But here again, at the very zenith of a shout, was he frozen to silence by
a vision--this time one too obviously of no ponderable fabric. There in
the corner, almost at his hand, seemed to be a thing that he had dreamed
of possessing only after he entered Heaven--a candy cane: one of fearful
length, thick of girth, vast of crook, and wide in the spiral stripe that
seemed to run a living flame before his ravished eyes, beginning at the
bottom and winding around and around the whole dizzy height. Fearfully in
nerve-braced silence he leaned far out of his bed to bring against this
amazing apparition one cool, impartial forefinger of skeptic research. It
did not vanish; it resisted his touch. Then his heart fainted with
rapture, for he knew the unimagined had become history.

Standing before the windows of the great, he had gazed long at these
creations. They were suspended on a wire across the window in various
lengths, from little ones to sizes too awesome to compute. On one
occasion so long had he stood motionless, so deep the trance of his
contemplation, that the winter cold had cruelly bitten his ears and toes.
He had not supposed that these things were for mere vulgar ownership. He
had known of boys who had guns and building-blocks and rocking-horses as
well as candy in the lesser degrees; but never had he known, never had he
been able to hear of one who had owned a thing like this. Indeed, among
the boys he knew, it was believed that they were not even to be seen save
on their wire at Christmas time in the windows of the rich. One boy had
hinted that the "set" would not be broken even if a person should appear
with money enough to buy a single one. And here before him was the finest
of them all, receding neither from his gaze or his touch, one as long as
the longest of which Heaven had hitherto vouchsafed him a chilling vision
through glass; here was the same fascinating union of transcendent merit
with a playful suggestion of downright utility. And he had blurted out to