Excerpt from The St. Nicholas Christmas Book T was just eight O'clock as the passenger-train pulled out of the Wayville station on the morning of December 24, I891. The train was heavily laden with merry people either bound for their Eastern homes, or gay holiday shoppers going to the city to purchase the last supply of prese'nts that were to make the coming day the happiest of the year. The mail-car and express - cars were laden to overflowing with many queer-shaped packages, and even the spaces in the vestibules between the cars had to be utilized for through pouches and packages, so great was the jam of Christmas presents. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.