It is a sad thought that I have chanced upon . What a company of dancers should we be ! For I , too , am a gentleman of sober footsteps , and therefore , little Annie , let us walk sedately on . It is a question with me , whether this giddy child , or my sage self , have most pleasure in looking at the shop-windows . We love the silks of sunny hue , that glow within the darkened premises of the spruce drygoods ' men ; we are pleasantly dazzled by the burnished silver , and the chased gold , the rings of wedlock and the costly love-ornaments , glistening at the window of the jeweller ; but Annie , more than I , seeks for a glimpse of her passing figure in the dusty looking-glasses at the hardware stores . All that is bright and gay attracts us both . Here is a shop to which the recollections of my boyhood , as well as present partialities , give a peculiar magic . How delightful to let the fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner ; those pies , with such white and flaky paste , their contents being a mystery , whether rich mince , with whole plums intermixed , or piquant apple , delicately rose-flavored ; those cakes , heart-shaped or round , piled in a lofty pyramid ; those sweet little circlets , sweetly named kisses ; those dark , majestic masses , fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress , mountains in size , their summits deeply snow-covered with sugar ! Then the mighty treasures of sugar-plums , white and crimson and yellow , in large glass vases ; and candy of all varieties ; and those little cockles , or whatever they are called , much prized by children for their sweetness , and more for the mottoes which they enclose , by love-sick maids and bachelors ! O , my mouth waters , little Annie , and so doth yours ; but we will not be tempted , except to an imaginary feast ; so let us hasten onward , devouring the vision of a plum-cake . Here are pleasures , as some people would say , of a more exalted kind , in the window of a bookseller . Is Annie a literary lady ? Yes ; she is deeply read in Peter Parley 's tomes , and has an increasing love for fairy-tales , though seldom met with nowadays , and she will subscribe , next year , to the Juvenile Miscellany . But , truth to tell , she is apt to turn away from the printed page , and keep gazing at the pretty pictures , such as the gay-colored ones which make this shopwindow the continual loitering-place of children . What would Annie think , if , in the book which I mean to send her , on New Year 's day , she should find her sweet little self , bound up in silk or morocco with gilt edges , there to remain till she become a woman grown with children of her own to read about their mother 's childhood ! That would be very queer . Little Annie is weary of pictures , and pulls me onward by the hand , till suddenly we pause at the most wondrous shop in all the town . O , my stars ! Is this a toy-shop , or is it fairy-land ? For here are gilded chariots , in which the king and queen of the fairies might ride side by side , while their courtiers , on these small horses , should gallop in triumphal procession before and behind the royal pair .
Here , too , are dishes of china-ware , fit to be the dining set of those same princely personages , when they make a regal banquet in the stateliest ball XXXXX their palace , full five feet high , and behold their nobles feasting adown the long perspective of the table .
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