Listen, children, while I tell you about marzipan. The grown people need not hear, if they do not wish.
Marzipan (or St. Mark's bread—marzi panis) is the name of a dainty which is made into bonbons of every shape and size and color imaginable; all, however, having the same flavor, tasting of sugar and vanilla and rose-water and almonds, and I know not what beside. There are tiny potatoes, dark and gray, with marvellous “eyes,” that would delight your souls; there are grapes, and nuts, and large, red apples, all made from the delectable marzipan. And most particularly there are little round loaves, an inch long, perhaps, which are the original celebrated marzipan, pure and simple, the other form being modern innovations. And why Mark's bread? Because, my dears, there was once a famine in Lübeck, and tradition saith that the loaf which each poor woman took from the baker to her starving bairns grew each day smaller and smaller, until finally it was such a poor wee thing it was no more than an inch long; and on St. Mark's Day was the famine commemorated, while the shape and size of the pitiful loaves are preserved in this sweetmeat, peculiar, I believe, to North Germany. Hamburg children—bless them!—will tell you the tale of famine, and swallow the tiny loaves as merrily as though there was never a hungry child in the world.
Hamburg children! Indeed, I have reason to bless them. Shall I not always be grateful to the fate that showed to eyes weary with gazing upon wet decks, dense fog, and the listless faces of fellow-voyagers, a bright and beautiful vision? Most travellers in Hamburg visit first the Zoölogical Gardens, and then immediately after—is it to observe the contrast or the similarity between the lower animals and noble man?—the Exchange or Börse, where they look down from a gallery upon hundreds, thousands of busy men, whose voices rise in one incessant, strange, indescribable noise—hum—roar—call it what you will. Neither of these spectacles, happily, was thrust at once before me. Did I not interpret as a happy omen that my first “sight” was twenty little German children dancing?
Can I ever forget those delicious shy looks at the queer stranger who has suddenly loomed up in the midst of their festivities? And the carefully prepared speech of the small daughter of the house who with blushes and falterings, much laughter, many promptings, and several false starts, finally chirps like a bird, trying to speak English, “I am va-ry happy to zee you,” and for the feat receives the felicitations of her friends, and retires in triumph to her bonbons.
Sweetest of all was the gracious yet timid way in which each child, in making her early adieus, gave her hand to the stranger also, as an imperative courtesy.
Each little maid draws up her dainty dancing-boots heel to heel, extends for an instant her small gloved hand, speaks no word except with the shy sweet eyes, gravely inclines her head, and is gone, giving place to the next, who goes through the same solemn form.
Dear little children at home, you are as dear and sweet as these small German girls—dearer and sweeter, shall I not say?—but would you, could you, prompted only by your own good manners, march up to a corner where sits a great, big, entirely grown-up person from over the sea, and stand before her, demure and quaint and stately, and make your stiff and pretty little bows? Would you now, you tiniest ones? Really?
Yet, do you know, if you would, of your own free will, without mamma visible in the background exhorting and encouraging, you would do a graceful thing, a courteous and a kindly thing, in thus including the dread stranger within your charmed circle, and in welcoming her from your child-heart and with your child-hands. You would be telling her, all so silently, that though her home is far away, she has her place among you; that kindness and warmth and free-hearted hospitality one finds the wide world over. And your pretty heads, bending seriously before her, and your demure, absurd, sweet, pursed-up baby-mouths might conjure up visions of curly gold locks, and soft dimpled faces far off in her home country, and she would—why, children, children, I cannot say what she would do! I cannot tell all that she would think and feel. But this I know well, she would love you and your dear little, frightened, welcoming hands, and she would say, with her whole heart, as I say now,—
“Merry, merry Christmas, and ‘God bless us every one!’”
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