No. 5 and No. 6.—The Man in the Moon, and The Clerk of the Weather Office. From a book of caricatures belonging to Dr. James.
No. 7.—A Dunce. From a steel engraving framed in rosewood that hangs in my Uncle Wilkinson’s parlor.
No. 8.—Old Father Christmas. From a German book at Lady Littleham’s.
CHAPTER II.
“My sister Patty was six years old. We loved each other dearly. The picture-book was almost as much hers as mine. We sat so long together on one big foot-stool by the fire, with our arms around each other, and the book resting on our knees, that Kitty called down blessings on my godmother’s head for having sent a volume that kept us both so long out of mischief.
“ ‘If books was allus as useful as that, they’d do for me,’ said she; and though this speech did not mean much, it was a great deal for Kitty to say; since, not being herself an educated person, she naturally thought that ‘little enough good comes of larning.’
“Patty and I had our favorites amongst the pictures. Bogy, now, was a character one did not care to think about too near bed-time. I was tired of Guy Fawkes, and thought he looked more natural made of straw, as Dick did him. The Dunce was a little too personal; but old Father Christmas took our hearts by storm; we had never seen anything like him, though now-a-days you may get a plaster figure of him in any toy-shop at Christmas-time, with hair and beard like cotton wool, and a Christmas-tree in his hand.
“The custom of Christmas-trees came from Germany. I can remember when they were first introduced into England, and what wonderful things we thought them. Now, every village school has its tree, and the scholars openly discuss whether the presents have been ‘good,’ or ‘mean’ as compared with other trees in former years. The first one that I ever saw I believed to have come from good Father Christmas himself; but little boys have grown too wise now to be taken in for their own amusement. They are not excited by secret and mysterious preparations in the back drawing-room; they hardly confess to the thrill—which I feel to this day—when the folding-doors are thrown open, and amid the blaze of tapers, mamma, like a Fate, advances with her scissors to give every one what falls to his lot.
“Well, young people, when I was eight years old I had not seen a Christmas-tree, and the first picture of one I ever saw was the picture of that held by Old Father Christmas in my godmother’s picture book.
“ ‘What are those things on the tree?’ I asked.