+Christmas in the Alley. _By Olive Thorne Miller_ 146
*A Christmas Star. _By Katherine Pyle_ 158
+The Queerest Christmas. _By Grace Margaret Gallaher_ 165
Old Father Christmas. _By J. H. Ewing_ 179
A Christmas Carol. _By Charles Dickens_ 193
How Christmas Came to the Santa Maria Flats. _By Elia W. Peattie_ 196
The Legend of Babouscka. _From the Russian Folk Tale_ 208
*Christmas in the Barn. _By F. Arnstein_ 211
The Philanthropist's Christmas. _By James Weber Linn_ 216
*The First Christmas-Tree. _By Lucy Wheelock_ 230
The First New England Christmas. _By G. L. Stone and M. G. Fickett_ 232
The Cratchits' Christmas Dinner. _By Charles Dickens_ 242
Christmas in Seventeen Seventy-Six. _By Anne Hollingsworth Wharton_ 253
*Christmas Under the Snow. _By Olive Thorne Miller_ 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
"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.