A few days before Christmas the three kings from the Orient came stealing up our stairs in the gloaming. They wore cheap white cotton raiment over their ordinary work-a-day clothes, and gilt-paper crowns on their heads. They were small, thin kings. Melchior's crown was awry, Kaspar felt very timid, and was continually stumbling over his train; but Balthazar was brave as a lion, and nudged his royal brothers,—one of whom was a girl, by the way,—putting courage into them with his elbows; and the dear little souls sang their songs and got their pennies, and their white robes vanished in the twilight as their majesties trudged on towards the next house. There they would again stand in an uncertain, tremulous row, and sing more or sing less, according to the reception they met with, and put more or less pennies—generally less, poor dears!—into their pockets. Poor, dear, shabby little wise men,—including the one who was a girl,—you were potentates whom it was a pleasure to see, and we trust you earned such an affluence of Christmas pennies that you were in a state of ineffable bliss when, at last, freed from the restraint of crowns and royal robes, you stood in your poor home before your Christmas-tree. It may have been a barren thing, but to your happy child-eyes no doubt it shone as the morning star and blossomed as the rose.

Other apparitions foretelling the approach of Christmas visited us. One was an old woman with cakes. Her prominent characteristic is staying where she is put, or rather where she puts herself, which is usually where she is not wanted. Buy a cake of this amiable old person, whose breath (with all the respect due to age let it be said) smells unquestionably of schnapps, and she will bless you with astounding volubility. Her tongue whirls like a mill-wheel as she tearfully assures us, “God will reward us,”—and how she stays! Men may come and men may go, but the old woman is still there, blessing away indefatigably. She must possess, to a remarkable degree, those clinging qualities men praise in woman. Indeed, her tendrils twine all over the house; and when, through deep plots against a dear friend, we manage to lead her out of our own apartment, it is not long before, through our dear friend's counter-plots, the old woman stands again in our doorway with her great basket on her head, smiling and weeping and bobbing and blessing as she offers her wares. Queer old woman, rare old plant!—though you cannot be said to beautify, yet, twining and clinging and staying forever like the ivy-green, you were not so attractive as the little shadowy kings, but you, too, heralded Christmas; and may you have had a comfortable time somewhere with sausage and whatever is nearest your heart in these your latter days! That she is not a poetical figure in the Christmas picture is neither her fault nor mine. She may, ages ago, have had a thrilling story, now completely drowned in schnapps, but that she exists, and sells cakes according to the manner described, is all we ever shall know of her.

Then the cakes themselves—“genuine Nurembergers,” she called them—were strange things to behold. Solid and brown, of manifold shapes and sizes, wrapped in silver-paper, they looked impenetrable and mysterious. The friends in council each seized a huge round one with an air as of sailing off on a voyage of discovery, or of storming a fortress, and nibbled away at it. As a massive whole it was strange and foreign, but familiar things were gradually evolved. There was now and then a trace of honey, a bit of an almond, a slice of citron, a flavor of vanilla, a soupÇon of orange.

Gazing out from behind her cake, one young woman remarks, sententiously,—

“It's gingerbread with things in it.”

Another stops in her investigations with,—

“It is as hard as a brownstone front.”

“It's delightful not to know in the least what's coming next,” says another. “I've just reached a stratum of jelly and am going deeper. Farewell.”

“Echt NÜrnberger, echt NÜrnberger!” croaked the old dame, still nodding, still blessing; and so, meditatively eating her cakes, we gazed at her and wondered if any one could possibly be as old as she looked, and if she too were a product of “Nuremberg the ancient,” to which “quaint old town of toil and traffic” we wandered off through the medium of Longfellow's poem, as every conscientious American in Europe is in duty bound to do. It is always a comfort to go where he has led the way. We are sure of experiencing the proper emotions. They are gently and quietly instilled into us, and we never know they do not come of themselves, until we happen to realize that some verse of his, familiar to our childhood, has been haunting us all the time. What a pity he never has written a poetical guide-book!

These unusual objects penetrating our quiet study hours told us Christmas was coming, and the aspect of the Stuttgart streets also proclaimed the glad tidings. They were a charming, merry sight. The Christmas fair extended its huge length of booths and tables through the narrow, quaint streets by the old Stiftskirche, reaching even up to the KÖnigstrasse, where great piles of furniture rose by the pavements, threatening destruction to the passer-by. Thronging about the tables, where everything in the world was for sale and all the world was buying, could be seen many a dainty little lady in a costume fresh from Paris; many a ruddy peasant-girl with braids and bodice, short gown and bright stockings; many types of feature, and much confusion of tongues; and you are crowded and jostled: but you like it all, for every face wears the happy Christmas look that says so much.

These fairs are curious places, and have a benumbing effect upon the brain. People come home with the most unheard-of purchases, which they never seriously intended to buy. Perhaps a similar impulse to that which makes one grasp a common inkstand in a burning house, and run and deposit it far away in a place of safety, leads ladies to come from the “Messe” with a wooden comb and a string of yellow-glass beads. In both cases the intellect is temporarily absent, it would seem. Buy you must, of course. What you buy, whether it be a white wooden chair, or a child's toy, or a broom, or a lace barbe, or a blue-glass breastpin, seems to be pure chance. The country people, who come into the city especially to buy, know what they want, and no doubt make judicious purchases. But we, who go to gaze, to wonder, and to be amused, never know why we buy anything, and, when we come home and recover our senses, look at one another in amazement over our motley collections.

At this last fair a kind fate led us to a photograph table, where old French beauties smiled at us, and all of Henry the VIII.'s hapless wives gazed at us from their ruffs, and the old Greek philosophers looked as if they could tell us a thing or two if they only would. The discovery of this haven in the sea of incongruous things around us was a fortunate accident. The photograph-man was henceforth our magnet. To him our little family, individually and collectively, drifted, and day by day the stock of Louise de la Vallieres, and Maintenons, and Heloises, and Anne Boleyns, and Pompadours, and Sapphos, and Socrates, and Diogenes, etc.,—(perfect likenesses of all of them, I am sure!)—increased in our pension, where we compared purchases between the courses at dinner, and made Archimedes and the duchess of Lamballe stand amicably side by side against the soup-tureen. Halcyon, but, alas! fleeting days, when we could buy these desirable works of art for ten pfennig, which, I mention with satisfaction, is two and one half cents!

But, of all the Christmas sights, the Christmas-trees and the dolls were the most striking. The trees marched about like Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane. There were solid family men going off with solid, respectable trees, and servants in livery condescending to stalk away with trees of the most lofty and aristocratic stature; and many a poor woman dragging along a sickly, stunted child with one hand and a sickly, stunted tree with the other.

As to the doll-world into which I have recently been permitted to penetrate, all language, even aided by a generous use of exclamation-points, fails to express its wondrous charm. A doll kindergarten, with desks and models and blackboards, had a competent, amiable, and elderly doll-instructress with spectacles. The younger members were occupied with toys and diversions that would not fatigue their infant minds, while the older ones pored over their books. They had white pinafores, flaxen hair, plump cheeks. I think they were all alive.

Then there were dolls who looked as if they lay on the sofa all day and read French novels, and dolls that looked as if they were up with the birds, hard-working, merry, and wise,—elegant, aristocratic countess dolls, with trunks of fine raiment; and jolly little peasant dolls, with long yellow braids hanging down their backs, and stout shoes, and a general look of having trudged in from the Black Forest to see the great city-world at Christmas. Such variety of expression, so many phases of doll-nature,—for nature they have in Germany! And in front of two especially alluring windows, where bright lights streamed upon fanciful decorations, toys, and a wonderful world of dolls, was always a great group of children. Once, in the early evening, they fairly blockaded the pavement and reached far into the street, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, not talking much, merely devouring those enchanted windows with their eager eyes; some wishing, some not daring to wish, but worshipping only, like pale, rapt devotees. And we others, who labor under the disadvantage of being “grown up,” looked at the pretty doll-world within the windows and the lovely child-world without, and wished that old Christmas might bring to each of us the doll we want, and never, never let us know that it is stuffed with sawdust.

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