Day (the 6th of December) has for years been a favourite festival with
the children in many parts of the Continent. In France, the children
are diligently taught that St. Nicholas comes in the night down the
chimney, and fills the little shoes (which are ranged there for the
purpose) with sweetmeats or rods, according to his opinion of their
owner's conduct during the past year. The Saint is supposed to travel
through the air, and to be followed by an ass laden with two panniers,
one of which contains the good things, and the other the birch, and he
leaves his ass at the top of the chimney and comes down alone. The
same belief is entertained in Holland; and in some parts of Germany he
is even believed to carry off bad boys and girls in his sack,
answering in this respect to our English Bogy.

The day, as may be supposed, is looked forward to with no small amount
of anxiety; very clean and tidy are the little shoes placed by the
young expectants; and their parents--who have threatened and promised
in St. Nicholas's name for a year past--take care that, with one sort
of present or the other, the shoes are well filled. The great
question--rods or sweetmeats--is, however, finally settled for each
individual before breakfast-time on the great day; and before dinner,
despite maternal warnings, most of the said sweetmeats have been
consumed. And so it came to pass that Friedrich and his brothers and
sisters had hit upon a plan for ending the day, with the same spirit
and enjoyment with which it opened.

The mother, by a little kind manoeuvring, generally induced the
father to sup and take his evening pipe with a neighbour, for the
tradesman was one of those whose presence is rather a "wet blanket"
upon all innocent folly and fun. Then she good-naturedly took herself
off to household matters, and the children were left in undisturbed