, and set fire to them. The Tree groaned 35 deeply. The children all ran up to the place and jumped about

5

in front of the blaze. But at each of those heavy groans the Fir Tree thought of a bright summer's day, of Christmas Eve, or of Humpty Dumpty, the only story that he knew and could tell. And at last the Tree was burned.

The boys played about in the yard. On the breast of the youngest one shone the golden star that the Tree had worn on the happiest evening of his life. But that was past, and the Tree was past, and the story also, past! past! for all stories must come to an end some time or other.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a great English writer. He gained much of the material for his novels while a reporter on a London newspaper. "A Christmas Tree' appeared in "Household Words," a magazine which Dickens edited, in 1850.

A GERMAN 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 5 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, eightday clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin), perched among the boughs, as 10 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, work15 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 humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, 20 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 25 more."

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 30 the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days.

THE TOYS

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 bright

ness 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 5 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 10 hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close beside him is that snuff-box, out of which there sprang a Counsellor in a black gown, with 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 mag15 nified 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 20 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 25 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.

I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers -there he is! was made of, then! His hide was real to the 30 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 color, next to him, that 35 went in the wagon of cheeses, and could be taken out and

stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of fur 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 5 was their harness 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 toothpicks 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, 10 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 15 great delight.

THE DOLL'S HOUSE

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 doorsteps, and a real balcony-greener than I ever see now, 20 except at watering-places; and even they afford but a poor imitation. And though it did open all at once, the entire house-front, it was but to shut it up again. Even open, there were three distinct rooms in it: a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly furnished, and, best of all, a kitchen, 25 with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils, and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to fry two fish. What 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 30 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, and which made tea, nectar?