This is a very pretty legend, but it is legend and not history. It deserves no more credit than the story of St. Winfred which I have quoted from German folk-lore, or the fairy tale which, as I have said, still lingers among the people in and around Strasburgh. All that we know from real history is that a tree with lighted candles was now and then used in the middle ages, and later, in connection with the Christmas rejoicings. Such a tree is known to have played its part in a Christmas pageant given at the court of Henry VIII. in England. The tree is described at some length in the chronicles of the time, but it is evident from these descriptions that it lacked the chief feature of the modern one. It was not a bearer of presents. So far as it is possible to gather from history, the Christmas tree, as we know it to-day, made its first appearance in Strassburgh. This is interesting in view of the fact that one of the earliest legends in explanation of the custom finds its home in that city. More authentic witness is afforded by an old manuscript still preserved in a library at Friedburg, Germany, which was written by a citizen of Strassburgh in the year 1608. This manuscript speaks of a tree all alight with candles and bedecked with presents as being a regular feature of the Christmas festivities of that time. Therefore we are sure that the Christmas tree had come into common use in this region by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Further than that there is no certainty. The custom appears to have spread from Strassburgh to the neighboring cities along the Rhine and to have flourished in that limited district for fully two hundred years. Suddenly, about the beginning of the nineteenth century, it made its appearance outside of the Rhenish towns in other nearby localities, until finally it had invaded the whole of Germany. Fifty years later it had conquered nearly all Christendom. In the year 1825 the English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, visited Germany to spend the winter months in that country. One of his letters written in the following January speaks of the Christmas tree as something entirely unknown to his fellow countrymen.