Genre - Fairy Tale. You are on the page - 1

iginal Dutch settlers. Many ceremonies and customs, relics of aruder age, and now nearly forgotten, were still practised. TheRaymonds, although pious, and more intelligent than most of theirneighbours, kept up many of the usages of Fatherland on the Christmasoccasion, perhaps more as wafting them back in remembrance of earlyenjoyment in the home circle, than from any present love of thefestivity common at this period.The joyful season drew nigh merrily, and in the watchmaker's family,as in all

e race has, in general, attainedthrough centuries of experience and moralising. The story becomes aninescapable part of the outfit of received ideas on manners and moralswhich is a necessary possession of the heir of civilisation.Children do not object to these stories in the least, if the stories aregood ones. They accept them with the relish which nature seems ever tohave for all truly nourishing material. And the little tales are one ofthe media through which we elders may transmit some very

d as though thegolden floor of heaven had come to rest upon earth. The path, withits sentinel trees, led straight as a rod to a distant house, longand low, surrounded by a vine-covered veranda. There were strange,sweet smells in the air, which felt soft and warm. The sky wasbrilliantly blue, and on the fence across the road a gorgeous parrotsat preening its feathers in the sunshine.Mollie looked about her with curious eyes, wondering where she was.Not in England, of that she was sure--there was

referred manlystrength and vivacity even though accompanied by a shade of bluntness.But Sibyl always received Graham Marr with one of her bright smiles,and she would listen to his poetry hour after hour; for Graham wroteverses, and liked nothing better than reclining in an easy chair andreading them aloud."What Sibyl can see in Gra-a-m'ma, I cannot imagine," Bessie wouldsometimes say; "he is a lazy white-headed egotist; a good judge oflace and ribbons, but mortally afraid of a