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 Lover, the Lady, the Dandy, the Captain, and so on-- with
which our young ones are wont to recreate themselves at this
festive time.
My friend Miss Bunch, who was governess of a large family that
lived in the Piano Nobile of the house inhabited by myself and my
young charges (it was the Palazzo Poniatowski at Rome, and
Messrs. Spillmann, two of the best pastrycooks in Christendom,
have their shop on the ground floor): Miss Bunch, I say, begged
me to draw a set of Twelfth-Night characters for the amusement of
our young people.
She is a lady of great fancy and droll imagination, and having
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