furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched
among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping;
there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in
appearance than many real men--and no wonder, for their heads took
off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles
and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes,
sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were
trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold
and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there
were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in
enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were
teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles,
conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially
dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts,
crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me,
delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend,
"There was everything, and more." This motley collection of odd
objects, clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back
the bright looks directed towards it from every side--some of the
diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and
a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty
mothers, aunts, and nurses--made a lively realisation of the fancies
of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and
all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their
wild adornments at that well-remembered time.

Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house
awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not
care to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do
we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our