Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company.

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.




THE THRESHOLD.


If, gentle reader, you will step across this threshold, now, as the moon
rises in the keen Christmas air, and will find a place by the ruddy
ingle within-doors, you may hear, if you will, a Babel of voices from
many lands, telling over the adventures of the road and falling into the
good-fellowship of the happy Christmas season.

Here from the north, with his ample furs thrown back, sits the Russian
in friendly talk with a gay little wanderer from Sicilian valleys.
There, with elbow crooked by a foaming tankard, leans the German,
narrating his perils and pleasures to a gallant Frenchman and a
sunbrowned Spaniard who smoke and chatter together as now and then
Mynheer stops for a pull at his pipe.

A Swede, Norwegians, an Englishman or two, and even a happy-go-lucky
American, are clustered about the Yule-log; for the place you have
entered is the common-room of the wide world.