Kitty's Christmas tree: or, the net of the flatterer

"Kitty's Christmas Tree" by Lucy Ellen Guernsey is a didactic children's novella written in the late 19th century. It follows Kitty Tremain, a warm-hearted but easily influenced girl, as she learns to resist flattery and stand by right principles while planning a Christmas tree for her French-Canadian Sunday-school class. Set in a small village, the story explores how weakness, vanity, and peer pressure can entangle a good child—and how guidance, faith, and honest self-examination can set her straighter.

The opening of the story shows Kitty getting into trouble at school for lending supplies against the rules, prompting her mother to warn that Kitty’s pliability—and love of being liked—echoes the weakness that ruined her father. At school, Miss Oliver fights a culture of cheating; meanwhile, Fanny Daskin (with sweetness) and Lizzy Gates (with bullying) exploit Kitty’s softness. Kitty briefly grows firmer, then is won back by Fanny’s flattery and a false tale that Kitty is a hidden heiress. While Kitty plans a modest Christmas tree for her little French-speaking pupils, Fanny coaxes her into revealing the plan and lending all her funds, then cheats her; Kitty’s discontent hardens, and she even skips Sunday-school on a pretense—only to learn her beloved pupil Julie has died. Shocked and ashamed, Kitty confronts Fanny, hears a lie about “counterfeit” money, and, urged by a now-penitent Lizzy, confesses everything to her mother; the supposed fortune is exposed as a rumor, and Kitty resolves to change as her mother withdraws pocket money but allows the party. Kitty offers her treasured French picture-books for the children, and a providential trunk of suitable gifts from her late Aunt Leffington arrives—making the Christmas tree possible just as the Daskins leave town.