CHRIS’TINE (2 syl.), a pretty, saucy young woman in the service of the countess Marie, to whom she is devotedly attached.  After the recapture of Ernest ("the prisoner of state"), she goes boldly to king Frederick II., from whom she obtains his pardon.  Being set at liberty, Ernest marries the countess.—­E.  Stirling, The Prisoner of State (1847).

CHRISTINE DRYFOOS, the undisciplined, showy daughter of a self-made man in W. D. Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889).

She was self-possessed because she felt that a knowledge of her father’s fortune had got around, and she had the peace which money gives to ignorance.  She is madly in love with Beaton, whose attentions have raised expectations he concluded not to fulfill.  At their last meeting she felt him more than life to her, and knew him lost, and the frenzy that makes a woman kill the man she loves or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she cannot have for all hers possessed her lawless soul....  She flashed at him, and with both hands made a feline pass at the face he bent towards her.

CHRISTMAS TREASURES.  Eugene Field, in A Little Book of Western Verse, gives a father’s soliloquy over such treasures as

  The little toy my darling knew,
  A little sock of faded hue,
  A little lock of golden hair,

all that remains to him who,

  As he lisped his evening prayer
  Asked the boon with childish grace,
  Then, toddling to the chimney-place,
  He hung his little stocking there.

(1889.)

CHRIS’TOPHER (St.), a saint of the Roman and Greek Churches, said to have lived in the third century.  His pagan name was Offerus, his body was twelve ells in height, and he lived in the land of Canaan.  Offerus made a vow to serve only the mightiest; so, thinking the emperor was “the mightiest,” he entered his service.  But one day the emperor crossed himself for fear of the devil, and the giant perceived that there was one mightier than his present master, so he quitted his service for that of the devil.  After awhile.  Offerus discovered that the devil was afraid of the cross, whereupon he enlisted under Christ, employing himself in carrying pilgrims across a deep stream.  One day, a very small child was carried across by him, but proved so heavy that Offerus, though a huge giant, was well-nigh borne down by the weight.  This child was Jesus, who changed the giant’s name to Christoferus, “bearer of Christ.”  He died three days afterwards, and was canonized.

  Like the great giant Christopher, it stands
  Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave.

Longfellow, The Lighthouse.

CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, otherwise “Uncle Christopher,” is the consequential oracle of the neighborhood, and the father of six daughters, in Clovernook, by Alice Cary (1851).