Saying this, he handed me a roll of ancient vellum, containing, as I afterwards found, the particulars which, in conformity with his solemn command, I have dilated into the only veritable biography of my patron saint which hath ever been given to the world. The one hitherto received as orthodox is, according to the declaration of the saint himself, little better than a collection of legends, written under the express inspection of the old lady of Babylon.
I reverently received the precious deposite, and faithfully promised obedience to his commands; whereupon the good St. Nicholas, puffing in my face a whiff of tobacco smoke more fragrant than all the spices of the East, blessed me, and departed in haste, to be present at a wedding in Communipaw. Hereupon I awoke, and should have thought all that had passed but a dream, arising out of the distempered state of my mind, had I not held in my hand the identical roll of vellum, presented in the manner just related. On examination, it proved to contain the matter which is incorporated in the first story of this collection, under the title of “The Legend of St. Nicholas,” not only in due obedience to his command, but in order that henceforward no one may pretend ignorance concerning this illustrious and benevolent saint, seeing they have now a biography under his own hand.
Thus much have I deemed it proper to preface to the reader, as some excuse for the freedom of having honoured my poor fictions with the title of The Book of St. Nicholas, which might otherwise have been deemed a piece of unchristian presumption.
THE STORY BOOK
OF
SAINT NICHOLAS.
THE LEGEND OF ST. NICHOLAS.
Everybody has heard of St. Nicholas, that honest Dutch saint, whom I look upon as having been one of the most liberal, good-natured little fat fellows in the world. But, strange as it may seem, though everybody has heard, nobody seems to know anything about him. The place of his birth, the history of his life, and the manner in which he came to be the dispenser of Newyear cakes, and the patron of good boys, are matters that have hitherto not been investigated, as they ought to have been long and long ago. I am about to supply this deficiency, and pay a debt of honour which is due to this illustrious and obscure tutelary genius of the jolly Newyear.
It hath often been justly remarked that the birth, parentage, and education of the most illustrious personages of antiquity, are usually enveloped in the depths of obscurity. And this obscurity, so far from being injurious to their dignity and fame, has proved highly beneficial; for as no one could tell who were their fathers and mothers on earth, they could the more easily claim kindred with the skies, and trace their descent from the immortals. Such was the case with Saturn, Hercules, Bacchus, and others among the heathens; and of St. George, St. Dennis, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, and the rest of the tutelaries, of whom—I speak it with great respect and reverence—it may justly be said, that nobody would ever have heard of their progenitors but for the renown of their descendants. It is, therefore, no reflection on the respectable St. Nicholas, that his history has hitherto remained a secret, and his origin unknown.
In prosecuting this biography, and thus striving to repay my obligations for divers, and I must say unmerited favours received from this good saint, after whom I was christened, I shall refrain from all invention or hyperbole, seeking the truth industriously, and telling it simply and without reserve or embellishment. I scorn to impose on my readers with cock and bull stories of his killing dragons, slaughtering giants, or defeating whole armies of pagans with his single arm. St. Nicholas was a peaceful, quiet, orderly saint, who, so far as I have been able to learn, never shed a drop of blood in his whole life, except, peradventure, it may be possible he sometimes cut his finger, of which I profess to know nothing, and, therefore, contrary to the custom of biographers, shall say nothing.
St. Nicholas was born—and that is all I can tell of the matter—on the first of January; but in what year or at what place, are facts which I have not been able to ascertain, although I have investigated them with the most scrupulous accuracy. His obscurity would enable me to give him a king and queen for his parents, whereby he might be able to hold up his head with the best of them all; but, as I before observed, I scorn to impose such doubtful, to say no worse, legends upon my readers.
Nothing is known of his early youth, except that it hath come down to us that his mother dreamed, the night before his birth, that the sun was changed into a vast Newyear cake and the stars into _oily cooks_—which she concluded was the reason they burned so bright. It hath been shrewdly intimated by certain would-be antiquaries, who doubtless wanted to appear wiser than they really were, that because our worthy saint was called Nicholas, that must of course have been the name of his father. But I set such conjectures at naught, seeing that if all the sons were called after their fathers, the distinction of senior and junior would no longer be sufficient, and they would be obliged to number them as they do in the famous island of Nantucket, where I hear there are thirty-six Isaac Coffins and sixteen Pelegs.