A FLOWER BOOK.
When the snow lies thick on the ground and all the streams that babble in summer lie still in their houses of ice, you think, I daresay, that the flowers are asleep, and that nothing can wake them before the spring?
But I know of a wood where the little elves and sprites and the delicate fairies dance in a ring in the moonlight, and I will tell you of what happens there at twelve o'clock on the first night of every year.
IVY
The clock in the cathedral tower booms out twelve solemn strokes, and all the church bells peal a welcome to the New Year. That is the signal for the fairies to come down on a moonbeam—with their white dresses shining and their long yellow hair streaming.
WINTER JASMINE
Most beautiful of them all is Rusialka, the queen of fairies and elves. She wears a necklet of dewdrops, and dew-drops sparkle in her dress and in her hair. She glides softly over the snow, and all the fairies follow her to a great elder bush that grows in the middle of the little wood. She knocks once and calls: