FOOTNOTE:
[27] By Eliza Cook, an English poet (1818-1889).
Expression: Imagine that you see Mr. Fezziwig with his apprentices preparing for the Christmas festivities. What is your opinion of him? Now read the story, paragraph by paragraph, trying to make it as interesting to your hearers as a real visit to Fezziwig warehouse would have been.
THE NEW YEAR'S DINNER PARTY [28]
The Old Year being dead, the New Year came of age, which he does by Calendar Law as soon as the breath is out of the old gentleman's body. Nothing would serve the youth but he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days of the Year were invited.
The Festivals, whom he appointed as his stewards, were mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and cheer for mortals below; and it was time that they should have a taste of their bounty.
All the Days came to dinner. Covers were provided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal table; with an occasional knife and fork at the sideboard for the Twenty-ninth of February.
I should have told you that cards of invitation had been sent out. The carriers were the Hours—twelve as merry little whirligig footpages as you should desire to see. They went all round, and found out the persons invited well enough, with the exception of Easter Day, Shrove Tuesday, and a few such Movables, who had lately shifted their quarters.