




Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition of "Christmas Stories"
by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





THE HOLLY-TREE--THREE BRANCHES


FIRST BRANCH--MYSELF


I have kept one secret in the course of my life.  I am a bashful man.
Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did
suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man.  This is the secret which I
have never breathed until now.

I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable places
I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon or
received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely
because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man.  But I
will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.

That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in
the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man and
beast I was once snowed up.

It happened in the memorable year when I