The Rose and the Ring

THE ROSE AND THE RING

by William Makepeace Thackeray

PRELUDE

It happened that the undersigned spent the last Christmas season in a foreign city where there were many English children.

In that city, if you wanted to give a child’s party, you could not even get a magic-lantern or buy Twelfth-Night characters--those funny painted pictures of the King, the Queen, the Love...