Good for Christmas time is the ruddy color
of the cloak, in which—the tree making
a forest of itself for her to trip through, with
her basket—Little Red Riding-Hood comes
to me one Christmas Eve, to give me information
of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling
Wolf who ate her grandmother, without
making any impression on his appetite,
and then ate her, after making that
ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my
first love. I felt that if I could have married
Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known
perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and
there was nothing for it but to look out the
Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him
late in the procession on the table, as a
monster who was to be degraded. O the
wonderful Noah's Ark! It was not found
seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and
the animals were crammed in at the roof, and
needed to have their legs well shaken down
before they could be got in, even there—and
then, ten to one but they began to tumble out
at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened
with a wire latch—but what was that
against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or
two smaller than the elephant: the lady-bird,
the butterfly—all triumphs of art! Consider
the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose
balance was so indifferent, that he usually
tumbled forward, and knocked down all the
animal creation. Consider Noah and his
family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how
the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and
how the tails of the larger animals used
gradually to resolve themselves into frayed
bits of string!

Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up
in a tree—not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not
the Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him and all
Mother Bunch's wonders, without mention),
but an Eastern King with a glittering scimitar
and turban. By Allah! two Eastern Kings,
for I see another, looking over his shoulder!
Down upon the grass, at the tree's foot, lies
the full length of a coal-black Giant, stretched
asleep, with his head in a lady's lap; and near
them is a glass box, fastened with four locks
of shining steel, in which he keeps the lady
prisoner when he is awake. I see the four
keys at his girdle now. The lady makes signs
to the two kings in the tree, who softly
descend. It is the setting-in of the bright
Arabian Nights.

Oh, now all common things become uncommon
and enchanted to me! All lamps are
wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common
flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little
earth scattered on the top; trees are for
Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to
throw down into the Valley of Diamonds,
that the precious stones may stick to them,
and be carried by the eagles to their nests,
whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare
them. Tarts are made, according to the recipe
of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned
pastrycook after he was set down in his
drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers
are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing
up people cut into four pieces, to whom they
are taken blindfold. Any iron ring let into
stone is the entrance to a cave, which only
waits for the magician, and the little fire, and
the necromancy, that will make the earth
shake. All the dates imported come from
the same tree as that unlucky date, with
whose shell the merchant knocked out the
eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives
are of the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning
which the Commander of the Faithful overheard
the boy conduct the fictitious trial of
the fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are
akin to the apple purchased (with two others)
from the Sultan's gardener, for three sequins,
and which the tall black slave stole from the
child. All dogs are associated with the dog,
really a transformed man, who jumped upon
the baker's counter, and put his paw on the
piece of bad money. All rice recals the rice
which the awful lady, who was a ghoule, could
only peck by grains, because of her nightly
feasts in the burial-place. My very rocking-
horse,—there he is, with his nostrils turned
completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!—
should have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof
to fly away with me, as the wooden horse did
with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all
his father's Court.

Yes, on every object that I recognise
among those upper branches of my Christmas
Tree, I see this fairy light! When I wake in
bed, at daybreak, on the cold dark winter
mornings, the white snow dimly beheld, outside,
through the frost on the window-pane, I hear
Dinarzade. " Sister, sister, if you are yet
awake, I pray you finish the history of the
Young King of the Black Islands." Scheherazade
replies, " If my lord the Sultan will
suffer me to live another day, sister, I will
not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful
story yet." Then, the gracious Sultan
goes out, giving no orders for the execution,
and we all three breathe again.

At this height of my tree I begin to see,
cowering among the leaves—it may be born
of turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie, or of
these many fancies, jumbled with Robinson
Crusoe on his desert island, Philip Quarll
among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton
with Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the
Mask—or it may be the result of indigestion,
assisted by imagination and over-doctoring—
a prodigious nightmare. It is so exceedingly
indistinct, that I don't know why it's frightful
but I know it is. I can only make out
that it is an immense array of shapeless
things, which appear to be planted on a vast
exaggeration of the lazy- tongs that used to bear
the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close
to my eyes, and receding to an immeasurable
distance. When it comes closest, it is worst.
In connection with it, I descry remembrances
of winter nights incredibly long; of being sent
early to bed, as a punishment for some small