50 WINTER 



You never ate a Christmas dinner high up in the 

 top of a persimmon tree? But you will, perhaps, some 

 day, as good a Christmas dinner, I hope, as ours was. 



For such persimmons ! 

 Bob Cratchit's goose 

 (" There never was such 

 a goose ! ") could not 



have been any better flavored. Nor 

 could the little Cratchits have been 

 any hungrier for goose than I was 

 for persimmons. 

 Now the 'possum had been having persimmons 

 every night since the frosts of October; so of course 

 he felt no such hunger for persimmons as I felt. But 

 ripe persimmons would be a Christmas dinner for a 

 'possum every day in the year. There is nothing so 

 unspeakably good as persimmons if you happen to 

 be a 'possum, or if you happen to be a boy even 

 after twenty years ! 



So the 'possum and I had our Christmas dinner 

 together at Nature's invitation, in the top of the 



