Some Christmas Stories | Page 7

the great green
curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins! The devoted
dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in
the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous Peasant with a red nose and a
very little hat, whom I take from this hour forth to my bosom as a
friend (I think he was a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many
years have passed since he and I have met), remarks that the
sassigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular
conceit will live in my remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping
all possible jokes, unto the end of time. Or now, I learn with bitter tears
how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair
hanging down, went starving through the streets; or how George
Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was
afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to have been let off. Comes
swift to comfort me, the Pantomime--stupendous Phenomenon!--when
clowns are shot from loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright
constellation that it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with scales of
pure gold, twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom
I deem it no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather)
puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!"
or taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I sawed you do
it!" when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being
changed into Anything; and "Nothing is, but thinking makes it so."
Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation-- often
to return in after-life--of being unable, next day, to get back to the dull,

settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the bright atmosphere I
have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with the wand like a celestial
Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy immortality along with her. Ah,
she comes back, in many shapes, as my eye wanders down the branches
of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has never yet stayed by
me!
Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,--there it is, with its familiar
proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!--and all its attendant
occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water colours, in the
getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth, or the Exile of
Siberia. In spite of a few besetting accidents and failures (particularly
an unreasonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, and some others,
to become faint in the legs, and double up, at exciting points of the
drama), a teeming world of fancies so suggestive and all-embracing,
that, far below it on my Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real Theatres
in the day-time, adorned with these associations as with the freshest
garlands of the rarest flowers, and charming me yet.
But hark! The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep!
What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set
forth on the Christmas Tree? Known before all the others, keeping far
apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel,
speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes
uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious
temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and
beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate,
calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people
looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting
down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest,
walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great
multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round;
again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the
deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant;
again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness
coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard,
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas
associations cluster thick. School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil
silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool impertinent inquiries, long
disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of huddled
desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats,
stumps, and balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and
the softened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh,