Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Bruce Thomas and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: WM. H. CRANE AS DAVID HARUM] _WM. H. CRANE EDITION_ THE CHRISTMAS STORY FROM DAVID HARUM By Edward Noyes Westcott ILLUSTRATED FROM MR. CHARLES FROHMAN'S PRODUCTION OF DAVID HARUM. A COMEDY DRAMATIZED FROM THE NOVEL NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900 Copyright, 1898, 1900, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ [Illustration] PREFACE "Dave done the thing his own way," said Aunt Polly to the Widow Cullom. "Kind o' fetched it round fer a merry Chris'mus, didn't he?" This is the story which is reprinted here from Mr. Westcott's famous book. It was David Harum's nature to do things in his own way, and the quaintness of his methods in raising the Widow Cullom from the depths of despair to the heights of happiness frame a story which is read between laughter and tears, and always with a quickening of affection for the great-hearted benefactor. David Harum's absolute originality, his unexpectedness, the dryness of his humor, the shrewdness of his insight, and the kindliness and generosity beneath the surface, have made him a permanent figure in literature. Moreover, the individual quality of David Harum is so distinctively American that he has been recognized as the typical American, typical of an older generation, perhaps, in mere externals, but nevertheless an embodiment of characteristics essentially national. While only Mr. Westcott's complete book can fully illustrate the personality of David Harum, yet it is equally true that no other episode in the book presents the tenderness and quaintness, and the full quality of David Harum's character, with the richness and pathos of the story which tells how he paid the "int'rist" upon the "cap'tal" invested by Billy P. Fortunately this story lends itself readily to separate publication, and it forms an American "Christmas Carol" which stands by itself, an American counterpart of the familiar tale of Dickens, and imbued with a simplicity, humor, and unstudied pathos peculiarly its own.