Resistance was useless, and the swift flight over the snow by moonlight proved to be very enjoyable.  Between four and five o’clock in the morning we were at home again.

Winter brought many other amusements.  I remember with particular pleasure the Christmas fair, which now, as I learn to my regret, is no longer held.  And yet, what a source of delight it once was to children!  What rich food it offered to their minds!  The Christmas trees and pyramids at the Stechbahn, the various wares, the gingerbread and toys in the booths, offered by no means the greatest charm.  A still stronger attraction were the boys with the humming “baboons,” the rattles and flags, for from them purchases had always to be made, with jokes thrown into the bargain—­bad ones, which are invariably the most amusing; and what a pleasure it was to twirl the “baboon” with one’s own little hand, and, if the hand got cold during the process, one did not feel it, for it seemed like midsummer with a swarm of flies buzzing about one!

But most enjoyable of all was probably the throng of people, great and small, and all there was to hear and see among them and to answer.  It seemed as if the Christmas joy of the city was concentrated there, and filled the not over-clear atmosphere like the pungent odour of Christmas trees.

Put there were other things to experience as well as mere gaiety—­the pale child in the corner, with its little bare feet, holding in its cold, red hands the six little sheep of snow-white wool on a tiny green board; and that other yonder, with the little man made of prunes spitted on tiny sticks.

How small and pale the child is!  And how eloquently the blue eyes invite a purchaser, for it is only with looks that the wares are extolled!  I still see them both before me!  The threepenny pieces they get are to help their starving mother to heat the attic room in those winter days which, cold though they are, may warm the heart.  Looking at them our mother told us how hunger hurts, and how painful want and misery are to bear, and we never left the Christmas fair without buying a few sheep or a prune man, though all we could do with them was to give them away again.  When I wrote my fairy-tale, The Nuts, I had the Christmas fair at Berlin in my mind’s eye, and I seemed to see the wretched little girl who, among all the happy folk, had found nothing but cold, pain, anguish, and a handful of nuts, and who afterward fared so happily—­not, indeed, among men, but with the most beautiful angels in heaven.

Why are the Berlin children defrauded of this bright and innocent pleasure, and their hearts denied the practice of exercising charity?

Turning my thoughts backward, it seems to me as if almost too much beauty and pleasure were crowded together at Christmas, richly provided with presents as we were besides, for over and above the Christmas fair there was Kroll’s Christmas exhibition, where clever heads and skilful hands transformed a series of great halls, at one time into the domain of winter, at another into the kingdom of the fairies.  There was nothing to do but look.