In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I

In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I

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Title: In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I Christmas Tales from 'Round the World
Author: Various
Editor: Harrison S. Morris
Release Date: June 29, 2006 [EBook #18720]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Transcribers note: Several original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation inconsistencies have been rationalised.]
[Illustration: The Yule-log glow]
IN THE YULE-LOG GLOW
CHRISTMAS TALES FROM 'ROUND THE WORLD
"Sic as folk tell ower at a winter ingle" Scott
EDITED BY HARRISON S. MORRIS
THREE VOLUMES IN ONE.
Book I.
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1900.

Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company.
Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

THE THRESHOLD.
If, gentle reader, you will step across this threshold, now, as the moon rises in the keen Christmas air, and will find a place by the ruddy ingle within-doors, you may hear, if you will, a Babel of voices from many lands, telling over the adventures of the road and falling into the good-fellowship of the happy Christmas season.
Here from the north, with his ample furs thrown back, sits the Russian in friendly talk with a gay little wanderer from Sicilian valleys. There, with elbow crooked by a foaming tankard, leans the German, narrating his perils and pleasures to a gallant Frenchman and a sunbrowned Spaniard who smoke and chatter together as now and then Mynheer stops for a pull at his pipe.
A Swede, Norwegians, an Englishman or two, and even a happy-go-lucky American, are clustered about the Yule-log; for the place you have entered is the common-room of the wide world.
As you slip the latch and take your seat, some traveller calls out: A Merry Christmas! Another cries: A story, a story! and so they fall to, each from his own scrip taking forth a native tale,--and so they sit the midnight out listening and talking in turn; while the good cheer goes round in endless abundance and laughter and song make interludes for the varied narratives.

CONTENTS OF BOOK I.

The Three Kings of Cologne
A modern version of an old English Chronicle.
By Harrison S. Morris.
The Three Christmas Masses
From the French of Alphonse Daudet.
By Harrison S. Morris.
A Russian Christmas Party[A]
By Count L��on Tolstoi.
Two Christmases
From the German of Georg Schuster.
A Tale of a Turkey
By Harrison S. Morris.
A Still Christmas[B]
By Agnes Repplier.
Thrond
From the Norwegian of Bj?rnson.
Christmas in the Desert
By Matilda Betham Edwards.

[A] By courtesy of Messrs. W. S. Gottsberger & Co.
[B] By courtesy of "The Catholic World."

ILLUSTRATIONS, BOOK I.
The Yule-log Glow Frontispiece.
Sonia
The Cavalier From France
My Little Sister Mary

A Tale Spoken by a Graybeard Out of the East.
"Gracious powers! Perhaps you are a hundred years old, now I think of it! You look more than a hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old for what I know."
Thackeray.

THE THREE KINGS OF COLOGNE.
A CHRISTMAS TALE FROM AN OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLE.
(Written by John of Hildesheim in the Fourteenth Century.)
Here followeth the manner and form of seeking and offering; and also of the burying and translations of the three Holy and Worshipful Kings of Cologne: Jaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar.
Now when the Children of Israel were gone out of Egypt and had won and made subject to them Jerusalem and all the land lying about, so that no man durst set against them in all that country for dread that they had of them; then was there a little hill called Vaws, which was also called the Hill of Victory, and on this hill the ward of them of Ind was ordained and kept by divers sentinels by night and by day against the Children of Israel, and afterward against the Romans; so that if any people at any time purposed with strong hand to enter into the country of the Kingdom of Ind, anon, sentinels of other hills about, through tokens, warned the keepers on the hill of Vaws. And by night they made a great fire and by day they made a great smoke, for that hill Vaws passeth the height of all other hills in all the East. Wherefore, when any such token was seen, then all manner of men made ready to defend themselves from the enemy that approached.
Now in the time when Balaam prophesied of the Star that should betoken the coming of Christ, all the great lords and all the other people of Ind and in the East desired greatly to see the Star of which he spake, and gave gifts to the keepers of the hill of Vaws, and moreover hired them