Footnote 1:
From HOW TO TELL STORIES TO CHILDREN, by Sara Cone Bryant. Copyright
1905. Printed by special permission of the publishers, Houghton
Mifflin Company.
I AM going to tell you a story about something wonderful that happened
to a Christmas tree like this, ever and ever so long ago, when it was
once upon a time.
It was before Christmas, and the tree was all trimmed with pop-corn and
silver nuts and [name the trimmings of the tree before you], and stood
safely out of sight in a room where the doors were locked, so that the
children should not see it before it was time. But ever so many other
little house-people had seen it. The big black pussy saw it with her
great green eyes; the little gray kitty saw it with her little blue
eyes; the kind house-dog saw it with his steady brown eyes; the yellow
canary saw it with his wise, bright eyes. Even the wee, wee mice that
were so afraid of the cat had peeped one peep when no one was by.
But there was some one who hadn’t seen the Christmas tree. It was the
little gray spider!
You see, the spiders lived in the corners,—the warm corners of the sunny
attic and the dark corners of the nice cellar. And they were expecting
to see the Christmas Tree as much as anybody. But just before Christmas
a great cleaning-up began in the house. The house-mother came sweeping
and dusting and wiping and scrubbing, to make everything grand and clean
for the Christ-child’s birthday. Her broom went into all the corners,
poke, poke,—and of course the spiders had to run. Dear, dear, _how_ the
spiders had to run! Not one could stay in the house while the Christmas
cleanness lasted. So, you see, they couldn’t see the Christmas Tree.
Spiders like to know all about everything, and all there is to see, and
they were very sad. So at last they went to the Christ-child and told
him all about it.
“All the others see the Christmas Tree, dear Christ-child,” they said;
“but we, who are so domestic and so fond of beautiful things, we are
_cleaned up_! We cannot see it, at all.”
The Christ-child was sorry for the little spiders when he heard this,
and he said they should see the Christmas Tree.
The day before Christmas, when no body was noticing, he let them all go
in, to look as long as ever they liked.
They came creepy, creepy, down the attic stairs, creepy, creepy, up the
cellar stairs, creepy, creepy, along the halls,—and into the beautiful
room. The fat mother spiders and the old papa spiders were there, all
the little teenty, tonty, curly spiders, the baby ones. And then they
looked! Round and round the tree they crawled, and looked and looked.
Oh, what a good time they had! They thought it was perfectly beautiful.
And when they had looked at everything they could see from the floor,
they started up the tree to see more. All over the tree they ran,
creepy, crawly, looking at every single thing. Up and down, in and out,
over every branch and twig, the little spiders ran, and saw every one of
the pretty things right up close.
They stayed till they had seen all there was to see, you may be sure,
and then they went away at last, _quite_ happy.
Then, in the still, dark night before Christmas Day, the dear
Christ-child came to bless the tree for the children. But when he looked
at it—_what_ do you suppose?—it was covered with cobwebs! Everywhere the
little spiders had been they had left a spider-web; and you know they
had been just everywhere. So the tree was covered from its trunk to its
tip with spider-webs, all hanging from the branches and looped around
the twigs; it was a strange sight.
What could the Christ-child do? He knew that house-mothers do not like
cobwebs; it would never, never do to have a Christmas Tree covered with
those. No, indeed.
So the dear Christ-child touched the spiders’ webs, and turned them all
to gold! Wasn’t that a lovely trimming? They shone and shone, all over
the beautiful tree. And that is the way the Christmas Tree came to have
golden cobwebs on it.
[This story was told me in the mother-tongue of a German friend,
at the kindly instance of a common friend of both; the narrator
had heard it at home from the lips of a father of story-loving
children for whom he often invented such little tales. The
present adaptation has passed by hearsay through so many minds
that it is perhaps little like the original, but I venture to
hope it has a touch of the original fancy, at least.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------