“A merry Christmas and happy New Year,”
and “all foreign authorities, corporations, and private individuals were enjoined to promote, by all legal means of hospitality and good-will, the loyal execution of the above-mentioned wishes.” It displayed the names of several highly honorable witnesses, and concluded:—
“Given under my hand and seal at my permanent White House residence, Elysium, 24th December, 1876.
—— “George Washington.”
And the seal bore the initials of the mighty man.
The tree yielded gifts many and charming, but the sweetest gift was the kindly thought that prompted the pretty device. Though one had to smile where all were smiling, yet was it not, all in all, quite enough to make one a little “teary roun' the lashes,” especially when one is very much “grown up,” and so has not the remotest claim upon the happy things that, “by the grace of God,” belong to the children? Such scenes make one feel the world is surely not so black as it is painted.
There was during the festivities, later, a bit of mistletoe over the door, which, in an indirect, roundabout way, through our ancestral England, was also meant as a tribute to America, and which caused much merriment during the holidays in a family unusually blessed with cousins in assorted sizes. When certain flaxen-haired maidens felt that their age and dignity did not permit them to indulge in such sports, and so resisted all allurements to stand an instant under the mistletoe-bough, what did the bold young student cousins? Each seized a twig of green and stood it up suggestively in a cousin's fair braided locks, when she was at last “under the mistletoe,” and
“I wad na hae thought a lassie
Wad sae o' a kiss complain!”
None but the brave deserve the fair, and then—lest any one should be shocked—they were positively all cousins, and when they were more than five times removed I can solemnly affirm I think it was the hand only that was gallantly lifted to the lips of Cousin Hugo, or Cousin Rudolph, or Cousin Siegfried; and, if I am mistaken after all, Christmas comes but once a year, and youth but once in a lifetime.
At the theatre, Christmas pieces were given especially for the children. The Stadt Theatre one evening was crowded with pretty little heads, the private boxes full to overflowing; and across the body of the house a great, solid row of orphan girls in a uniform of black, with short sleeves and a large white kerchief pinned soberly across the shoulders. They wear no hats in winter, nor do common housemaids here. A friend in Stuttgart remarked innocently to a servant who was walking with her to the theatre one bitter cold night, “Why, Luise, you'll freeze; you ought to wear a hat or hood.” “No, indeed!” said the girl, quite repudiating the idea, “I am no fraülein.” They do not seem to suffer any evil consequences, never having known anything different, and perhaps the little orphans, too, are not so cold as they look. It may be they are made to go bareheaded, to teach them their station and humility, but it seems a miracle that it does not teach them influenza. The little things were in the seventh heaven of delight, and the play a bit of pure, delicious nonsense,—a fairy-tale with an old, familiar theme,—the three golden apples and the three princesses who pluck them, and in consequence are plunged into the depths of the earth, where a fire-breathing dragon is their keeper; the despair of their royal father, who is a portly old gentleman with a very big crown, and his proclamation that whoever, high or low, shall rescue them may wed them; then the procession that sets out in search of the missing maidens, with the tailor, the gardener, and the hunter in advance, and the adventures of the three, until the hunter, who is the beautiful, good young man who always succeeds,—in fairy-tales,—finally rescues the princesses, and marries the youngest and loveliest, while the tailor and gardener, who have conducted themselves in a treacherous and unseemly manner, are punished according to the swift retribution that always overtakes offenders—in fairy-tales.
The action was extremely rapid, the scenery very effective; there were perfect armies of children on the stage, some of whom danced a kind of Chinese mandarin ballet, and some of whom represented apes, and also danced in the suite of the Prince of Monkeyland, one of the rejected suitors of the princesses. In actual life the Prince of Monkeyland is, unfortunately, not always rejected. There was a pretty scene when the sunlight streamed through the Gothic windows of an old castle, and red-capped dwarfs hopped about the stone floor, and played all sorts of pranks by the old well. And then there was the man in the moon, with his lantern; and all the women in the moon, who were blue, filmy, misty creatures, bowing and swaying in a way that made the children through the house scream with laughter; and these moony maidens were so very ethereal they could only speak in a whisper, and almost fainted when the hunter, who happened to be up that way, addressed them.