"
Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation--
often to return in after-life--of being unable, next day, to get
back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the
bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy,
with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy
immortality along with her. Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as
my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as
often, and has never yet stayed by me!
Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,--there it is, with its
familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!--and all
its attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water
colours, in the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth,
or the Exile of Siberia. In spite of a few besetting accidents and
failures (particularly an unreasonable disposition in the
respectable Kelmar, and some others, to become faint in the legs,
and double up, at exciting points of the drama), a teeming world of
fancies so suggestive and all-embracing, that, far below it on my
Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real Theatres in the day-time,
adorned with these associations as with the freshest garlands of the
rarest flowers, and charming me yet.
But hark! The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep!
What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them
set forth on the Christmas Tree? Known before all the others,
keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little
bed.
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