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 sun-browned 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.
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.
From In the Glow of the Yule Log
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