Excerpt from Giving and Receiving: Essays and Fantasies In any case, the Baby can have had nothing to say, and how its mother, who had been in a state of surprise for some months, and her hus band, who also had not a few thoughts to carry, behaved, we shall never know. But those were the first Christmas presents, and for nineteen centuries the custom of giving them has been growing; but whether the art of giving them is any nearer perfection now than then is a ques tion. I know, at any rate, that I was given several last Christmas which were not as exactly what I had been wanting as I pro tested they were. 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.