House-top

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too.

The pantomime scenes are well arranged, especially a view of house-tops, where a good deal of comic business takes place, ending with a wholesale slaughter of cats and irruption of bed-gowned and disturbed sleepers.

It was a foggy, cloudy morning, and a dun-coloured veil hung over the house-tops, looking like the reflection of the mud-coloured streets beneath.

They drove to shelter all citizens possessed of homes, while the belated ones, or the unfortunates, were pursued and buffeted with a fiendish delight that found expression in wild shrieks; and up the street and over the house-tops they would sweep, meeting other winds tearing round corners and whirling into each other, making lesser storms that sent up in circles snow, soot, and lighter garbage far into the murky night.

Long, long did the child lie in her little bed, awake, listening with a throbbing little heart for the sledge bells of Saint Claus, and the sound of the reindeers’ feet pattering over the house-top.

The spring and the winter came unsought into every man's life, not as they come to-day, wayfarers bewandered among the house-tops, feebly whispering of unknown things in far salubrious lands, […]