"The bird is an English robin," said his father. "It is quite another
bird to that which is called a robin here: it is smaller and rounder,
and has a redder breast and bright dark eyes, and lives and sings at
home through the winter. A Christmas tree is a fir-tree--just such a
one as that outside the door--brought into the house and covered with
lights and presents. Picture to yourself our fir-tree lighted up with
tapers on all the branches, with dolls, and trumpets, and bon-bons, and
drums, and toys of all kinds hanging from it like fir-cones, and on the
tip-top shoot a figure of a Christmas Angel in white, with a star upon
its head."

"Fancy!" said the boy.

And fancy he did. Every day he looked at the spruce fir, and tried to
imagine it laden with presents, and brilliant with tapers, and thought
how wonderful must be that "old country"--_Home_, as it was called, even
by those who had never seen it--where the robins were so very red, and
where at Christmas the fir-trees were hung with toys instead of cones.

It was certainly a pity that, two days before the party, an original
idea on the subject of snowmen struck one of the children who used to
play together, with their sleds and snow shoes, in the back streets.
The idea was this: That instead of having a commonplace snowman, whose
legs were obliged to be mere stumps, for fear he should be top-heavy,
and who could not walk, even with them; who, in fact, could do nothing
but stand at the corner of the street, holding his impotent stick, and
staring with his pebble eyes, till he was broken to pieces or
ignominiously carried away by a thaw,--that, instead of this, they
should have a real, live snowman, who should walk on competent legs, to