AROUND THE YULE LOG

Chicago, IL: The Pilgrim Press, 1898. FIRST EDITION (NAP). Hardcover. Very Good Minus in Good Dustjacket. Octavo. 7" x 8 3/4". Yellow boards with design of a roaring red and black fire, surrounded by sprigs of Holly. Corners are lightly nudged. Book is overall, very bright on both outside and inside. Design on front board is repeated on this thick, Nineteenth-century dustjacket, which in its 120+ year life,shows some edgewer,smudging and a few relatively smallish chips missing.Previous owner's inscription to front free endpaper, reads: "________Birth-day from Auntie, Jan. 4th, 1906." Tissue-guarded frontis of a warm and happy Christmas scene by the fire. Every single page of text in this 181 page book has a separate line drawing illustration which sets the mood. Eleven stories of Christmas, from Party to Travel, to Presence, to Charity, to a Storm. A very old newspaper clipping laid-in,which must have been hiding in this book for at least a century -- literally, and has left its browned offset mark on the pages which closed it in and kept it save for the past hundred years or so. "Around the Yule Log" by Willis Boyd Allen is a collection of Eleven yule-tide stories. The volume contains: Around the Yule Log, The Shadow of Christmas Present, 'Lijah, A Christmas Reverie, The Cracked Bell, Christmas Folk-Lore, Mrs. Brownlow's Christmas Party, Christmas on Wheels, Treasure Trove; a Christmas Story, Charity and Evergreen, and Through the Storm.