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WASHINGTON IRVING

But is old, old, good old Christmas gone? Nothing but the hair on his good, gray, old head and beard left? Well, I will have that, seeing I cannot have more of him.

There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavor of those honest days of yore, Rh