of delight it once was to children! What
rich food it offered to their minds! The Christmas trees and pyramids at
the Stechbahn, the various wares, the gingerbread and toys in the booths,
offered by no means the greatest charm. A still stronger attraction were
the boys with the humming "baboons," the rattles and flags, for from them
purchases had always to be made, with jokes thrown into the bargain--bad
ones, which are invariably the most amusing; and what a pleasure it was
to twirl the "baboon" with one's own little hand, and, if the hand got
cold during the process, one did not feel it, for it seemed like
midsummer with a swarm of flies buzzing about one!

But most enjoyable of all was probably the throng of people, great and
small, and all there was to hear and see among them and to answer. It
seemed as if the Christmas joy of the city was concentrated there, and
filled the not over-clear atmosphere like the pungent odour of Christmas
trees.

Put there were other things to experience as well as mere gaiety--the
pale child in the corner, with its little bare feet, holding in its cold,
red hands the six little sheep of snow-white wool on a tiny green board;
and that other yonder, with the little man made of prunes spitted on tiny
sticks.

How small and pale the child is! And how eloquently the blue eyes invite
a purchaser, for it is only with looks that the wares are extolled! I
still see them both before me! The threepenny pieces they get are to help
their starving mother to heat the attic room in those winter days which,
cold though they are, may warm the heart. Looking at them our mother told
us how hunger hurts, and how painful want and misery are to bear, and we
never left the Christmas fair without buying a few sheep or a prune man,
though all we could do with them was to give them away again. When I
wrote my fairy-tale, The Nuts, I had the Christmas fair at Berlin in my
mind's eye, and I seemed to see the wretched little girl who, among all
the happy folk, had found nothing but cold, pain, anguish, and a handful
of nuts, and who afterward fared so happily--not, indeed, among men, but
with the most beautiful angels in heaven.

Why are the Berlin children defrauded of this bright and innocent
pleasure, and their hearts denied the practice of exercising charity?

Turning my thoughts backward, it seems to me as if almost too much beauty
and pleasure were crowded together at Christmas, richly provided with
pres