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In compensation, not a star was visible in the sky. The last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the Thenardiers' door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin.
And, of all disreputable things, tumbled, rumpled, and tousled finery is the most disreputable. A simple white muslin, that can come fresh from the laundry every week, is, in point of real taste, worth any amount of spangled tissues. A plain straw bonnet, with only a ribbon across it, is in reality in better taste than rubbishy birds or butterflies, or tinsel ornaments.
There is a smell of green wood, of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets, on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud through which they have tramped, chips of rosewood are strewn about, clippings of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the débris of the treasures employed to dazzle childish eyes. Then the shop-windows array themselves.
Nowhere was there glow of holly or flash of tinsel that did not carry its pang to her; for always to Mrs. Carew it but symbolized a child's empty stocking a stocking that might be Jamie's. Finally, a week before Christmas, she fought what she thought was the last battle with herself. Resolutely, but with no real joy in her face, she gave terse orders to Mary, and summoned Pollyanna.
It is true that, did they not propose themselves as fit to hold my leading-staff, little should I care for plucking the silken trappings off the puppets thou hast shown me in succession. What concerns it me what fine tinsel robes they swagger in, unless when they are named as rivals in the glorious enterprise to which I have vowed myself?
We have tried it, and it is empty; hark, it sounds. Vain pomp and glory of it all, we hate ye. Ye tinsel gauds, ye base embroideries, ye female fripperies, have but our scorn. What are flashing eyes, and tossing ringlets, and rosy lips, and jewelled fingers, to minds like ours? Let us go off to the Nitrian desert, Jim, away from this eternal simper, this harrowing routine."
For a long time he suppressed his natural instinct, and merely grumbled softly once in a while when a horn knocked the brush or the tinsel out of his hand. These grumbles, however, scarcely interrupted the general silence in which all the busily occupied people were attending to their work.
Native and tropical fruits were tied on here and there; and dolls were tied on also with cords around their necks, their feet dangling. There were smiling masks, like men beheaded and smiling in their death. Near the base of the Tree there was a drum. And all over the Tree from pinnacle to base glittered a tinsel like golden fleece looking as the moss of old Southern trees seen at yellow sunset.
We revel in pantomimes—not because they dazzle one’s eyes with tinsel and gold leaf; not because they present to us, once again, the well-beloved chalked faces, and goggle eyes of our childhood; not even because, like Christmas-day, and Twelfth-night, and Shrove-Tuesday, and one’s own birthday, they come to us but once a year;—our attachment is founded on a graver and a very different reason.
"But a deal to feel; isn't there, George? a deal to feel! It did look very pretty that day we opened it, very pretty. The colours seem to have got dirty now." "Bright colours will become dull and dirty, Mr. Brown. It's the way of the world. The brighter they are in their brightness, the more dull will they look when the tinsel and gloss are gone."
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