261

Mr. Bluff's Experience of Holidays. _By Oliver Bell Bunce_ 273

+Master Sandy's Snapdragon. _By Elbridge S. Brooks_ 284

A Christmas Fairy. _By John Strange Winter_ 297

The Greatest of These. _By Joseph Mills Hanson_ 303

*Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe. _By Elizabeth Harrison_ 316

+Christmas on Big Rattle. _By Theodore Goodridge Roberts_ 329

THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF CHRISTMAS STORIES

I

CHRISTMAS AT FEZZIWIG'S WAREHOUSE

CHARLES DICKENS

"YO HO! my boys," said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night! Christmas Eve,
Dick! Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up!" cried old
Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack
Robinson. . . ."

"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with
wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room
here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Cheer-up, Ebenezer!"

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away, or
couldn't have cleared away with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in
a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from
public life forevermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were
trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug,
and warm, and dry, and bright a ballroom as you would desire to see on a
winter's night.

In came a fiddler with a music book, and went up to the lofty desk and
made an orchestra of it and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs.
Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Misses
Fezziwig, beaming and lovable. In came the six followers whose hearts
they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the
business. In came the housemaid with her cousin the baker. In came the
cook with her brother's particular friend the milkman. In came the boy
from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his
master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one
who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress; in they all
came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once;
hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up
again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping, old
top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting
off again, as soon as they got there; all top coupl