Identifier: oldchristmas00irviuoft (find matches)
Title: Old Christmas
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Irving, Washington, 1783-1859
Subjects: Christmas stories
Publisher: New York : G.P. Putnam
Contributing Library: Scott - York University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Ontario Council of University Libraries and Member Libraries

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d out,with passengers, who, by their talk, seemed prin-cipally bound to the mansions of relations orfriends, to eat the Christmas dinner. It wasloaded also with hampers of game, and basketsand boxes of delicacies; and hares hung danglingtheir long ears about the coachmans box, pres-ents from distant friends for the impendingfeast. I had three fine rosy-cheeked boys formy fellow-passengers inside, full of the buxomhealth and manly spirit which I have observedin the children of this country. They werereturning home for the holidays in high glee, andpromising themselves a world of enjoyment.It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans ofthe little rogues, and the impracticable featsthey were to perform during their six weeksemancipation from the abhorred thraldom ofbook, birch, and pedagogue. They were fullof anticipations of the meeting with the familyand household, down to the very cat and dog;and of the joy they were to give their littlesisters by the presents with which their pockets
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Zbc Stage Coacb 19 were crammed; but the meeting to which theyseemed to look forward with the greatest impa-tience was with Bantam, which I found to be apony, and, according to their talk, possessed ofmore virtues than any steed since the days ofBucephalus. How he could trot! how he couldrun! and then such leaps as he would take—therewas not a hedge in the whole country that hecould not clear. They were under the particular guardianshipof the coachman, to whom, whenever an oppor-tunity presented, they addressed a host ofquestions, and pronounced him one of the bestfellows in the world. Indeed, I could not butnotice the more than ordinary air of bustle andimportance of the coachman, who wore his hata little on one side, and had a large bunch ofChristmas greens stuck in the button-hole of hiscoat. He is always a personage full of mightycare and business, but he is particularly so dur-ing this season, having so many commissions toexecute in consequence of the great interchangeof presen

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