BIG BOOK OF CLASSIC CHRISTMAS TALES Ebook

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Christmas at Fezziwig's Warehouse - Charles Dickens
• The Fir-Tree - Hans Christian Andersen
• The Christmas Masquerade - Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• The Telltale Tile - Olive Thorne Miller
• The Shepherds and the Angels - Adapted from the Bills
• Little Girl's Christmas - ByWinnifred E. Lincoln
• Toinette and the Elves - Susan Coolidge
• A Christmas Matinee - M.A.L. Lane
• The Voyage of the Wee Red Cap. By Ruth Sawyer Durand
• Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas - Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• A Story of the Christ-Child (a German Legend for Christmas Eve) - Elizabeth Harrison
• Why the Chimes Rang - Raymond McAlden
• The Little Sister's Vacation - Winifred M. Kirkland
• The Birds'Christmas (founded on fact) - F.E. Mann
• Little Wolff's Wooden Shoes - Francois Coppee, adapted and translated by Alma J. Foster
• A Christmas Star - Katherine Pyle
• Christmas in the Alley - Olive Thorne Miller
• The Queerest Christmas - Grace Margaret Gallaher
• A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
• Old Father Christmas - J.H. Ewing
• How Christmas Came to the Santa Maria Flats - Elia W. Peattie
• Christmas in the Barn - F. Arnstein
• The Legend of Babouscka - From the Russian Folk Tale
• The Philanthropist's Christmas - James Weber Linn
• The First New England Christmas - G.L. Stone and M.G. Fickett
• The First Christmas-Tree - LucyWheelock
• The Cratchits' Christmas Dinner - Charles Dickens
• Christmas Under the Snow - Olive Thorne Miller
• Christmas in Seventeen Seventy-Six - Anne HollingsworthWharton
• Mr. Bluff's Experience of Holidays - Oliver Bell Bunce
• A Christmas Fairy - John Strange Winter
• Master Sandy's Snapdragon - Elbridge S. Brooks
• The Greatest of These - Joseph Mills Hanson
• Big Rattle - Theodore Goodridge Roberts
• Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe - Elizabeth Harrison

Sample:

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 couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them.
When this result was brought about the fiddler struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley." Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too, with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pairs of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance and had no notion of walking.

But if they had been thrice as many--oh, four times as many--old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig.
As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term.
If that's not high praise, tell me higher and I'll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted at any given time what would become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs.
Fezziwig had gone all through the dance, advance and retire; both hands to your partner, bow and courtesy, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again with a stagger.

When the clock struck eleven the domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs.
Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually, as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas!