Excerpt from A Naughty Girl: A Story of 1893 Drury lane Theatre is possibly the best place in the world to see a holiday audience, and never was it seen to more advantage than on Boxing Night, 1892. The Spirit of Christmas and King Holiday seemed to have combined in order to do the highest honour to the occasion on the stage of Old Drury. People may Speak disrespectfully of Father Christmas they may try to pull him from his pedestal they may tear his wreath from his brow, Shake the snow from ofi' his garment, and proclaim to the world what a senile, doddering old humbug he is; they may say that holly is nothing but prickles, and that poison lurks in the berries of the mistletoe; they may aver that mince-pies mean nothing but biliousness, and that plum-pudding is concentrated indigestion that Uncle John never arrives laden with presents, and that illustrated newspapers are liars that the turkey is the Pecksniff of poultry, and that brawn is an oleaginous abomination that Christmas hampers are a snare, and Christmas boxes a tax that Scrooge was a sensible saint. 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.