Edward Noyes Westcott 
The Christmas Story from David Harum 

The Christmas Story from David Harum is a seasonal novella written by Edward Noyes Westcott. Noyes Westcott was an American banker and author. Excerpt: ‚The widow was looking at David with shining eyes and devouring his words. All the years of trouble and sorrow and privation were wiped out, and she was back in the days of her girlhood. Ah, yes! how well she remembered him as he looked that very day—so handsome, so splendidly dressed, so debonair; and how proud she had been to sit by his side that night, observed and envied of all the village girls. ‚I ain’t goin‘ to go over the hull show, ‚ proceeded David, ‚well ’s I remember it. The‘ didn’t nothin‘ git away from me that afternoon, an‘ once I come near to stickin‘ a piece o‘ gingerbread into my ear ’stid o‘ my mouth. I had my ten-cent piece that Billy P. give me, but he wouldn’t let me buy nothin‘; an‘ when the gingerbread man come along he says, ‚Air ye hungry, Dave? (I’d told him my name), air ye hungry?‘ Wa’al, I was a growin‘ boy, an‘ I was hungry putty much all the time. He bought two big squares an‘ gin me one, an‘ when I’d swallered it, he says, ‚Guess you better tackle this one too, ‚ he says, ‚I’ve dined.‘ I didn’t exac’ly know what ‚dined‘ meant, but—he, he, he, he!—I tackled it, ‚ and David smacked his lips in memory.‘