Christmas Gold Read online

  Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Mark Twain, Beatrix Potter, Louisa May Alcott, O. Henry, Leo Tolstoy, L. Frank Baum, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Hans Christian Andersen, Selma Lagerlöf, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walter Scott, J. M. Barrie, Brothers Grimm, George MacDonald, Henry van Dyke, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Clement Moore, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Butler Yeats

  Christmas Gold: The Greatest Holiday Novels, Tales & Poems (Illustrated Edition)

  200+ Titles: A Christmas Carol, The Gift of the Magi, The Blue Bird, Little Women...

  Published by

  Books Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting

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  2017 OK Publishing

  ISBN 978-80-272-2216-2

  Reading suggestions

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Mark Twain:

  The Greatest Christmas Tales & Poems in One Volume (Illustrated)

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Mark Twain:

  CHRISTMAS CLASSICS: 150+ Novels, Stories & Poems (Illustrated Edition)

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Mark Twain:

  THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY CHEER: 180+ Novels, Tales & Poems in One Volume (Illustrated Edition)

  Table of Contents

  Novels

  Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (L. Frank Baum)

  Christmas-Tree Land (Mary Louisa Molesworth)

  The Little City of Hope (F. Marion Crawford)

  Peter Pan and Wendy (J. M. Barrie)

  Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

  The Wonderful Wizard of OZ (L. Frank Baum)

  Little Lord Fauntleroy (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

  Christmas with Grandma Elsie (Martha Finley)

  Anne of Green Gables (Lucy Maud Montgomery)

  The Christmas Angel (Abbie Farwell Brown)

  At the Back of the North Wind (George MacDonald)

  Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)

  The Christmas Child (Hesba Stretton)

  Granny’s Wonderful Chair (Frances Browne)

  The Romance of a Christmas Card (Kate Douglas Wiggin)

  Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)

  The Birds' Christmas Carol (Kate Douglas Wiggin)

  The Wonderful Life - Story of the life and death of our Lord (Hesba Stretton)

  Oliver Twist

  Happy Hearts (June Isle)

  The Doctor's Christmas Eve (James Lane Allen)

  Pollyanna (Eleanor H. Porter)

  Pollyanna Grows Up (Eleanor H. Porter)

  Children of the Tenements (Jacob A. Riis)

  The Tailor of Gloucester (Beatrix Potter)

  Little Prudy's Sister Susy (Sophie May)

  Little Peter: A Christmas Morality (Lucas Malet)

  Snap-Dragons or, Old Father Christmas (Juliana Horatia Ewing)

  Christmas Holidays at Merryvale (Alice Hale Burnett)

  The Ice Queen (Ernest Ingersoll)

  Miss Santa Claus of the Pullman (Annie F. Johnston)

  The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe (Amanda M. Douglas)

  Little Maid Marian (Amy Ella Blanchard)

  Short Stories

  A Merry Christmas & Other Christmas Stories (Louisa May Alcott)

  The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)

  The Fir Tree (Hans Christian Andersen)

  The Little Match Girl (Hans Christian Andersen)

  The Steadfast Tin Soldier (Hans Christian Andersen)

  The Snow Queen (Hans Christian Andersen)

  Betty's Bright Idea (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

  The First Christmas Of New England (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

  Deacon Pitkin's Farm (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

  The Holy Night (Selma Lagerlöf)

  Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe (Elizabeth Harrison)

  A Letter from Santa Claus (Mark Twain)

  The Christmas Angel (Abbie Farwell Brown)

  The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter)

  Toinette and the Elves (Susan Coolidge)

  Christmas at Thompson Hall (Anthony Trollope)

  Christmas Day at Kirkby Cottage (Anthony Trollope)

  The Mistletoe Bough (Anthony Trollope)

  Not if I Know It (Anthony Trollope)

  The Two Generals (Anthony Trollope)

  The Princess and the Goblin & The Princess and Curdie (George MacDonald)

  Thurlow's Christmas Story (John Kendrick Bangs)

  A Little Book of Christmas (John Kendrick Bangs)

  Christmas Every Day (William Dean Howells)

  Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas (Mary E. Wilkins Freeman)

  Little Girl’s Christmas (Winnifred E. Lincoln)

  The Elves and the Shoemaker (Brothers Grimm)

  Mother Holle (Brothers Grimm)

  The Star Talers (Brothers Grimm)

  Snow-White (Brothers Grimm)

  The Lost Word (Henry van Dyke)

  A Kidnapped Santa Claus (L. Frank Baum)

  The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (Robinson Perrault)

  The Blue Bird (Madame d'Aulnoy)

  Christmas Every Day (William Dean Howells)

  Turkeys Turning the Tables (William Dean Howells)

  The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express (William Dean Howells)

  The Pumpkin Glory (William Dean Howells)

  Butterflyfutterby and Flutterbybutterfly (William Dean Howells)

  The Heavenly Christmas Tree (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

  Christmas Eve & Christmas Day - Ten Christmas stories (Edward Everett Hale)

  A Visit From Saint Nicholas (Clement Moore)

  Christmas - A Story (Zona Gale)

  The Story of the Other Wise Man (Henry van Dyke)

  Where Love Is, God Is (Leo Tolstoy)

  Christmas Roses (Anne Douglas Sedgwick)

  Christmas Stories (Edward Berens)

  The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (E. T. A. Hoffmann)

  A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)

  The Chimes (Charles Dickens)

  The Cricket on the Hearth (Charles Dickens)

  The Battle of Life (Charles Dickens)

  The Haunted Man (Charles Dickens)

  A Christmas Tree (Charles Dickens)

  What Christmas Is As We Grow Older (Charles Dickens)

  The Poor Relation's Story (Charles Dickens)

  The Child's Story (Charles Dickens)

  The Schoolboy's Story (Charles Dickens)

  Nobody's Story (Charles Dickens)

  The Seven Poor Travellers (Charles Dickens)

  The Holly-Tree (Charles Dickens)

  The Wreck of the Golden Mary (Charles Dickens)

  The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (Charles Dickens)

  A House to Let (Charles Dickens)

  The Haunted House (Charles Dickens)

  A Message From the Sea (Charles Dickens)

  Tom Tiddler's Ground (Charles Dickens)

  Somebody's Luggage (Charles Dickens)

  Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings (Charles Dickens)

  Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy (Charles Dickens)

  Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions (Charles Dickens)

  Mugby Junction (Charles Dickens)

  No Thoroughfare (Charles Dickens)

  Madelaine Tube and Her Blind Brother (Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick)

  A Christmas Inspiration and Other Stories (Lucy Maud Montgomery)

  Boreas Bluster's Christmas Present (Mrs. W. J. Hays)

  A Christmas Fairy (John Strange Winter)

  The First Christmas Tree and Other Christmas Stories (Eugene Field)

  A Christmas Greeting: A Series of Stories (Hans Christian Andersen)

  A Winter Nosegay, Being Tales for Children at Chr
istmastide (Walter Crane)

  Susy Diller's Christmas Feast (Anonymous)

  The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing (Thomas Hardy)

  Poems & Carols

  Silent Night

  The Three Kings (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

  Christmas Bells (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

  Christmas At Sea (Robert Louis Stevenson)

  Angels from the Realms of Glory (James Montgomery)

  Christmas in the Olden Time (Sir Walter Scott)

  Marmion: A Christmas Poem (Sir Walter Scott)

  Old Santa Claus (Clement Clarke Moore)

  The Twelve Days of Christmas

  Minstrels (William Wordsworth)

  Ring Out, Wild Bells (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

  Christmas In India (Rudyard Kipling)

  Hymn On The Morning Of Christ's Nativity (John Milton)

  A Christmas Carol (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

  The Oxen (Thomas Hardy)

  A Christmas Ghost Story (Thomas Hardy)

  The Savior Must Have Been A Docile Gentleman (Emily Dickinson)

  'Twas just this time, last year, I died (Emily Dickinson)

  The Magi (William Butler Yeats)

  The Mahogany Tree (William Makepeace Thackeray)

  A Bell (Clinton Scollard)

  Christmas Carol (Sara Teasdale)

  The Mystic’s Christmas (John Greenleaf Whittier)

  Christmas Cheer (Thomas Tusser)

  Noel: Christmas Eve 1913 (Robert Seymour Bridges)

  The Holly and the Ivy

  Adam lay ybounden

  Christmas Day (Charles Kingsley)

  Christmas Fancies (Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

  Twas jolly, jolly Wat (C. W. Stubbs)

  A Tale Of Christmas Eve (William Topaz McGonagall)

  Jest 'Fore Christmas (Eugene Field)

  A Christmas Folksong (Paul Laurence Dunbar)

  As with Gladness Men of Old (William Chatterton Dix)

  Nativity a Christmas (John Donne)

  Boar's Head Carol

  Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus (Charles Wesley)

  Coventry Carol

  Here We Come A-wassailing

  A Defective Santa Claus (James Whitcomb Riley)

  King Winter (Anonymous)

  Christmas Gifts and Other Poems (Carolyn Wells)

  The Night After Christmas (Anonymous)

  Novels

  Table of Contents

  Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (L. Frank Baum)

  Table of Contents

  YOUTH

  1. Burzee

  2. The Child of the Forest

  3. The Adoption

  4. Claus

  5. The Master Woodsman

  6. Claus Discovers Humanity

  7. Claus Leaves the Forest

  MANHOOD

  1. The Laughing Valley

  2. How Claus Made the First Toy

  3. How the Ryls Colored the Toys

  4. How Little Mayrie Became Frightened

  5. How Bessie Blithesome Came to the Laughing Valley

  6. The Wickedness of the Awgwas

  7. The Great Battle Between Good and Evil

  8. The First Journey with the Reindeer

  9. "Santa Claus!"

  10. Christmas Eve

  11. How the First Stockings Were Hung by the Chimneys

  12. The First Christmas Tree

  OLD AGE

  1. The Mantle of Immortality

  2. When the World Grew Old

  3. The Deputies of Santa Claus

  YOUTH

  Table of Contents

  1. Burzee

  Table of Contents

  Have you heard of the great Forest of Burzee? Nurse used to sing of it when I was a child. She sang of the big tree-trunks, standing close together, with their roots intertwining below the earth and their branches intertwining above it; of their rough coating of bark and queer, gnarled limbs; of the bushy foliage that roofed the entire forest, save where the sunbeams found a path through which to touch the ground in little spots and to cast weird and curious shadows over the mosses, the lichens and the drifts of dried leaves.

  The Forest of Burzee is mighty and grand and awesome to those who steal beneath its shade. Coming from the sunlit meadows into its mazes it seems at first gloomy, then pleasant, and afterward filled with never-ending delights.

  For hundreds of years it has flourished in all its magnificence, the silence of its inclosure unbroken save by the chirp of busy chipmunks, the growl of wild beasts and the songs of birds.

  Yet Burzee has its inhabitants—for all this. Nature peopled it in the beginning with Fairies, Knooks, Ryls and Nymphs. As long as the Forest stands it will be a home, a refuge and a playground to these sweet immortals, who revel undisturbed in its depths.

  Civilization has never yet reached Burzee. Will it ever, I wonder?

  2. The Child of the Forest

  Table of Contents

  Once, so long ago our great-grandfathers could scarcely have heard it mentioned, there lived within the great Forest of Burzee a wood-nymph named Necile. She was closely related to the mighty Queen Zurline, and her home was beneath the shade of a widespreading oak. Once every year, on Budding Day, when the trees put forth their new buds, Necile held the Golden Chalice of Ak to the lips of the Queen, who drank therefrom to the prosperity of the Forest. So you see she was a nymph of some importance, and, moreover, it is said she was highly regarded because of her beauty and grace.

  When she was created she could not have told; Queen Zurline could not have told; the great Ak himself could not have told. It was long ago when the world was new and nymphs were needed to guard the forests and to minister to the wants of the young trees. Then, on some day not remembered, Necile sprang into being; radiant, lovely, straight and slim as the sapling she was created to guard.

  Her hair was the color that lines a chestnut-bur; her eyes were blue in the sunlight and purple in the shade; her cheeks bloomed with the faint pink that edges the clouds at sunset; her lips were full red, pouting and sweet. For costume she adopted oak-leaf green; all the wood-nymphs dress in that color and know no other so desirable. Her dainty feet were sandal-clad, while her head remained bare of covering other than her silken tresses.

  Necile's duties were few and simple. She kept hurtful weeds from growing beneath her trees and sapping the earth-food required by her charges. She frightened away the Gadgols, who took evil delight in flying against the tree-trunks and wounding them so that they drooped and died from the poisonous contact. In dry seasons she carried water from the brooks and pools and moistened the roots of her thirsty dependents.

  That was in the beginning. The weeds had now learned to avoid the forests where wood-nymphs dwelt; the loathsome Gadgols no longer dared come nigh; the trees had become old and sturdy and could bear the drought better than when fresh-sprouted. So Necile's duties were lessened, and time grew laggard, while succeeding years became more tiresome and uneventful than the nymph's joyous spirit loved.

  Truly the forest-dwellers did not lack amusement. Each full moon they danced in the Royal Circle of the Queen. There were also the Feast of Nuts, the Jubilee of Autumn Tintings, the solemn ceremony of Leaf Shedding and the revelry of Budding Day. But these periods of enjoyment were far apart, and left many weary hours between.

  That a wood-nymph should grow discontented was not thought of by Necile's sisters. It came upon her only after many years of brooding. But when once she had settled in her mind that life was irksome she had no patience with her condition, and longed to do something of real interest and to pass her days in ways hitherto undreamed of by forest nymphs. The Law of the Forest alone restrained her from going forth in search of adventure.

  While this mood lay heavy upon pretty Necile it chanced that the great Ak visited the Forest of Burzee and allowed the wood-nymphs as was their wont—to lie at his feet and listen to the words of wisdom that fell from his lips. Ak is the Master Woodsman of the world; he sees everything, and know
s more than the sons of men.

  That night he held the Queen's hand, for he loved the nymphs as a father loves his children; and Necile lay at his feet with many of her sisters and earnestly harkened as he spoke.

  "We live so happily, my fair ones, in our forest glades," said Ak, stroking his grizzled beard thoughtfully, "that we know nothing of the sorrow and misery that fall to the lot of those poor mortals who inhabit the open spaces of the earth. They are not of our race, it is true, yet compassion well befits beings so fairly favored as ourselves. Often as I pass by the dwelling of some suffering mortal I am tempted to stop and banish the poor thing's misery. Yet suffering, in moderation, is the natural lot of mortals, and it is not our place to interfere with the laws of Nature."

  "Nevertheless," said the fair Queen, nodding her golden head at the Master Woodsman, "it would not be a vain guess that Ak has often assisted these hapless mortals."

  Ak smiled.

  "Sometimes," he replied, "when they are very young—'children,' the mortals call them—I have stopped to rescue them from misery. The men and women I dare not interfere with; they must bear the burdens Nature has imposed upon them. But the helpless infants, the innocent children of men, have a right to be happy until they become full-grown and able to bear the trials of humanity. So I feel I am justified in assisting them. Not long ago—a year, maybe—I found four poor children huddled in a wooden hut, slowly freezing to death. Their parents had gone to a neighboring village for food, and had left a fire to warm their little ones while they were absent. But a storm arose and drifted the snow in their path, so they were long on the road. Meantime the fire went out and the frost crept into the bones of the waiting children."

  "Poor things!" murmured the Queen softly. "What did you do?"

  "I called Nelko, bidding him fetch wood from my forests and breathe upon it until the fire blazed again and warmed the little room where the children lay. Then they ceased shivering and fell asleep until their parents came."

  "I am glad you did thus," said the good Queen, beaming upon the Master; and Necile, who had eagerly listened to every word, echoed in a whisper: "I, too, am glad!"