THE ROSE AND THE RING


by William Makepeace Thackeray





PRELUDE

It happened that the undersigned spent the last Christmas season in a
foreign city where there were many English children.

In that city, if you wanted to give a child's party, you could not even
get a magic-lantern or buy Twelfth-Night characters--those funny painted
pictures of the King, the Queen, the Lover, the Lady, the Dandy, the
Captain, and so on--with which our young ones are wont to recreate
themselves at this festive time.

My friend Miss Bunch, who was governess of a large family that lived in
the Piano Nobile of the house inhabited by myself and my young charges
(it was the Palazzo Poniatowski at Rome, and Messrs. Spillmann, two
of the best pastrycooks in Christendom, have their shop on the ground
floor): Miss Bunch, I say, begged me to draw a set of Twelfth-Night
characters for the amusement of our young people.

She is a lady of great fancy and droll imagination, and having looked
at the characters, she and I composed a history about them, which
was recited to the little folks at night, and served as our FIRESIDE