Project Gutenberg's Twas the Night before Christmas, by Clement C. Moore

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Twas the Night before Christmas
A Visit from St. Nicholas

Author: Clement C. Moore

Illustrator: Jessie Willcox Smith

Release Date: November 22, 2005 [EBook #17135]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS ***

Produced by Janet Blenkinship, Suzanne Shell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Twas the Night Before Christmas

A Visit from St. Nicholas

By Clement C. Moore

[Illustration]

With Pictures by Jessie Willcox Smith

Houghton Mifflin Company

Boston

Copyright (c) 1912 by Houghton Mifflin Company

All rights reserved. For information about permission
to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park
Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

HC ISBN 0-395-06952-1
PA ISBN 0-395-64374-0

Printed in the United States of America

LBM 40 39 38 37 36

INTRODUCTION

Amid the many celebrations last Christmas Eve, in various places by
different persons, there was one, in New York City, not like any other
anywhere. A company of men, women, and children went together just after
the evening service in their church, and, standing around the tomb of
the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," recited together the words of
the poem which we all know so well and love so dearly.

Dr. Clement C. Moore, who wrote the poem, never expected that he would
be remembered by it. If he expected to be famous at all as a writer, he
thought it would be because of the Hebrew Dictionary that he wrote.

He was born in a house near Chelsea Square, New York City, in 1781; and
he lived there all his life. It was a great big house, with fireplaces
in it;--just the house to be living in on Christmas Eve.

Dr. Moore had children. He liked writing poetry for them even more than
he liked writing a Hebrew Dictionary. He wrote a whole book of poems for
them.

One year he wrote this poem, which we usually call "'Twas the Night
before Christmas," to give to his