Chapters 30
-
1 The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle 50:09
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Read by Ralph Snelson, Springville, Utah, 15 December 2007.
I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of examination. "'You are engaged,' said I. "'Perhaps I interrupt you?' "'Not at all.' I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results.
The matter is a perfectly trivial one. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the old hat. But there are points in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest, and even of instruction. I seated myself in his armchair, and warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice-crystals. I suppose, I remarked, that, homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it. That it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the punishment of some crime. No, no, no crime," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles.
Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place. and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such. So much so, I remarked, that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime. Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers. To the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip, well, I have no doubt that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You know Peterson, the commissionaire?
Yes. It is to him that this trophy belongs. It is his hat. No, no. He found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock, but as an intellectual problem, and first as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson's fire. The facts are these. About four o'clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification, and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw in the gaslight a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder.
As he reached the corner of Good Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a little knot of ruffs. One of the latter knocked off the man's hat. on which he raised his stick to defend himself, and, swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his assailants, but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose, which surely he restored to their owner.
My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that for Mrs. Henry Baker, was printed upon a small card which was tied to the bird's left leg, and it is also true that the initials H.B. are legible upon the lining of this hat. But as there are some thousands of bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any one of them. What then did Peterson do? He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without unnecessary delay.
Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfill the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner. Did he not advertise? No. Then what clew could you have as to his identity? Only as much as we can deduce. From his hat? Precisely. But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt? Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this article? I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard, and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but was a good deal discolored.
There was no maker's name, but, as Holmes had remarked, the initials H.B. were scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat secure, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was cracked exceedingly dusty and spotted in several places, although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the discolored patches by smearing them with ink. "'I can see nothing,' said I, handing it back to my friend. "'On the contrary, Watson. You can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences. Then pray tell me what is it that you can infer from this hat?' He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of him.
It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been," he remarked, and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is, of course, obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well to do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight. but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him. My dear Holmes!
He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect, he continued, disregarding my remonstrance. He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on in his house. You are certainly joking, Holmes. Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these results, you are unable to see how they are attained? I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you.
For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual? For answer, Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. "'It is a question of cubic capacity,' said he. "'A man with so large a brain must have something in it.' The decline of his fortunes, then. This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world. Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?
Sherlock Holmes laughed. Here is the foresight, said he, putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavored to conceal some of these stains upon the felt, by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect. Your reasoning is certainly plausible.
The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends. clean-cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odor of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty gray dust of the street, but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore hardly be in the best of training.
But his wife. You said that she had ceased to love him. This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection. But he might be a bachelor. Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg? You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house? One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance. But when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt But the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow.
Walks upstairs at night, probably with his hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow stains from a gas jet. Are you satisfied? "'Well, it is very ingenious,' said I, laughing. "'But since you said just now,'' There has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose. All this seems to be rather a waste of energy. Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply when the door flew open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with astonishment. "'The goose, Mr. Holmes, the goose, sir,' he gasped. "'Eh? What of it, then?' Has it returned to life, and flapped off through the kitchen window?
Holmes twisted himself round about the sofa to get a fairer view of the man's excited face. "'See here, sir. See what my wife found in its crop.' He held out his hand and displayed upon the center of the palm a brilliantly scintillating blue stone rather smaller than a bean in size, but of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric point in the dark hollow of his hand. Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. "'By Joke, Peterson,' said he. "'This is treasure trove indeed. "'I suppose you know what you have got.' "'A diamond, sir?' "'A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though it were putty.' "'It's more than a precious stone. It is THE precious stone.' "'Not the countess of Morcar's blue carbuncle,' I ejaculated.' Precisely so.
I ought to know its size and shape, seeing that I have read the advertisement about it in the Times every day lately. It is absolutely unique, and its value can only be conjectured. But the reward offered of one thousand pounds is certainly not within a twentieth part of the market price. A thousand pounds! Great Lord of mercy! The commissioner plumped down into a chair and stared from one to the other of us. That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are sentimental considerations in the background which would induce the countess to part with half her fortune if she could but recover the gem. It was lost, if I remember aright, at the Hotel Cosmopolitan, I remarked. Precisely so.
On December, Twenty Second, just five days ago. John Horner, a plumber, was accused of having abstracted it from the lady's jewel case. The evidence against him was so strong that the case has been referred to the Esau's. I have some account of the matter here, I believe. He rummaged amid his newspapers, glancing over the dates, until at last he smoothed one out, doubled it over, and read the following paragraph. Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. John Horner, Twenty Six Plummer, was brought up upon the charge of having upon the Twenty Second Instant abstracted from the jewel case of the Countess of Morcar the valuable gem known as the Blue Carbuncle. James Ryder, upper attendant at the hotel, gave his evidence to the effect that he had shown Horner up to the dressing-room of the Countess of Morcar upon the day of the robbery, in order that he might solder the second bar of the grate, which was loose.
He had remained with Horner some little time, but had finally been called away. On returning he found that Horner had disappeared, that the bureau had been forced open, and that the small morocco casket in which, as it afterwards transpired, the countess was accustomed to keep her jewel, was lying empty upon the dressing-table. Ryder instantly gave the alarm, and Horner was arrested the same evening. But the stone could not be found, either upon his person or in his rooms. Catherine Cusack, maid to the countess, deposed to having heard Ryder's cry of dismay on discovering the robbery, and to having rushed into the room where she found matters as described by the last witness. Inspector Bradstreet, B Division, gave evidence as to the arrest of Horner, who struggled frantically and protested his innocence in the strongest terms, evidence of a previous conviction for robbery having been given against the prisoner.
The magistrate refused to deal summarily with the offense, but referred it to the Esau's. Horner, who had shown signs of intense emotion during the proceedings, fainted away at the conclusion, and was carried out of court. "'H'm—' so much for the police court,' said Holmes thoughtfully, tossing aside the paper. "'The question for us now to solve is the sequence of events leading from a rifled jewel-case at one end to the crop of a goose in Tottenham Court Road at the other.' You see, Watson, our little deductions have suddenly assumed a much more important and less innocent aspect. Here is the stone. The stone came from the goose, and the goose came from Mr. Henry Baker, the gentleman with the bad hat and all the other characteristics with which I have bored you.
So now we must set ourselves very seriously to finding this gentleman, and ascertaining what part he has played in this little mystery. To do this we must try the simplest means first, and these lie undoubtedly in an advertisement in all the evening papers. If this fail, I shall have recourse to other methods. What will you say? Give me a pencil, and that slip of paper. Now, then, found at the corner of Good Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Mr. Henry Baker can have the same by applying at Six Thirty this evening at Two Twenty One B Baker Street. That is clear and concise. Very. But will he see it? Well, he is sure to keep an eye on the papers, since to a poor man the loss was a heavy one, He was clearly so scared by his mischance in breaking the window and by the approach of Peterson that he thought of nothing but flight.
But since then he must have bitterly regretted the impulse which caused him to drop his bird. Then again the introduction of his name will cause him to see it, for everyone who knows him will direct his attention to it. Here you are, Peterson. Run down to the advertising agency and have this put in the evening papers. In which, sir? Oh, in the Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St. James, Evening News Standard, Echo, and any others that occur to you. Very well, sir. And this stone? Ah, yes, I shall keep the stone. Thank you. And I say, Peterson, Just buy a goose on your way back, and leave it here with me, for we must have one to give to this gentleman in place of the one which your family is now devouring.
When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "'It's a bonny thing,' said he. "'Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime.' Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in southern China, and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol throwing, A suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty grain weight of crystallized charcoal.
Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison? I'll lock it up in my strong box now, and drop a line to the countess to say that we have it. Do you think that this man Horner is innocent? I cannot tell. Well, then, do you imagine that this other one, Henry Baker, had anything to do with the matter? It is, I think, much more likely that Henry Baker is an absolutely innocent man, who had no idea that the bird which he was carrying was of considerably more value than if it were made of solid gold. That, however, I shall determine by a very simple test if we have an answer to our advertisement. And you can do nothing until then? Nothing. In that case I shall continue my professional round, but I shall come back in the evening at the hour you have mentioned, for I should like to see the solution of so tangled a business.
Very glad to see you. I dine at seven. There is a woodcock, I believe. By the way, in view of recent occurrences, perhaps I ought to ask Mrs. Hudson to examine its crop. I had been delayed at a case, and it was a little after half-past six when I found myself in Baker Street once more. As I approached the house I saw a tall man in a Scotch bonnet with a coat which was buttoned up to his chin, waiting outside in the bright semicircle which was thrown from the fanlight. Just as I arrived, the door was opened, and we were shown up together to Holmes' room. "'Mr. Henry Baker, I believe,' said he, rising from his armchair, and greeting his visitor with the easy air of geniality which he could so readily assume.
"'Pray take this chair by the fire, Mr. Baker. It is a cold night, and I observe that your circulation is more adapted for summer than for winter.' "'Ah, Watson, you have just come at the right time. Is that your hat, Mr. Baker?' "'Yes, sir, that is undoubtedly my hat.' He was a large man with rounded shoulders, a massive head, and a broad, intelligent face, sloping down to a pointed beard of grizzled brow, a touch of red in nose and cheeks, With a slight tremor of his extended hand recalled Holmes' surmise as to his habits. His rusty black frock-coat was buttoned right up in front, with the collar turned up, and his lank wrists protruded from his sleeves without a sign of cuff or shirt. He spoke in a slow, staccato fashion, choosing his words with care, and gave the impression generally of a man of learning and letters, who had had ill-usage at the hands of fortune.
"'We have retained these things for some days,' said Holmes, "'because we expected to see an advertisement from you giving your address. I am at a loss to know why you did not advertise.' Our visitor gave a rather shamefaced laugh. "'Shillings have not been so plentiful with me as they once were,' he remarked. I had no doubt that the gang of ruffs who assaulted me had carried off both my hat and the bird. I did not care to spend more money in a hopeless attempt at recovering them. Very naturally. By the way, about the bird. We were compelled to eat it. "'To eat it?' Our visitor half rose from his chair in his excitement. "'Yes.' It would have been of no use to any one had we not done so. But I presume that this other goose upon the sideboard, which is about the same weight and perfectly fresh, will answer your purpose equally well?"
"'Oh, certainly, certainly,' answered Mr. Baker, with a sigh of relief. "'Of course we still have the feathers, legs, crop, and so on of your own bird. So if you wish,' the man burst into a hearty laugh, "'They might be useful to me as relics of my adventure,' said he. "'But beyond that I can hardly see what use the disjecta membra of my late acquaintance are going to be to me.' "'No, sir. I think that, with your permission, I will confine my attentions to the excellent bird which I perceive upon the sideboard.' "'Sherlock Holmes glanced sharply across at me with a slight shrug of his shoulders.' "'There is your hat, then, and there your bird,' said he. "'By the way, would it bore you to tell me where you got the other one from?
I am somewhat of a foul fancier, and I have seldom seen a better-grown goose.' "'Certainly, sir,' said Baker, who had risen and tucked his newly gained property under his arm. There are a few of us who frequent the Alpha Inn near the museum. We are to be found in the museum itself during the day, you understand. This year our good host, Windigate by name, instituted a goose-club by which, on consideration of some few pence every week, we were each to receive a bird at Christmas. My pence were duly paid, and the rest is familiar to you. I am much indebted to you. A Scotch bonnet is fitted neither to my years nor my gravity. With a comical pomposity of manner, he bowed solemnly to both of us and strode off upon his way.
"'So much for Mr. Henry Baker,' said Holmes, when he had closed the door behind him. "'It is quite certain that he knows nothing whatsoever about the matter. Are you hungry, Watson?' "'Not particularly.' Then I suggest that we turn our dinner into a supper and follow up this clue while it is still hot. By all means. It was a bitter night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped cravats about our throats. Outside, the stars were shining coldly in a cloudless sky, and the breath of the passers-by blew out into smoke like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out crisply and loudly as we swung through the doctor's quarter, Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and so through Wigmore Street into Oxford Street.
In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at the Alpha Inn, which is a small public-house at the corner of one of the streets which runs down into Holborn. Holmes pushed open the door of the private bar and ordered two glasses of beer from the ruddy-faced, white-aproned landlord. "'Your beer should be excellent if it is as good as your geese,' said he. "'My geese?' the man seemed surprised. "'Yes, I was speaking only half an hour ago to Mr. Henry Baker, who was a member of your goose-club.' "'Ah, yes, I see. You see, sir, them's not our geese. Indeed? Who's then? Well, I got the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden. Indeed. I know some of them. Which was it? Breckinridge is his name.
Ah, I don't know him. Well, here's your good health, landlord, and prosperity to your house. Good night. Now for Breckenridge, he continued, buttoning up his coat as we came out in the frosty air. Remember, Watson, that though we have so homely a thing as a goose at one end of this chain, we have at the other a man who will certainly get seven years penal servitude unless we can establish his innocence. It is possible that our inquiry may but confirm his guilt, But, in any case, we have a line of investigation which has been missed by the police and which a singular chance has placed in our hands. Let us follow it out to the bitter end. Faces to the south, then, and quick march. We passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market.
One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor, a horsey-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers, was helping a boy to put up the shutters. "'Good evening. It's a cold night,' said Holmes. The salesman nodded and shot a questioning glance at my companion. "'Sold out of geese, I see,' continued Holmes, pointing at the bare slabs of marble. Let you have five hundred to-morrow morning. That's no good. Well, there are some on the stall with the gas flare. Ah, but I was recommended to you. Who by? The landlord of the Alpha. Oh, yes. I sent him a couple of dozen. Fine birds they were, too. Now where did you get them from? To my surprise, the question provoked a burst of anger from the salesman.
"'Now then, mister,' said he, with his head cocked and his arms akimble, "'what are you driving at? Let's have it straight now.' "'It is straight enough. I should like to know who sold you the geese which you supplied to the Alpha.' "'Well, then, I shan't tell you. So now.' "'Oh, it is a matter of no importance. But I don't know why you should be so warm over such a trifle.' Warm? You'd be as warm, maybe, if you were as pestered as I am. When I pay good money for a good article, there should be an end of the business. But it's where are the geese, and who did you sell the geese to, and what will you take for the geese? One would think they were the only geese in the world, to hear the fuss that is made over them.
Well, I have no connection with any other people who have been making inquiries. said Holmes carelessly. If you won't tell us, the bet is off, that is all. But I'm always ready to back my onion on a matter of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the bird I ate is country-bred. "'Well, then, you've lost your fiver, for it's town-bred,' snapped the salesman. "'It's nothing of the kind. I say it is. I don't believe it.' "'Do you think you know more about fowls than I, who have handled them ever since I was a nipper? I tell you all those birds that went to the Alpha were town-bred. You'll never persuade me to believe that.' "'Will you bet, then? It's merely taking your money, for I know that I am right.
But I'll have a sovereign on with you just to teach you not to be obstinate.' The salesman chuckled grimly. "'Bring me the books, Bill,' said he. The small boy brought round a small thin volume and a great greasy-backed one, laying them out together beneath the hanging lamp. "'Now then, Mr. Cockshore,' said the salesman, "'I thought that I was out of geese, but before I finish you'll find that there is still one left in my shop. You see this little book?' "'Well, that's the list of the folk from whom I buy. Do you see?' "'Well, then, here on this page are the country folk.' And the numbers after their names are where their accounts are in the big ledger. Now then, you see this other page in red ink.
Well, that is a list of my town suppliers. Now look at that third name. Just read it to me. Mrs. Oakshot, One, one, seven, Brixton Road, two, four, nine, read Holmes. Quite so. Now turn that up in the ledger. Holmes turned to the page indicated. Here you are. Mrs. Oakshot. 1-1-7 Brixton Road. Egg and poultry supplier. Now then, what's the last entry? December 22nd. Twenty-four geese at seven shillings sixpence. Quite so. There you are. And underneath? So to Mr. Winnigate of the Alpha at twelve shillings. What have you to say now? Sherlock Holmes looked deeply chagrined. He drew a sovereign from his pocket and threw it down upon the slab, turning away with the air of a man whose disgust is too deep for words.
A few yards off he stopped under a lamp-post and laughed in the hearty, noiseless fashion which was peculiar to him. "'When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the pink un protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet,' said he. I dare say that if I had put one hundred pounds down in front of him, that man would not have given me such complete information as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a wager. Well, Watson, we are, I fancy, nearing the end of our quest, and the only point which remains to be determined is whether we should go on to this Mrs. Oakeshott to-night, or whether we should reserve it for tomorrow. It is clear from what that surly fellow said that there are others besides ourselves who are anxious about the matter, and I should—his remarks were suddenly cut short by a loud hubbub which broke out from the stall which we had just left.
Turning round, we saw a little rat-faced fellow standing in the center of the circle of yellow light which was thrown by the swinging lamp. While Breckenridge, the salesman, framed in the door of his stall, was shaking his fists fiercely at the cringing figure. "'I've had enough of you and your geese,' he shouted. "'I wish you were all at the Devils together. If you come pestering me any more with your silly talk, I'll set the dog at you. You bring Mrs. Oakshot here, and I'll answer her. But what have you to do with it? Did I buy the geese off you?' But one of them was mine all the same," whined the little man. Well, then, ask Mrs. Oakeshott for it. She told me to ask you. Well, you can ask the King of Prusia, for all I care.
I've had enough of it. Get out of this. He rushed fiercely forward, and the inquirer flitted away into the darkness. Ha! This may save us a visit to Brixton Road," whispered Holmes. Come with me, and we will see what is to be made of this fellow. Striding through the scattered knots of people who lounged round the flaring stalls, my companion speedily overtook the little man and touched him upon the shoulder. He sprang round, and I could see in the gaslight that every vestige of color had been driven from his face. "'Who are you, then? What do you want?' he asked in a quavering voice. "'You will excuse me,' said Holmes blandly. But I could not help overhearing the questions which you put to the salesman just now.
I think that I could be of assistance to you. "'You? Who are you? How could you know anything of the matter?' "'My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't know. But you can know nothing of this.' "'Excuse me. I know everything of it.' "'You are endeavoring to trace some geese which were sold by Mrs. Oakshot of Brixton Road to a salesman named Breckenridge, by him in turn to Mr. Wintigat of the Alpha, and by him to his club of which Mr. Henry Baker is a member.' "'Oh, sir, you are the very man whom I have longed to meet,' cried the little fellow with outstretched hands and quivering fingers. "'I can hardly explain to you how interested I am in the matter.' Sherlock Holmes hailed a four-wheeler which was passing.
In that case we had better discuss it in a cozy room rather than in this wind-swept marketplace, said he. But pray tell me, before we go farther, who is it that I have the pleasure of assisting? The man hesitated for an instant. My name is John Robinson, he answered with a sidelong glance. No, no, the real name, said Holmes sweetly. It is always awkward doing business with an alias. A flush sprang to the white cheeks of the stranger. "'Well, then,' he said, "'my real name is James Ryder.' "'Precisely so. Head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Pray step into the cab, and I shall soon be able to tell you everything which you would wish to know.' The little man stood glancing from one to the other of us with half frightened, half hopeful eyes, as one who is not sure whether he is on the verge of a windfall or of a catastrophe.
Then he stepped into the cab, and in half an hour we were back in the sitting-room at Baker Street. Nothing had been said during our drive, but the high, thin breathing of our new companion and the claspings and unclaspings of his hands spoke of the nervous tension within him. Here we are," said Holmes cheerily, as we filed into the room. The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold, Mr. Ryder. Pray take the basket chair. I will just put on my slippers before we settle this little matter of yours. Now then, you want to know what became of those geese? Yes, sir. Or rather, I fancy, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine, in which you were interested. White with a black bar across the tail.
Ryder quivered with emotion. "'Oh, sir,' he cried, "'can you tell me where it went to?' "'It came here.' "'Here?' "'Yes, and a most remarkable bird it proved. I don't wonder that you should take an interest in it. It laid an egg after it was dead. The bonniest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. I have it here in my museum.' Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the mantelpiece with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strong box and held up the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star with a cold, brilliant, many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood glaring with a drawn face, uncertain whether to claim it or to disown it. "'The game's up, Ryder,' said Holmes quietly. "'Hold up, Anne, or you'll be into the fire.' Give him an arm back into his chair, Watson.
He's not got blood enough to go in for felony with impunity. Give him a dash of brandy. So now he looks a little more human. What a shrimp it is, to be sure. For a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy brought a tinge of color into his cheeks, and he sat staring with frightened eyes at his accuser. I have almost every link in my hands. and all the proofs which I could possibly need. So there is little which you need tell me. Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the Countess of Morcar's? It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it, said he in a crackling voice. I see. Her ladyship's waiting-maid. Well, the temptation of sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has been for better men before you.
But you were not very scrupulous in the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the making of a very pretty villain in you. You knew that this man Horner, the plumber, had been concerned in some such matter before, and that suspicion would rest the more readily upon him. What did you do then? You made some small job in my lady's room, you and your confederate Cusack, and you managed that he should be the man sent for. Then when he had left you rifled the jewel-case, raised the alarm, and had this unfortunate man arrested. You then—Rider threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my companion's knees. Oh, for heaven's sake, have mercy! He shranked. Think of my father, my mother.
It would break their hearts. I never went wrong before. I never will again. I swear it. I swear it on a Bible. Oh, don't bring me into court. For heaven's sake, don't." "'Get back into your chair,' said Holmes sternly. "'It is very well to cringe and crawl now, but you've thought little enough of this poor Horner in the dock for a crime of which he knew nothing.' "'I will fly. Mr. Holmes, I will leave the country, sir. Then the charge against him will break down.' "'Hm. We will talk about that.' And now let us hear a true account of the next act. How came the stone into the goose, and how came the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, for there lies your only hope of safety." Ryder passed his tongue over his parched lips.
"'I will tell you it just as it happened, sir,' said he. When Horner had been arrested it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment the police might take it into their heads to search me and my room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be safe. I went out as if on some commission, and I made for my sister's house. She had married a man named Oakshot, and lived in Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective, and for all that it was a cold night the sweat was pouring down my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me what was the matter, and why I was so pale, but I told her that I had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel.
Then I went into the backyard and smoked a pipe and wondered what it would be best to do. I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just been serving his time in Pentonville. One day he had met me and fell into talk about the ways of thieves, and how they could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be true to me, for I knew one or two things about him. So I made up my mind to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money, but how to get to him in safety. I thought of the agonies I had gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at any moment be seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat pocket.
I was leaning against the wall at the time, and looking at the geese, which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the best detective that ever lived. My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she was always as good as her word. I would take my goose now, and in it I would carry my stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in the yard, and behind this I drove one of the birds, a fine big one, white with a barred tail. I caught it, and prying its bill open, I thrust the stone down its throat as far as my finger could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass along its gullet and down into its crop.
But the creature flapped and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the matter. As I turned to speak to her, the brute broke loose and fluttered off among the others. "'Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?' said she. "'Well,' said I, "'you said you'd give me one for Christmas, and I was feeling which was the fattest.' "'Oh,' said she, "'We've set yours aside for you. Jem's Bird, we call it. It's the big white one over yonder. There's twenty-six of them, which makes one for you and one for us, and two dozen for the market.' "'Thank you, Maggie,' says I. "'But if it is all the same to you, I'd rather have that one I was handling just now.' "'The other is a good three-pound heavier,' said she, "'and we fattened it expressly for you.
Never mind, I'll take the other.' "'And I'll take it now,' said I. "'Oh, just as you like,' said she, a little huffed. "'Which is it you want, then? That white one with the barred tail, right in the middle of the flock. "'Oh, very well. Kill it and take it with you.' "'Well, I did what she said, Mr. Holmes, and I carried the bird all the way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had done, for he was a man that it was easy to tell a thing like that to.' He laughed until he choked, and we got a knife and opened the goose. My art turned to water, for there was no sign of the stone, and I knew that some terrible mistake had occurred. I left the bird, rushed back to my sister's, and hurried into the backyard.
There was not a bird to be seen there. "'Oh, where are they all, Maggie?' I cried. "'Gone to the dealers, Jem.' "'Which dealers?' "'Breckenridge of Covent Garden.' But was there another with a barred tail, I asked, the same as the one I chose? Yes, Jem, there were two barred-tailed ones, and I could never tell them apart. Well, then, of course, I saw it all, and I ran off as hard as my feet would carry me to this man Breckenridge. But he had sold the lot at once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they had gone. You heard him yourselves to-night. Well, he has always answered me like that. My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am myself. And now—and now I am myself a branded thief without ever having touched the wealth for which I sold my character.
Heaven help me! Heaven help me! He burst into convulsive sobbing with his face buried in his hands. There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes' finger-tips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door. "'Get out,' said he. "'What, sir? Oh, heaven bless you!' "'No more words. Get out!' And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls from the street. "'After all, Watson,' said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay-pipe, I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing, but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse.
I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again. He is too terribly frightened. Send him to jail now, and you make him a jailbird for life." Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, doctor, we will begin another investigation in which also a bird will be the chief feature. End of The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-
2 Christmas at Sea 4:19
Christmas at Sea by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand. The decks were like a slide where a seaman scarce could stand. The wind was a nor'wester blowing squally off the sea, and cliffs and spouting breakers Were the only things a-lee. They heard the surfer roaring before the break of day, but twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay. We tumbled every hand on deck d'instanter with a shout, and we gave her the main-tops, and stood by to go about. All day we tacked and tacked between the south-head and the north, All day we hauled the frozen sheets and got no further forth. All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread, for very life and nature we tacked from head to head.
We gave the south a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared. By every tack we made we brought the north-head close aboard. So's we saw the cliffs in houses and the breakers running high, and the coastguard in his garden with his glass against his eye. The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam. The good red fires were burning bright in every longshore home. The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out, and I vowed we'd sniffed The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer, for it's just that I should tell you how, of all days in the year, this day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn, and the house above the coast guards was the house where I was born.
Oh, well I saw the pleasant room. The pleasant faces there, my mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair. And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves, go dancing round the china plates that stand upon the shelves. And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me, of the shadow on the household and the sun that went to sea. And, oh, the wicked fool I seemed in every kind of way, to be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day. They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall. All hands to loose top-gallant sails, I heard the captain call. By the Lord, she'll never stand it, our first mate Jackson cried. It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.
She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good, and the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood. As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night, we cleared the weary headland and passed below the light, and they heaved a mighty breath Every soul on board but me, as they saw her nose again, pointing handsome out to sea. But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold, was just that I was leaving home, and my folks were growing old.
-
3 The Christmas Fairy of Strasburg 8:54
The Christmas Fairy of Strasbourg. The Christmas Fairy of Strasbourg by J. Sterling Coyne. A German Folk Tale Once long ago. There lived, near the ancient city of Strasbourg, on the River Rhine, a young and handsome count, whose name was Otto. As the years flew by, he remained unwed, and never so much cast a glance at the fair maidens of the country round. For this reason people began to call him Stoneheart. A chance that Count Otto, on one Christmas Eve, ordered that a great hunt should take place in the forests surrounding his castle. He and his guests and his many retainers rode forth, and the chase became more and more exciting. It led through thickets and over pathless tracks of forest, until at length Count Otto found himself separated from his companions.
He rode on by himself, Until he came to a spring of clear, bubbling water, known to the people around as the Fairy Well. Here Count Otto dismounted. He bent over the spring and began to lave his hands in the sparkling tide. But to his wonder he found that though the weather was cold and frosty, the water was warm and delightfully caressing. He felt a glow of joy pass through his veins, and as he plunged his hands deeper, he fancied that his right hand was grasped by another, soft and small, which gently slipped from his finger the gold ring he always wore. And lo, when he drew out his hand, the gold ring was gone, full of wonder, At this mysterious event, the Count mounted his horse and returned to his castle, resolving in his mind that the very next day he would have the fairy-wale emptied by his servants.
He retired to his room, and throwing himself, just as he was upon his couch, trod to sleep, but the strangeness of the adventure kept him restless and wakeful. Suddenly he heard the hoarse baying of the watch-hounds in the courtyard, and then the creaking of the drawbridge, as though it were being lowered. Then came to his ear the patter of many small feet on the stone staircase, and next he heard indistinctly the sound of light footsteps in the chamber adjoining his own. Count Otto sprung from his couch, and as he did so there sounded a strain of delicious music, and the door of his chamber was flung open. Hurrying into the next room, he found himself in the midst of numberless fairy beings, clad in gay and sparkling robes.
They paid no heed to him, but began to dance and laugh and sing to the sound of mysterious music. In the center of the apartment stood a splendid Christmas tree, the first ever seen in that country. Instead of toys and candles, there hung on its lighted boughs diamond stars, pearl-neck-glaces, bracelets of gold ornamented with colored jewels, agrettes of rubies and sapphires, silken belts embroidered with oriental pearls, and daggers mounted in gold and studded with the rarest gems. The whole tree swayed, sparkled, and glittered in the radiance of its many lights. Count Otto stood speechless, gazing at all this wonder, when suddenly the fairy stopped dancing and fell back to make room for a lady of dazzling beauty who came slowly toward him.
She wore on her raven-black tresses a golden diadem set with jewels. Her hair flowed down upon a robe of rosy satin and creamy velvet. She stretched out two small, white hands to the Count and addressed him in sweet, alluring tones. "'Dear Count Otto,' said she, "'I come to return your Christmas visit.' I am Ernestine, the Queen of the Fairies. I bring you something you lost in the fairy well. And as she spoke, she drew from her bosom a golden casket, set with diamonds, and placed it in his hands. He opened it eagerly, and found within his lost gold ring. Carried away by the wonder of it all, and overcome by an irresistible impulse, The Count pressed the Fairy Ernestine to his heart, while she, holding him by the hand, drew him into the magic mazes of the dance.
The mysterious music floated through the room, and the rest of that fairy company circled and whirled around the Fairy Queen and Count Otto, and then gradually dissolved into a mist of many colors, Leaving the Count and his beautiful guest alone. Then the young man, forgetting all his former coldness towards the maidens of the country round about, fell on his knees before the fairy and besought her to become his bride. At last she consented on the condition that he should never speak the word death in her presence. The next day the wedding of Count Otto and Ernestine, Queen of the Fairies, was celebrated with great pomp and magnificence, and the two continued to live happily for many years. Now it happened on a time that the Count and his fairy wife were to hunt in the forest around the castle.
The horses were saddled and bridled, and standing at the door the company waited, and the Count paced the hall in great impatience. But still Fairy Ernestine tarried long in her chamber. At length she appeared at the door of the hall, and the Count addressed her in anger. "'You have kept us waiting so long,' he cried, "'that you would make a good messenger to send for death.' Scarcely had he spoken the forbidden and fatal word, When the fairy, uttering a wild cry, vanished from his sight. In vain, Count Otto, overwhelmed with grief and remorse, searched the castle and the fairy well. No trace could he find of his beautiful lost wife, but the imprint of her delicate hand set in the stone ark above the castle gate.
Years passed by. and the fairy Ernestine did not return. The Count continued to grieve. Every Christmas Eve he set up a lighted tree in the room where he had first met the fairy, hoping in vain that she would return to him. Time passed, and the Count died. The castle fell into ruins, but to this day may be seen above the massive gate. Deeply sunken in the stone ark, the impress of a small and delicate hand. And such, say the good folk of Strasbourg, was the origin of the Christmas tree. End of The Christmas Fairy of Strasbourg by J. Stirling Coyne
-
4 The Christmas Present 11:24
The Christmas Present by Rich Moll Crompton.
Mary Clay looked out of the window of the old farmhouse. The view was dreary enough, hill and field and woodland, bare, colorless, mist-covered, with no other house in sight. She had never been a woman to crave for company. She liked sewing. She was passionately fond of reading. She was not fond of talking. Probably she could have been very happy at Crombe Farm, alone. Before her marriage, she had looked forward to the long evenings with her sewing and reading. She knew that she could be busy enough in the day, for the farmhouse was old and rambling, and she was to have no help in the housework. But she looked forward to quiet, peaceful, lamplight evenings, and only lately, after ten years of married life, had she reluctantly given up the hope of them.
For peace was far enough from the old farm kitchen in the evening. It was driven away by John Clay's loud voice, raised always in orders or complaints, or in the stumbling, incoherent reading aloud of his newspaper. Mary was a silent woman herself, and a lover of silence. But John liked to hear the sound of his voice. He liked to shout at her, and to call for her from one room to another. Above all, he liked to hear his voice reading the paper out loud to her in the evening. She dreaded that most of all. It had lately seemed to jar on her nerves till she felt she must scream aloud. His voice, going on, Raucous and singsong became unspeakably irritating. His, Mary, summoning her from the household work to wherever he happened to be, his, Get my slippers, or, Bring my pipe, exasperated her almost to the point of rebellion.
Get your own slippers, had trembled on her lips, but had never passed them, for she was a woman who could not bear anger. Noise of any kind appalled her. She had borne it for ten years, so surely she could go on with it. Yet today, as she gazed hopelessly at the wintry countryside, she became acutely conscious that she could not go on with it. Something must happen. Yet what was there that could happen? It was Christmas next week. She smiled ironically at the thought. Then she noticed the figure of her husband coming up the road. He came in at the gate and round to the side door. "'Mary!' She went slowly in answer to the summons. He held a letter in his hand. "'Met the postman,' he said. "'From your aunt.' She opened the letter and read it in silence.
Both of them knew quite well what it contained. "'She wants us to come over for Christmas again.' said Mary. He began to grumble. She's as deaf as a post. She's most as deaf as her mother was. She ought to know better than to ask folks over when she can't hear a word anyone says. Mary said nothing. He always grumbled about the invitation at first, but really he wanted to go. He liked to talk with her uncle. He liked the change of going down to the village for a few days and hearing all its gossip. He could quite well leave the farm to the hands for that time. The crude deafness was proverbial. Mary's great-grandmother had gone stone deaf at the age of thirty-five. Her daughter had inherited the affliction, and her granddaughter.
The aunt with whom Mary had spent her childhood had inherited it also. at exactly the same age. "'All right,' he said at last, grudgingly, as though in answer to her silence, "'we'd better go. Write and say we'll go.'" It was Christmas Eve. They were in the kitchen of her uncle's farmhouse. The deaf old woman sat in her chair by the fire, knitting. Upon her sunken face there was a curious sardonic smile, That was her habitual expression. The two men stood in the doorway. Mary sat at the table, looking aimlessly out of the window. Outside, the snow fell in blinding showers. Inside, the fire gleamed on to the copper pots and pans, the crockery on the old oak dresser, the hams hanging from the ceiling.
Suddenly, James turned. "'Jane!' he said. The deaf woman never stirred. "'Jane!' Still, there was no response upon the enigmatic old face by the fireside. "'Jane!' She turned slightly towards the voice. "'Get them photos from upstairs to show John,' he bawled. "'What about the boats?' she said. "'Photos!' roared her husband. "'Coats?' she quavered. Mary looked from one to the other. The man made a gesture of irritation, and went from the room. He came back with a pile of picture postcards in his hand. It's quicker to do a thing oneself, he grumbled. They're what my brother sent from Switzerland, where he's working now. It's a fine land, to judge from the views of it. John took them from his hand.
She gets worse. he said, nodding towards the old woman. She was sitting, gazing at the fire, her lips curved into the curious smile. Her husband shrugged his shoulders. Aye, it takes longer to tell her to do something than to do it myself. And deaf folks get a bit stupid, too. Can't see what you mean. They're best let alone. The other man nodded and lit his pipe, and then James opened the door. The snow stopped, he said. Shall we go to the end of the village and back? The other nodded, and took his cap from behind the door. A gust of cold air filled the room as they went out. Mary took a paper-back book from the table and came over to the fireplace. Mary! She started. It was not the sharp, querulous voice of the deaf old woman.
It was more like the voice of the young aunt whom Mary remembered in childhood. The old woman was leaning forward, looking at her intently. "'Mary! A happy Christmas to e!' And as if in spite of herself, Mary answered in her ordinary low tones, "'The same to you, auntie.' "'Thankie, thankie!' Mary gasped. "'Aunt!' Can you hear me speaking like this? The old woman laughed, silently, rocking to and fro in her chair, as if with pent-up merriment of years. Yes, I can hear ye, child. I've always heard ye. Mary clasped her hand eagerly. Then you're cured, aunt. Aye, I'm cured as far as there was ever anything to be cured. "'You?' "'I was never deaf, child, nor never will be, please God. I've took you all in fine.' Mary stood up in bewilderment.
"'You?' "'Never deaf?' The old woman chuckled again. "'No, nor my mother, nor her mother neither.' Mary shrank back from her. "'I—' "'Don't know what you mean,' she said, unsteadily. "'Have you been—pretending?' "'I'll make you a Christmas present of it, dearie,' said the old woman. "'My mother made me a Christmas present of it when I was your age, and her mother made her one. I haven't a lass of my own to give it to, so I give it to you.' It can come on quite sudden-like, if you want it, and then you can hear what you choose, and not hear what you choose. Do you see? She leaned nearer, and whispered, "'You're shut out of it all, of having to fetch and carry for him. Answer their daft questions, and run their errands like a dog.
I've watched you, my lass. You don't get much peace, do you?' Mary was trembling. "'Oh, I don't know what to think,' she said. "'I—I couldn't do it.' "'Do as you like,' said the old woman. "'Take it as a present, always—the crude deafness for a Christmas present.' She chuckled. "'Use it—or not—as you like. You'll find it main amusing—always.' And into the old face there came again that curious smile, as if she had carried in her heart some jest fit for the gods on Olympus. The door opened suddenly with another gust of cold wind, and the two men came in again, covered with fine snow. "'I'll not do it,' whispered Mary, trembling. "'We didn't get far. It's coming on again.' remarked John, hanging up his cap.
The old woman rose and began to lay the supper, silently and deftly, moving from cupboard to table without looking up. Mary sat by the fire, motionless and speechless, her eyes fixed on the glowing coals. "'Any signs of deafness in her?' whispered James, looking towards Mary. It come on my wife, just when she was that age. Aye, so I've heard. And he said loudly, Mary! A faint pink color came into her cheeks, but she did not show by look or movement that she had heard. James looked significantly at her husband. The old woman stood still for a minute, with a cup in each hand, and smiled her slow, subtle smile.
End of the Christmas Present.
-
5 A Christmas Star 8:30
A Christmas Star by Catherine Pyle.
Come now, my little dear stars," said Mother Moon, and I will tell you the Christmas story. Every morning for a week before Christmas, Mother Moon used to call all the little stars around her and tell them a story. It was always the same story, but the stars never wearied of it. It was the story of the Christmas star, the star of Bethlehem. When Mother Moon had finished the story, the little stars always said, "'And this star is shining still, isn't it, Mother Moon, even if we can't see it?' And Mother Moon would answer, Yes, my dears, only now it shines for men's hearts instead of their eyes. Then the stars would bid Mother Moon good-night, and put on their little blue night-caps, and go to bed in the sky-chamber, for the stars' bedtime is when people down on earth are beginning to waken and see that it is morning.
But that particular morning, when the little stars said good-night and went quietly away, one golden star still lingered beside Mother Moon. "'What is the matter, my little star?' asked Mother Moon. "'Why don't you go with your little sisters?' "'Oh, Mother Moon,' said the golden star, "'I am so sad. I wish I could shine for some one's heart like that star of wonder that you tell us about.' "'Why, aren't you happy up here in the sky-country?' asked Mother Moon. Yes, I have been very happy," said the star, but to-night it seems just as if I must find some heart to shine for. Then, if that is so, said Mother Moon, the time has come, my little star, for you to go through the wonder-entry. The wonder-entry?
What is that? asked the star. But Mother Moon made no answer. Rising, she took the little star by the hand and led it to a door that it had never seen before. The mother moon opened the door, and there was a long, dark entry. At the far end was shining a little speck of light. "'What is this?' asked the star. "'It is the wonder entry, and it is through this that you must go to find the heart where you belong,' said the mother moon. Then the little star was afraid. It longed to go through the entry, as it had never longed for anything before. And yet it was afraid, and clung to the mother moon.' But very gently, almost sadly, the mother moon drew her hand away. "'Go, my child,' she said. Then, wondering and trembling, the little star stepped into the wonder-entry, and the door of the sky-house closed behind it.
The next thing the star knew, it was hanging in a toy-shop with a whole row of other stars, blue and red and silver. It, itself, was gold. The shop smelled of evergreen, and was full of Christmas shoppers, men and women and children, but of all of them the star looked at no one but a little boy standing in front of the counter, for as soon as the star saw the child it knew that he was the one to whom it belonged. The little boy was standing beside a sweet-faced woman in a long black veil, and he was not looking at anything in particular. The star shook and trembled on the string that held it, because it was afraid lest the child should not see it, or lest, if he did, he would not know it as his star.
The lady had a number of toys on the counter before her, and she was saying, "'Now, I think we have presents for everyone. There's the doll for Lou, and the game for Ned, and the music-box for May, and then the rocking-horse and the sled.' Suddenly the little boy caught her by the arm. Oh, mother," he said. He had seen the star. "'Well, what is it, darling?' asked the lady. "'Oh, mother, to see that star up there. Oh, I wish, I do wish I had it.' "'Oh, my dear, we have so many things for the Christmas tree,' said the mother. "'Yes, I know, but I do want the star,' said the child. "'Very well,' said the mother, smiling. "'Then we'll take that too.' So the star was taken down from the place where it hung, and wrapped up in a piece of paper, and all the while it thrilled with joy, for now it belonged to the little boy.
It was not until the afternoon before Christmas, when the tree was being decorated, that the golden star was unwrapped and taken out from the paper. "'Here is something else,' said the sweet-faced lady. "'We must hang this on the tree.' Paul took such a fancy to it that I had to get it for him. He will never be satisfied unless we hang it on, too." "'Oh, yes,' said someone else who was helping to decorate the tree, "'we will hang it here on the very top.' So the little star hung on the highest branch of the Christmas tree. That evening all the candles were lighted on the Christmas tree, and they were so many that they fairly dazzled the eyes. And the gold and silver balls, the fairies, and the glass fruits shone and twinkled in the light, and high above them all shone the golden star.
At seven o'clock a bell was rung, and then the folding doors of the room where the Christmas trees stood were thrown open, and a crowd of children came trooping in. They laughed and shouted and pointed, and all talked together, and after a while there was music, and presents were taken from the tree and given to the children. How different it was from the great wide, still sky-house! But the star had never been so happy in all its life, for the little boy was there. He stood apart from the other children, looking up at the star, with his hands clasped behind him, and he did not seem to care for the toys and the games. At last it was all over. The lights were put out, the children went home, and the house grew still.
Then the ornaments on the tree began to talk among themselves. "'So that is all over,' said the silver ball. "'It was very gay this evening—the gayest Christmas I remember.' "'Yes,' said a bunch of grapes. "'The best of it is over. Of course people will come to look at us for several days yet, but it won't be like this evening.' "'And then, I suppose, we'll be laid away for another year,' said a paper fairy. "'Really, it seems hardly worth the while.' Such a few days of the year, and then to be shut up in the dark box again. I almost wish I were a paper doll. The bunch of grapes was wrong in saying that people would come to look at the Christmas tree the next few days, for it stood neglected in the library, and nobody came near it.
Everybody in the house went about very quietly, with anxious faces, for the little boy was ill. At last, one evening, a woman came into the room with a servant. The woman wore the cap and apron of a nurse. "'That is it,' she said, pointing to the golden star. The servant climbed up on some steps and took down the star and put it in the nurse's hand, and she carried it out into the hall and upstairs to the room where the little boy lay. The sweet-faced lady was sitting by the bed, and as the nurse came in she held out her hand for the star. "'Is this what you wanted, my darling?' she asked, bending over the little boy. The child nodded and held out his hands for the star, and as he clasped it, a wonderful, shining smile came over his face.
The next morning the little boy's room was very still and dark. The golden piece of paper that had been the star lay on a table beside the bed, its five points very sharp and bright. But it was not the real star, any more than a person's body is the real person. The real star was living and shining now in the little boy's heart, and it had gone out with him into a new and more beautiful sky-country than it had ever known before, the sky-country where the little child angels live, each one carrying in its heart its own particular star.
-
6 Christmas Storms and Sunshine 34:06
Christmas Storms and Sunshine by Elizabeth Gaskell In the town of No Matter Where there circulated Two local newspapers, no matter when. Now the Flying Post was long established and respectable, alias Bigoted and Tory. The Examiner was spirited and intelligent, alias Newfangled and Democratic. Every week these newspapers contained articles abusing each other, as cross and peppery as articles could be, And evidently the production of irritated minds, although they seem to have one stereotyped commencement. Though the article appearing in last week's Post or Examiner is below contempt, yet we have been induced, etc., etc., and every Saturday the radical shopkeepers shook hands together and agreed that the Post was done for by the slashing Clever Examiner, while the more dignified Tories began by regretting that Johnson should think that low paper, only read by a few of the vulgar, worth wasting his wit upon.
However, the Examiner was at its last gasp. It was not, though. It lived and flourished, at least paid its way, as one of the heroes of my story could tell. He was chief compositor. or whatever title may be given to the head man of the mechanical part of a newspaper. He hardly confined himself to that department. Once or twice, unknown to the editor, when the manuscript had fallen short, he had filled up the vacant space by compositions of his own, announcements of a forthcoming crop of green peas in December, a grey thrush having been seen, Or a white hair, or such interesting phenomena invented for the occasion. I must confess, but what of that? His wife always knew when to expect a little specimen of her husband's literary talent by a peculiar cock, which served as prelude, and, judging from this encouraging sign and the high-pitched and emphatic voice in which he read them, She was inclined to think that an ode to an early rosebud in the corner devoted to original poetry, and a letter in the correspondence department, signed pro bono publico, were her husband's writing, and to hold up her head accordingly.
I could never find out what it was that occasioned the Hodgson's to lodge in the same house as the Jenkinses. Jenkins held the same office in the Tory paper as Hodgson did in the Examiner, and as I said before, I leave you to give it a name. But Jenkins had a proper sense of his position, and a proper reverence for all his authority, from the king down to the editor and the sub-editor. He would as soon have thought of borrowing the king's crown for a nightcap, Or the King's Sceptre for a walking-stick, as he would have thought of filling up any space corner with any production of his own. And I think it would have even added to his contempt of Hodgson's, if that were possible, had he known of the productions of his brain, as the latter fondly alluded to the paragraphs he inserted when speaking to his wife.
Jenkins had his wife, too. Wives were wanting to finish the completeness of the quarrel, which existed one memorable Christmas week, some dozen years ago, between the two neighbors, the two compositors. And with wives it was a very pretty, a very complete quarrel, to make the opposing parties still more equal, still more well matched, if the Hodgsons had a baby. Such a baby. A poor, puny little thing. Mrs. Jenkins had a cat. Such a cat. A great nasty, meowing tomcat, that was always stealing the milk put by for little Angel's supper. And now, having matched Greek with Greek, I must proceed to the tug-of-war. It was the day before Christmas. Such a cold east wind. Such an inky sky, such a blue-black look in people's faces, as they were driven out more than usual to complete their purchases for the next day's festival.
Before leaving home that morning, Jenkins had given some money to his wife to buy the next day's dinner. My dear, I wish for turkey and sausages. It may be a weakness. But I own I am partial to sausages. My deceased mother was. Such tastes are hereditary. As to sweets, whether plum pudding or mince pies, I leave such considerations to you. I only beg you not to mind expense. Christmas comes but once a year. And again he had called out from the bottom of the first flight of stairs, just close to the Hodgson's door. Such ostentatiousness, as Mrs. Hodgson observed. "'You will not forget the sausages, my dear?' "'I should have liked to have had something above common, Mary,' said Hodgson, as they two made their plans for the next day.
"'But I think roast beef must do for us. You see, love, we've a family.' "'Only one, Jem.' I don't want more than roast beef, though. I'm sure. Before I went to service, Mother and me would have thought roast beef a very fine dinner. Well, let's settle it, then. Roast beef and a plum pudding. And now, good-bye. Mind and take care of little Tom. I thought he was a bit hoarse this morning. And off he went to his work. Now, it was a good while since Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Hodgson had spoken to each other, although they were quite as much in possession of the knowledge of events and opinions as though they did. Mary knew that Mrs. Jenkins despised her for not having a real lace cap, which Mrs. Jenkins had, and for having been a servant, which Mrs.
Jenkins had not. And the little occasional pinchings which the Hodgson's were obliged to resort to, to make both ends meet, would have been very patiently endured by Mary, if she had not winced under Mrs. Jenkins' knowledge of such economy. But she had her revenge. She had a child, and Mrs. Jenkins had none. To have had a child, even such a puny baby as a little Tom, Mrs. Jenkins would have worn commonest caps and clean grates and drudged her fingers to the bone. The great unspoken disappointment of her life soured her temper and turned her thoughts inward and made her morbid and selfish. Hang that cat. He's been stealing again. He's gnawed the cold mutton in his nasty mouth till it's not fit set before a Christian.
"'And I've nothing else for Jem's dinner, but I'll give it him now I've caught him. That I will.' So saying, Mrs. Hodgkins caught up her husband's Sunday cane, and despite Pussy's cries and scratches, she gave him such a heating as she hoped might cure him of his thievish propensities, when, lo and behold, Mrs. Jenkins stood at the door with a face of bitter wrath. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, ma'am, to abuse a poor dumb animal, ma'am, as knows no better than to take food when he sees it, ma'am? He only follows the nature which God has given him, ma'am, and it's a pity your nature, ma'am, which I've heard is of the stingy saving species. Does not make you shut your cupboard door a little closer.
There is such a thing as law for brute animals. I'll ask Mr. Jenkins, but I don't think them radicals has done away with that law yet, for all their reform bill, ma'am. My poor precious love of a Tommy. Is he hurt, and is his leg broke for taking a mouthful of scraps, as most people would give away to a beggar if he'd take them? Wound up, Mrs. Jenkins. casting a contemptuous look on the remnant of a scrap-end of mutton. Mary felt very angry and very guilty, for she really pitied the poor limping animal as he crept up to his mistress, and there lay down to bemoan himself she wished she had not beaten him so hard, for it certainly was her own careless way of never shutting the cupboard door that had tempted him to his fault, But the sneer of her little bit of mutton turned her penitence to fresh wrath, and she shut the door in Mrs.
Jenkins' face as she stood caressing her cat in the lobby with such a bang that it wakened little Tom, and he began to cry. Everything was to go wrong with Mary to-day. Now Baby was awake. Who was to take her husband's dinner to the office? She took the child in her arms and tried to hush him off to sleep again, and as she sung she cried. She could hardly tell why. A sort of reaction from her violent, angry feelings. She wished she had never beaten the poor cat. She wondered if his leg was really broken. What would her mother say if she knew how cross and cruel her little Mary was getting? If she could live to beat her child in one of her angry fits. It was of no use lullabying while she sobbed so.
It must be given up, and she must just carry her baby in her arms and take him with her to the office, for it was long past dinner time. So she pared the mutton carefully, although by so doing she reduced the meat to an infinite small quantity. And taking the baked potatoes out of the oven, she popped them piping hot into her basket with the etc.s of plate, butter, salt, and knife and fork. It was, indeed, a bitter wind. She bent against it as she ran, and the flakes of snow were sharp and cutting as ice. Baby cried all the way, though she cuddled him up in her shawl. Then her husband had made his appetite up for a potato pie, and, literally, man as he was, his body got so much the better of his mind that he looked rather black at the cold mutton.
Mary had no appetite for her own dinner when she arrived at home again. So, after she had tried to feed the baby, and he had fretfully refused to take his bread and milk, She laid him down, as usual, on his quilt, surrounded by playthings, while she sewed it away and chopped suet for the next day's pudding. Early in the afternoon a parcel came, done up first in brown paper, then in such a white grass-bleached, sweet-smelling towel, and a note from her dear, dear mother, in which quaint writing she endeavored to tell her daughter that she was not forgotten at Christmas time, but that learning that Farmer Burton was killing his pig, she had made interest for some of his famous pork, out of which she had manufactured some sausages, and flavoured them just as Mary used to like when she lived at home.
"'Dear, dear Mother,' said Mary to herself, "'there never was any one like her for remembering other folk.' What rare sausages she used to make. Home things have a smack with them. No bought things can ever have. Set them up with their sausages. I've a notion if Mrs. Jenkins had ever tasted mothers, she have no fancy for them town-made things Fanny took in just now. And so she went on thinking about home, till the smiles and the dimples came out again, At the remembrance of that pretty cottage, which would look green even now in the depth of winter, with its pyracanthus and its holly bushes, and the great portugal laurel that was her mother's pride, and the back path through the orchard to Farmer Burton's.
How well she remembered it! The bushels of unripe apples she had picked up there, and distributed among his pigs, Till he had scolded her for giving them so much green trash. She was interrupted. Her baby. I call him a baby, because his father and mother did, and because he was so little of his age. But I rather think he was 18 months old. Had fallen asleep some time before, among his playthings. An uneasy, restless sleep. But of which Mary had been thankful, as his morning's nap had been too short, and as she was so busy. But now he began to make such a strange crowing noise, just like a chair drawn heavily and gratingly along a kitchen floor. His eyes were open, but expressive of nothing but pain.
"'Mother's darling,' said Mary, in terror, lifting him up, Baby, try not to make that noise. Hush, hush, darling. What hurts him? But the noise came worse and worse. Fanny, Fanny! Mary called in mortal fright, for her baby was almost black with his grasping breath, and she had no one to ask for aid or sympathy but her landlady's daughter, a little girl of twelve or thirteen, who attended to the house in her mother's absence as daily cook in gentlemen families. Fanny was more especially considered the attendant of the upstairs lodgers, who paid for the use of the kitchen, for Jenkins could not abide the smell of meat cooking. But just now she was fortunately sitting at her afternoon's work of darning stockings, and hearing Mrs.
Hodgson's cry of terror She ran to her sitting-room, and understood the case at a glance. "'He's got croup. Oh, Mrs. Hodgson, he'll die as sure as fate.' Little brother had it, and he died in no time. The doctor said he could do nothing for him. It had gone too far. He said if we'd put him in a warm bath at first, it might have saved him. But bless you, He was never half so bad as your baby. Unconsciously there mingled in her statement some of a child's love of producing an effect, but the increasing danger was clear enough. "'Oh, my baby, my baby! Oh, love, love, don't look so ill. I cannot bear it. And my fire so low. There I was thinking of home. and picking currants and never minding the fire.
Oh, Fanny, what is the fire like in the kitchen? Speak. Mother told me to screw it up and throw some slack on it as soon as Mrs. Jenkins had done with it, and so I did. It's very low and black. But, oh, Mrs. Hodgson, let me run for the doctor. I cannot bear to hear him. It's so like little brother. Through her streaming tears Mary motioned her to go, and trembling, sinking, sick at heart, she laid her boy in his cradle and ran to fill her kettle. Mrs. Jenkins, having cooked her husband's snug little dinner, to which he came home, having told him her story of pussy's beating, at which he was justly and dignifiedly indignant, Saying it was all of a piece with that abusive examiner, having received the sausages and turkey and mince-pies which her husband had ordered, and cleaned up the room, and prepared everything for tea, and coaxed and duly bemoaned her cat, who had pretty nearly forgotten his beating, but very much enjoyed the petting.
Having done all these and many other things, Mrs. Jenkins sat down to get up the real lace cap. Every thread was pulled out separately and carefully stretched when—what was that? Outside in the street, a chorus of piping children's voices sung, the old carol she had heard a hundred times in the days of her youth. As Joseph was a-walking, he heard an angel sing. This knight shall be born our heavenly king. He neither shall be born in housen nor in hall, nor in the place of paradise, but in an ox's stall. He neither shall be clothed in purple nor in pall, but all in fair linen, as were babies all. He neither shall be rocked in silver nor in gold, But in a wooden cradle that rocks on the mould, etc.
She got up and went to the window. There, below, stood the group of grey-black little figures, relieved against the snow, which now enveloped everything. For old Sakes' sake, as she phrased it, she counted out half a penny apiece for the singers, out of the copper bag, and threw them down below. The room had become chilly while she had been counting out and throwing down her money, so she stirred her already glowing fire and sat down right before it, but not to stretch her lace. Like Mary Hodgson, she began to think over long-past days, on softening remembrances of the dead and gone, on words long forgotten, on holy stories heard at her mother's knee. "'I cannot think what come over me tonight,' said she, half aloud, recovering herself by the sound of her own voice from her train of thought.
"'My head goes wandering on them old times. I'm sure more texts have come into my head.' With thinking on my mother within this last half-hour than I've thought on for years and years. I hope I'm not going to die. Folks say, thinking too much on the bed, the tokens were going to join em. I should be loath to go just yet. Such a fine turkey as we've got for dinner tomorrow too. Knock, knock, knock at the door, as fast as Knuckles could go. And then, as if the comer could not wait, the door was opened, and Mary Hodgson stood there as white as death. "'Mrs. Jenkins, oh, your kettle is boiling, thank God. Let me have the water for my baby, for the love of God. He's got croup, and he's dying.' Mrs.
Jenkins turned on her chair with a wooden, inflexible look on her face. That, between ourselves, her husband knew and dreaded for all his pompous dignity. "'I'm sorry I can't oblige you, ma'am. My kettle is wanted for my husband's tea.' "'Don't be afeared. Tommy, Mrs. Hutchins, won't venture to intrude herself where she's not desired.' "'You'd better send for the doctor, ma'am, instead of wasting your time in wringing your hands, ma'am. My kettle is engaged.' Mary clasped her hands together with passionate force, but spoke no word of entreaty to that wooden face, that sharp, determined voice. But as she turned away, she prayed for strength to bear the coming trial, and strength to forgive Mrs.
Jenkins. Mrs. Jenkins watched her go away meekly, as one who has no hope, and then she turned upon herself as sharply as she ever did on any one else. What a brute I am. Lord, forgive me. What's my husband's tea to a baby's life? In Croup, too, where time is everything. You crabbed old Vikes an'ew. Any one may know you never had a child. She was downstairs, kettle in hand, before she had finished herself upbraiding, And when, in Mrs. Hodgson's room, she rejected all thanks, Mary had not the voice for many words, saying stiffly, I'd do it for the poor baby's sake, ma'am, hoping he may live to have mercy to poor dumb beasts if he does forget to lock his cupboards. But she did everything, and more than Mary, with her young inexperience, could have thought of.
She prepared the warm bath, and tried it with her husband's own thermometer. Mr. Jenkins was as punctual as clockwork in noting down the temperature of every day. She let his mother place her baby in the tub, still preserving the same rigid, affronted aspect, and then she went upstairs without a word. Mary longed to ask her to stay, but dared not, Though, when she left the room, the tears chased each other down her cheeks, faster than ever. Poor young mother, how she counted the minutes till the doctor should come. But before he came, down again stalked Mrs. Jenkins with something in her hand. "'I've seen many of those croup fits, which I take it you've not, ma'am.' Mustard Plasters is very sovereign.
Put on the throat. I've been up and made one, ma'am, and, by your leave, I'll put it on the poor little fellow. Mary could not speak, but she sighed her grateful assent. It began to smart while they still kept silence, and he looked up to his mother as if seeking courage from her looks to bear the stinging pain. But she was softly crying to see him suffer, and her want of courage reacted upon him, and he began to sob aloud. Instantly, Mrs. Jenkins' apron was up, hiding her face. "'Peep, though, baby,' said she, as merrily as she could. His little face brightened, and his mother having once got the cue, The two women kept the little fellow amused until his plaster had taken effect. "'He's better.
Oh, Mrs. Jenkins, look at his eyes. How different! And he breathes quite softly.' As Mary spoke thus, the doctor entered. He examined his patient. Baby was really better. "'It has been a sharp attack, but the remedies you have applied have been worth Or the paracopeia. An hour later. I shall send a powder, etc., etc. Mrs. Jenkins stayed to hear this opinion, and, her heart wonderfully more easy, was going to leave the room. When Mary seized her hand and kissed it, she could not speak her gratitude. Mrs. Jenkins looked affronted and awkward. and as if she must go upstairs and wash her hands directly. But in spite of these sour looks, she came softly down an hour or so afterwards to see how baby was.
The little gentleman slept well after the fright he had given his friends, and on Christmas morning, when Mary awoke and looked at the sweet little pale face lying on her arm, She could hardly realize the danger he had been in. When she came down, later than usual, she found the household in a commotion. What do you think had happened? Why, Pussy had been a traitor to his best friend, and eaten up some of Mrs. Jenkins' own especial sausages, and gnawed and tumbled the rest so that they were not fit to be eaten. There were no bounds to that cat's appetite. He would have eaten his own father if he had been tender enough. And now Mrs. Jenkins stormed and cried, hang the cat. Christmas Day, too, and all the shops shut.
What was turkey without sausages? gruffly asked Mr. Jenkins. Oh, Jem, whispered Mary. Harken, what a piece of work he's making about sausages. I should like to take Mrs. Jenkins up some of Mother's. They're twice as good as bought sausages. I see no objection, my dear. Sausages do not involve intimacies, else his politics are what I can no ways respect. But, oh, Jem, if you had seen her last night about baby, I'm sure she may scold me forever, and I'll not answer. "'I'd even make her cat welcome to the sausages.' The tears gathered to Mary's eyes as she kissed her boy. "'Better take em upstairs, my dear, and give them to the cat's mistress,' and Jem chuckled at his saying. Mary put them on a plate, but still she loitered.
"'What must I say, Jem? I never know. Say, I hope you'll accept of these sausages.' "'As my mother—no, that's not grammar. Say what comes uppermost, Mary. It will be sure to be right.' So Mary carried them upstairs, and knocked at the door, and when told to come in, she looked very red, but went up to Mrs. Jenkins, saying, "'Please take these.' Mother made them, and was away before an answer could be given. Just as Hodgson was ready to go to church, Mrs. Jenkins came downstairs and called Fanny. In a minute the latter entered the Hodgson's room, and delivered Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins compliments, and they would be particular glad if Mr. and Mrs. Hodgson would eat their dinner with them. "'And carry baby upstairs in a shawl.
Be sure,' added Mrs. Jenkins's voice in the passage, close to the door, whither she had followed her messenger. There was no discussing the matter, with the certainty of every word being overheard. Mary looked anxiously at her husband. She hears saying he did not approve of Mr. Jenkins's politics. "'Do you think it would do for baby?' asked he. "'Oh, yes,' answered she eagerly. "'I would wrap him up so warm, and I've got our room up to sixty-five already, for all it's so frosty,' added the voice outside. "'Now, how do you think they settled the matter? The very best way in the world. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins came down into Hodgson's room and dined there. Turkey at the top, roast beef at the bottom, sausages at one side, Potatoes at the other, second course, plum-pudding at the top, and mince-pies at the bottom.
And after dinner, Mrs. Jenkins would have Baby on her knee, and he seemed quite to take to her. She declared he was admiring the real lace on her cap, but Mary thought, though she did not say so, that he was pleased by her kind looks and coaxing words. Then he was wrapped up and carried carefully upstairs to tea in Mrs. Jenkins' room. And after tea, Mrs. Jenkins and Mary and her husband found out each other's mutual liking for music, and sat singing old Glees and Catchers till I don't know what o'clock without one word of politics or newspapers. Before they parted, Mary had coaxed Pussy on to her knee, for Mrs. Jenkins would not part with Baby, who was sleeping on her lap. "'When you're busy, bring him to me.
Do now. It will be a real favor. I know you must have a deal to do with another coming. Let him come up to me. I'll take the greatest cares of him. Pretty darling, how sweet he looks when he's asleep.' When the couples were once more alone, the husbands unburdened their minds to their wives. Mr. Jenkins said to his, "'Do you know—' Burgess tried to make me believe Hodgson was such a fool as to put paragraphs into the examiner now and then, but I see he knows his place and has got too much sense to do any such thing. Hodgson said, "'Mary, love, I almost fancy from Jenkins' way of speaking, so much civiller than I expected. He guessed I wrote that, pro bono, and the rosebud, at any rate. I've no objection to your naming it.
If the subject should come uppermost, I should like him to know I'm a literary man. Well, I've ended my tale. I hope you don't think it too long, but—' Before I go, just let me say one thing. If any of you have any quarrels, or misunderstandings, or coolness, or cold shoulders, or shynesses, or tiffs, or miffs, or huffs, with any one else, just make friends before Christmas. You will be so much merrier if you do. I ask it of you for the sake of that old angelic song. Heard so many years ago by the shepherds, keeping watch by night on Bethlehem Heights. End of Christmas Storms and Sunshine by Elizabeth Gaskell
-
7 Christmas Trees: A Christmas Circular Letter 4:10
Org by Alan Davis Drake.
The city had withdrawn into itself, and left at last the country to the country, when between whirls of snow not come to lie, and whirls of foliage not yet laid, There drove a stranger to our yard, who looked the city, yet did in country fashion, in that there he sat and waited, till he drew us out, a buttoning coats, to ask him who he was. He proved to be the city come again, to look for something it had left behind, and could not do without and keep its Christmas. He asked if I could sell my Christmas trees, my woods, the young fir balsams, like a place where houses all were churches and have spires. I hadn't thought of them as Christmas trees. I doubt if I was tempted for a moment to sell them off their feet to go in cars and leave the slope behind the house all bare, where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I'd hate to have them know it if I was. Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except as others hold theirs, or refuse for them beyond the time of profitable growth, the trial by market, everything must come to. I dallied so much with the thought of selling. Then, whether from mistaken courtesy and fear of seeming short of speech, Or whether from hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said, "'There aren't enough to be worth while.' I could soon tell how many they would cut. You let me look them over. You could look, but don't expect I'm going to let you have them. Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close that lop each other of boughs. But not a few quite solitary, and having equal bows all round and round.
The latter he nodded yes to, or paused to say beneath some lovelier one, with a buyer's moderation. That would do. I thought so, too, but wasn't there to say so. We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over, and came down on the north. He said, A thousand. A thousand Christmas trees? At what a piece? He felt some need of softening that to me. A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars. Then I was certain I had never meant to let him have them, never show surprise. But thirty dollars seemed so small beside the extent of pasture I should strip. Three cents! For that was all they figured out apiece. Three cents, so small besides the dollar friends I should be writing to within the hour would pay in cities for good trees like those.
Regular vestry trees, whole Sunday schools could hang enough on to pick off enough. A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had. Worth three cents more to give away than to sell. As many be shown by a simple calculation. Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter. I can't help wishing I could send you one, in wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.
-
8 The Conscience Pudding 33:27
The Conscience Pudding by E. Nesbit. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.
Read by Corey Samuel in December, 2007. The Conscience Pudding, from The New Treasure Seekers, by E. Nesbit.
It was Christmas. Nearly a year after mother died. I cannot write about mother, but I will just say one thing. If she had only been away for a little while, and not for always, we shouldn't have been so keen on having a Christmas. I didn't understand this then, but I am much older now, and I think it was just because everything was so different and horrid we felt we must do something, and perhaps we were not particular enough what. Things make you much more unhappy when you loaf about, than when you were doing events.
Father had to go away just about Christmas. He had heard that his wicked partner, who ran away with his money, was in France, and he thought he could catch him, but really he was in Spain, where catching criminals is never practiced. We did not know this till afterwards. Before Father went away, he took Dora and Oswald into his study, and said, I'm awfully sorry I've got to go away. But it is very serious business, and I must go. You'll be good while I'm away, kiddies, won't you?" We promised faithfully. Then he said, "'There are reasons. You wouldn't understand if I tried to tell you, but you can't have much for Christmas this year. But I've told Matilda to make you a good plain pudding. Perhaps next Christmas will be brighter.' It was, for the next Christmas saw us the affluent nephews and nieces of an Indian uncle, but that is quite another story.
As good old Kipling says. When father had been seen off at Lewisham Station with his bags and a plaid rug in a strap, we came home again, and it was horrid. There were papers and things littered all over his room where he had packed. We tidied the room up. It was the only thing we could do for him. It was Dickie who accidentally broke his shaving glass, and H.O. made a paper boat out of a letter we found out afterwards father particularly wanted to keep. This took us some time, and when we went into the nursery, the fire was black out, and we could not get it alight again, even with the whole Daily Chronicle. Matilda, who was our general then, was out, as well as the fire, so we went and sat in a kitchen.
There is always a good fire in kitchens. The kitchen hearthrug was not nice to sit on, so we spread newspapers on it. It was sitting in the kitchen, I think, that brought to our minds my father's parting words. About the pudding, I mean. Oswald said. Father said we couldn't have much for Christmas for secret reasons, and he said he had told Matilda to make us a plain pudding. The plain pudding instantly cast its shadow over the deepening gloom of our young minds. I wonder how plain she'll make it, Dickie said. As plain as plain, you may depend, said Oswald. A here-am-i-where-are-you pudding? That's her sort.
The others groaned, and we gathered closer round the fire till the newspapers rustled madly.
"'I believe I could make a pudding that wasn't plain, if I tried,' Alice said. "'Why shouldn't we?' "'No chink,' said Oswald, with brief sadness. "'How much would it cost?' Noel asked, and added that Dora had twopence and H.O. had a French halfpenny. Dora got the cookery book out of the dresser drawer, where it lay doubled up among clothes pegs, dirty dusters, scallop shells, string, penny novelettes, and the dining room corkscrew. The general we had then, it seemed as if she did all the cooking on the cookery book instead of on the baking board. There were traces of so many bygone meals upon its pages. It doesn't say Christmas pudding at all, said Dora. Try plum, the resourceful Oswald instantly counselled.
Dora turned the greasy pages anxiously. Plum pudding, Five One Eight. A rich with flour, Five One Seven. Christmas, Five One Seven. Cold brandy sauce for, Two Four One. We shouldn't care about that, so it's no use looking. Good without eggs, Five One Eight. Plain, Five One Eight. We don't want that, anyhow. Christmas, Five One Seven, that's the one. It took her a long time to find the page. Oswald got a shovel of coals and made up the fire. It blazed up like the devouring elephant the Daily Telegraph always calls it. Then Dora read, Christmas Plum Pudding, Time Six Hours. To eat it in, said H.O. No silly to make it. Forge ahead, Dora, Dickie replied. Dora went on. Twenty seventy-two. One pound and half of raisins, half a pound of currants, three quarters of a pound of breadcrumbs, half a pound of flour, three quarters of a pound of beef suet, nine eggs, one wine glass full of brandy, half a pound of citron and orange peel, half a nutmeg, and a little ground ginger.
I wonder how little ground ginger? A teacupful would be enough, I think, Alice said. We must not be extravagant. "'We haven't got anything yet to be extravagant with,' said Oswald, who had toothache that day. "'What would you do with the things if you got them?' "'You'd chop the suet as fine as possible. I wonder how fine that is,' replied Dora, and the book together. "'And mix it with the bread-crumbs and flour, add the currants washed and dried.' "'Not starched, then,' said Alice. "'The citron and orange-peel cut into thin slices. I wonder what they call thin.' Matilda's thin bread and butter is quite different from what I mean by it. And the raisins, stoned and divided. How many heaps would you divide them into?
Seven, I suppose, said Alice. One for each person, and one for the pot. I mean pudding. Mix it all well together with the grated nutmeg and ginger. Then stir in nine eggs well beaten, and the brandy. We'll leave that out, I think. And again mix it thoroughly together, that every ingredient may be moistened. Put it into a buttered mould, tie over tightly, and boil for six hours. Serve it ornamented with holly and brandy poured over it.
I should think holly and brandy poured over it would be simply beastly, said Dickie. I expect the book knows. I daresay holly and water would do as well, though. This pudding may be made a month before. It's no use reading about that, though, because we've only got four days to Christmas. "'It's no use reading about any of it,' said Oswald, with thoughtful repeatedness. "'Because we haven't got the things, and we haven't got the coin to get them.' "'We might get the tins somehow,' said Dickie. "'There must be lots of kind people who would subscribe to a Christmas pudding for poor children who hadn't any,' Noel said. "'Well, I'm going skating at Penn's,' said Oswald. "'It's no use thinking about puddings.
We must put up with it plain.' So he went. And Dickie went with him.
When they returned to their home in the evening, the fire had been lighted again in the nursery, and the others were just having tea. We toasted our bread and butter on the bare side, and it gets a little warm among the butter. This is called a French toast. I like English better, but it is more expensive, Alice said. Matilda is in a frightful rage about your putting those coals on a kitchen fire, Oswald. She says we shan't have enough to last over Christmas as it is. And father gave her a talking to before he went about them. Asked her if she ate them, she says, but I don't believe he did. Anyway, she's locked the coal-cellar door, and she's got the key in her pocket. I don't see how we can boil the pudding.
What pudding? said Oswald dreamily. He was thinking of a chap he had seen at Penn's, who had cut the date, 1899, on the ice, with four strokes. The pudding, Alice said. Oh, we've had such a time, Oswald. First Dora and I went to the shops to find out exactly what the pudding would cost. It's only two and elevenpence halfpenny, counting in the holly. It's no good, Oswald repeated. He is very patient, and will say the same thing any number of times. It's no good. You know we've got no tin.
Ah, said Alice. But H.O. and I went out. And we called at some of the houses in Granville Park and Dartmouth Hill, "'And we got a lot of sixpences and shillings, besides pennies, and one old gentleman gave us half a crown. He was so nice, quite bald, with a knitted red-and-blue waistcoat. We've got eight and sevenpence.' Oswald did not feel quite sure Father would like us to go asking for shillings and sixpences, or even half-crowns from strangers, but he did not say so. The money had been asked for, and got, and it couldn't be helped. And perhaps he wanted the pudding. I am not able to remember exactly why he did not speak up and say, This is wrong. But anyway, he didn't. Alice and Dora went out and bought the things next morning.
They bought double quantities, so that it came to five shillings and elevenpence, and was enough to make a noble pudding. There was a lot of holly left over for decorations. We used very little for the sauce. The money that was left we spent very anxiously in other things to eat. Such as dates and figs and toffee. We did not tell Matilda about it. She was a red-haired girl, and apt to turn shirty at the least thing. Concealed under our jackets and overcoats, we carried the parcels up to the nursery, and hid them in the treasure chest we had there. It was the bureau drawer. It was locked up afterwards because the treacle got all over the green baize and the little drawers inside it, while we were waiting to begin to make the pudding.
It was the grocer told us we ought to put treacle in the pudding, and also about not so much ginger as a teacupful. When Matilda had begun to pretend to scrub the floor—she pretended this three times a week, so as to have an excuse not to let us in the kitchen—but I know she used to read novelettes most of the time, because Alice and I had a squint through the window more than once. We barricaded the nursery door and set to work. We were very careful to be quite clean. We washed our hands as well as the currants. I have sometimes thought we did not get all the soap off the currants. The pudding smelt like a washing day when the time came to cut it open, and we washed a corner of the table to chop the suet on.
Chopping suet looks easy till you try. Father's machine he weighs letters with did to weigh out the things. We did this very carefully, in case the grocer had not done so. Everything was right except the raisins. H.O. had carried them home. He was very young then, and there was a hole in the corner of the paper bag, and his mouth was sticky. Lots of people have been hanged to a gibbet in chains on evidence no worse than that, and we told H.O. so till he cried. This was good for him. It was not unkindness to H.O., but part of our duty. Chopping suet as fine as possible is much harder than anyone would think, as I said before. So is crumbling bread, especially if your loaf is new like ours was.
When we had done them, the breadcrumbs and the suet were both very large and lumpy, and of a dingy grey colour, something like pale slate pencil. They looked a better colour when we had mixed them with the flour. The girls had washed the currants with brown Windsor soap and the sponge. Some of the currants got inside the sponge, and kept coming out in the bath for days afterwards. I see now that this was not quite nice. We cut the candied peel as thin as we wish people would cut our bread and butter. We tried to take the stones out of the raisins, but they were too sticky, so we just divided them up in seven lots. Then we mixed the other things in the wash-hand basin from the spare bedroom that was always spare.
We each put in our own lot of raisins, and turned it all into a pudding-basin, and tied it up in one of Alice's pinafores, which was the nearest thing to a proper pudding-cloth we could find, at any rate clean. What was left sticking to the wash-hand basin did not taste so bad. It's a little bit soapy, Alice said, but perhaps that will boil out, like stains in tablecloths.
It was a difficult question how to boil the pudding. Matilda proved furious when asked to let us, just because someone had happened to knock her hat off the scullery door, and Pincher had got it and done for it. However, part of the embassy nicked a saucepan, While the others were being told what Matilda thought about the hat, and we got hot water out of the bathroom and made it boil over our nursery fire. We put the pudding in it. It was now getting on towards the hour of tea, and let it boil. With some exceptions, owing to the fire going down and Matilda not hurrying up with coals, it boiled for an hour and a quarter. Then Matilda came suddenly in and said, "'I'm not going to have you messing about in here with my saucepans.' And she tried to take it off the fire.
You will see that we couldn't stand this. It was not likely. I do not remember who it was that told her to mind her own business, and I think I have forgotten who caught hold of her first to make her chuck it. I'm sure no needless violence was used. Anyway, while the struggle progressed, Alice and Dora took the saucepan away, and put it in a boot cupboard under the stairs, and put the key in their pocket. This sharp encounter made everyone very hot and cross. We got over it before Matilda did, but we brought her round before bedtime. Quarrel should always be made up before bedtime. It says so in the Bible. If this simple rule was followed, there would not be so many wars and martyrs and lawsuits and inquisitions and bloody deaths at the stake.
All the house was still. The gas was out all over the house, except on the first landing, when several darkly shrouded figures might have been observed creeping downstairs to the kitchen. On the way, with superior precaution, we got out our saucepan. The kitchen fire was red, but low. The coal-cellar was locked, and there was nothing in the scuttle but a little coal-dust, and the piece of brown paper that is put in to keep the coals from tumbling out through the bottom where the hole is. We put the saucepan on the fire and plied it with fuel. Two chronicles, a telegraph, and two family herald novelettes were burned in vain. I am almost sure the pudding did not boil at all that night. Never mind, Alice said.
We can each nick a piece of coal every time we go into the kitchen tomorrow. This daring scheme was faithfully performed, and by night we had nearly half a waste-paper basket of coal, coke, and cinders, and in the depth of night once more we might have been observed, this time with our collier-like waste-paper basket in our guarded hands. There was more fire left in the grate that night, and we fed it with the fuel we had collected. This time the fire blazed up, and the pudding boiled like mad. This was the time it boiled two hours—at least I think it was about that—but we dropped to sleep on the kitchen tables and dresser. You dare not be lowly in the night in the kitchen because of the beetles.
We were aroused by a horrible smell. It was the pudding-cloth burning. All the water had secretly boiled itself away. We filled it up at once with cold, and the saucepan cracked. So we cleaned it, and put it back on the shelf, and took another, and went to bed. You see what a lot of trouble we had over the pudding. Every evening till Christmas, which had now become only the day after tomorrow, we sneaked down in the inky midnight, and boiled that pudding for as long as it would. On Christmas morning we chopped the holly for the sauce. But we put hot water instead of brandy, and moist sugar. Some of them said it was not so bad. Oswald was not one of these. Then came the moment when the plain pudding Father had ordered smoked upon the board.
Matilda brought it in, and went away at once. She had a cousin out of Woolwich Arsenal to see her that day, I remember. Those far-off days are quite distinct in memory's recollection still. Then we got out our own pudding from its hiding-place, and gave it one last hurried boil, only seven minutes, because of the general impatience which Oswald and Dora could not cope with. We had found means to secrete a dish, and we now tried to dish the pudding up, but it stuck to the basin and had to be dislodged with a chisel. The pudding was horribly pale. We poured the holly sauce over it, and Dora took up the knife, and was just cutting it, when a few simple words from H.O., Turned us from happy and triumphing cookery artists to persons in despair.
He said, How pleased all those kind ladies and gentlemen would be if they knew we were the poor children they gave the shillings and sixpences and things for. We all said, What? It was no moment for politeness. I say, H.O. said, They'd be glad if they knew it was us was enjoying the pudding, and not dirty little really poor children. "'You should say you were, not you was,' said Dora, but it was as in a dream, and only from habit. "'Do you mean to say,' Oswald spoke firmly, yet not angrily, "'that you and Alice went and begged for money for poor children, "'and then kept it?' "'We didn't keep it,' said H.O. "'We spent it.' "'We've kept the things, you little duffer. said Dickie, looking at the pudding sitting alone and uncared for on its dish.
You begged for money for poor children, and then kept it. It's stealing, that's what it is. I don't say so much about you. You're only a silly kid, but Alice knew better. Why did you do it? He turned to Alice, but she was now too deep in tears to get a word out. H.O. looked a bit frightened, but he answered the question. We have taught him this. He said— I thought they'd give us more if I said poor children than if I said just us. That's cheating, said Dickie. Downright beastly mean low cheating. I'm not, said H.O., and you're another. Then he began to cry too. I do not know how the others felt, but I understand from Oswald that he felt that now the honor of the House of Bastable had been stamped on in the dust, and it didn't matter what happened.
He looked at the beastly holly that had been left over from the source, and was stuck up over the pictures. It now appeared hollow and disgusting, though it had got quite a lot of berries, and some of it was the varied kind, green and white. The figs, and dates, and toffee were set out in a doll's dinner service. The very sight of it all made Oswald blush sickly. He owns he would have liked to cuff H.O., and, if he did for a moment wish to shake Alice, The author, for one, can make allowances. Now Alice choked and spluttered, and wiped her eyes fiercely, and said, "'It's no use ragging H.O. It's my fault. I'm older than he is.' H.O. said, "'It couldn't be Alice's fault. I don't see as it was wrong.' "'That, not as,' murmured Dora, putting her arm round the sinner who had brought this degrading blight upon our family tree.
But such is girl's undetermined and affectionate silliness. Tells us all about it, H.O. dear. Why couldn't it be Alice's fault?
H.O. cuddled up to Dora, and said snufflingly in his nose, "'Because she hadn't got nothing to do with it. I collected it all. She never went into one of the houses. She didn't want to.' "'And then took all the credit of getting the money,' said Dickie savagely. Oswald said, "'Not much credit.' In scornful tones. "'Oh, you are beastly, the whole lot of you, except Dora,' Alice said, stamping her foot in rage and despair. "'I tore my frock on a nail going out, and I didn't want to go back, and I got H.O. to go to the houses alone, and I waited for him outside. And I asked him not to say anything, because I didn't want Dora to know about the frock. It's my best. And I don't know what he said inside.
He never told me.' But I'll bet anything he didn't mean to cheat. You said lots of kind people would be ready to give money to get pudding for poor children, so I asked them to. Oswald, with his strong right hand, waved a wave of passing things over. We'll talk about that another time, he said. Just now, we've got weightier things to deal with. He pointed to the pudding, which had grown cold during the conversation to which I have alluded. H.O. stopped crying, but Alice went on with it. Oswald now said, "'We're a base and outcast family. Until that pudding's out of the house, we shan't be able to look anyone in the face. We must see that that pudding goes to poor children—not grizzling, grumpy, whiny-piny, pretending poor children, but real poor ones, just as poor as they can stick.' "'And the figs, too—and the dates,' said Noel, with regretting tones.
Every fig, said Dickie sternly. Oswald is quite right. This honorable resolution made us feel a bit better. We hastily put on our best things, and washed ourselves a bit, and hurried out to find some really poor people to give the pudding to. We cut it in slices ready, and put it in a basket with the figs and dates and toffee. We would not let H.O. come with us at first because he wanted to, and Alice would not come because of him, so at last we had to let him. The excitement of tearing into your best things heals the hurt that wounded honour feels, as the poetry writer said, or at any rate it makes the hurt feel better. We went out into the streets. They were pretty quiet. Nearly everybody was eating its Christmas dessert.
But presently we met a woman in an apron. Oswald said very politely, "'Please, are you a poor person?' And she told us to get along with us. The next we met was a shabby man with a hole in his left boot. Again Oswald said, "'Please, are you a poor person, and have you any poor little children?' The man told us not to come any of our games with him, or we should laugh on the wrong side of our faces. We went on, sadly. We had no heart to stop and explain to him that we had no games to come. The next was a young man near the obelisk. Dora tried this time. She said—' "'Oh, if you please, we've got some Christmas pudding in this basket, and if you're a poor person you can have some.' "'Poor as job,' said the young man, in a hoarse voice, and he had to come up out of a red comforter to say it.
We gave him a slice of the pudding, and he bit into it without thanks or delay. The next minute he had thrown the pudding slap in Dora's face, and was clutching Dickie by the collar. "'Blimey, if I don't chuck ye in the river, the whole blooming lot of you.' He exclaimed. The girls screamed, the boys shouted, and though Oswald threw himself on the insulter of his sister with all his manly vigor, yet but for a friend of Oswald's, who was in the police, passing at that instant, the author shudders to think what might have happened, for he was a strong young man, and Oswald is not yet come to his full strength, and the craggy runs all too near. Our policeman led our assailant aside, and we waited anxiously as he told us to.
After long, uncertain moments, the young man in the comforter loafed off, grumbling, and our policeman turned to us. "'Said you give him a dollop of pudding, and a tasted of soap and hair oil.' I suppose the hair oil must have been the brown wintzeriness of the soap coming out. We were sorry, but it was still our duty to get rid of the pudding. The quaggy was handy, it is true, but when you have collected money to feed poor children, and spent it on pudding, It is not right to throw that pudding in the river. People do not subscribe shillings and sixpences and half-crowns to feed a hungry flood with Christmas pudding. Yet we shrank from asking any more people whether they were poor persons or about their families, and still more from offering the pudding to chance people who might bite into it and taste the soap before we had time to get away.
It was Alice, the most paralyzed with disgrace of all of us, who thought of the best idea. She said, "'Let's take it to the workhouse. At any rate, they're all poor there, and they mayn't go out without leave, so they can't run after us to do anything to us after the pudding. No one would give them leave to go out to pursue people who have brought them pudding, and wreak vengeance on them, and at any rate we shall get rid of the conscience pudding. It's a sort of conscience money, you know, only it isn't money but pudding. The workhouse is a good way, but we stuck to it, though very cold. And hungrier than we thought possible when we started, for we had been so agitated we had not even stayed to eat the plain pudding our good father had so kindly and thoughtfully ordered for our Christmas dinner.
The big bell at the workhouse made a man open the door to us when we rang it. Oswald said, and he spoke because he is next eldest to Dora, and she had had jolly well enough of saying anything about pudding. He said, Please, we've brought some pudding for the poor people. He looked us up and down, and he looked at our basket. Then he said, "'You'd better see the matron.' We waited in a hall, feeling more and more uncomfy, and less and less like Christmas. We were very cold indeed, especially our hands and our noses, and we felt less and less able to face the matron if she was horrid, and one of us at least wished we had chosen the quaggy for the pudding's long home, and made it up to the robbed poor in some other way afterwards.
Just as Alice was saying earnestly, in the burning cold ear of Oswald, "'Let's put down the basket and make a bolt for it. Oh, Oswald, let's!' A lady came along the passage. She was very upright, and she had eyes that went through you like blue gimlets. I should not like to be obliged to thwart that lady if she had any design, and mine was opposite. I'm glad this is not likely to occur. She said, "'What's all this about a pudding?' H.O. said at once, before we could stop him, "'They say I've stolen the pudding, so we've brought it here for the poor people.' "'No, we didn't. That wasn't why. The money was given. It was meant for the poor. Shut up, H.O.' said the rest of us all at once. Then there was an awful silence.
The lady gimleted us again one by one with her blue eyes. Then she said, "'Come into my room. You all look frozen.' She took us into a very jolly room with velvet curtains and a big fire, and the gas lighted, because now it was almost dark, even out of doors. She gave us chairs, and Oswald felt as if his was a dock. He felt so criminal, and the lady looked so judgular. Then she took the armchair by the fire herself, and said, "'Who's the eldest?' "'I am,' said Dora, looking more like a frightened white rabbit than I've ever seen her. Then tell me all about it. Dora looked at Alice, and began to cry. That slab of pudding in the face had totally unnerved the gentle girl. Alice's eyes were red, and her face was puffy with crying, but she spoke up for Dora, and said, "'Oh, please let Oswald tell.
Dora can't. She's tired with the long walk. And a young man threw a piece of it in her face, and—' The lady nodded, and Oswald began. He told the story from the very beginning. As he has always been taught to, though he hated to lay bare the family honor's wound before a stranger, however judge-like and gimlet-eyed. He told all, not concealing the pudding-throwing, nor what the young man had said about soap. "'So,' he ended, "'we want to give the conscience pudding to you. It's like conscience money. You know what that is, don't you? But if you really think it is soapy, and not just the young man's horridness, perhaps you'd better not let them eat it.' But the figs and things were all right.
When he had done, the lady said, for most of us were crying, more or less. Come, cheer up. It's Christmas time, and he's very little, your brother, I mean. And I think the rest of you seem pretty well able to take care of the honor of the family. I'll take the conscience pudding off your minds. Where are you going now? Home, I suppose, Oswald said. And he thought how nasty and dark and dull it would be. The fire out, most likely, and farther away. "'And your father's not at home, you say?' The blue gimlet lady went on. "'What do you say to having tea with me, and then seeing the entertainment we have got up for our old people?' Then the lady smiled, and the blue gimlets looked quite merry. The room was so warm and comfortable, and the invitation was the last thing we expected.
It was jolly of her, I do think. No one thought quite at first of saying how pleased we should be to accept her kind invitation. Instead, we all just said, Oh! But in a tone which must have told her we meant, Yes, please, very deeply. Oswald, this has more than once happened, was the first to restore his manners. He made a proper bow like he has been taught, and said, Thank you very much. We should like it very much. It is very much nicer than going home. Thank you very much. I need not tell the reader that Oswald could have made up a much better speech if he had had more time to make it up in, or if he had not been so filled with mixed flusteredness and purification by the shameful events of the day.
We washed our faces and hands, and had a first-rate muffin and crumpet tea, with slices of cold meats, and many nice jams and cakes. A lot of other people were there, most of them people who were giving the entertainment to the aged poor. After tea it was the entertainment. Songs, and conjuring, and a play called Box and Cox, very amusing, and a lot of throwing things about in it, Bacon, and Chops and Things, and Nigger Minstrels. We clapped till our hands were sore. When it was over we said good-bye. In between the songs and things Oswald had had time to make up a speech of thanks to the lady. He said, We all thank you heartily for your goodness. The entertainment was beautiful. We shall never forget your kindness and hospitableness.
The lady laughed, and said she had been very pleased to have us. A fat gentleman said, "'And your teas? I hope you enjoyed those, eh?' Oswald had not had time to make up an answer to that, so he answered straight from the heart, and said, "'Rather!' And everyone laughed, and slapped us boys on the back, and kissed the girls, and the gentleman who played the bones in The Nigger Minstrel saw us home. We ate the cold pudding that night, and H.O. dreamed that something came to eat him like it advises you to in the advertisements on the hoardings. The grown-up said it was the pudding, but I don't think it could have been that, because, as I have said more than once, it was so very plain. Some of H.O.'s brothers and sisters thought it was a judgment on him for pretending about who the poor children were he was collecting the money for.
Oswald does not believe such a little boy as H.O. would have a real judgment made just for him and nobody else, whatever he did. But it certainly is odd. H.O. was the only one who had bad dreams, and he was also the only one who got any of the things we bought with that ill-gotten money, because, you remember, He picked a hole in the raisin paper as he was bringing the parcel home. The rest of us had nothing, unless you count the scrapings of the pudding basin, and those don't really count at all.
End of the Conscience Pudding by E. Nesbit.
-
9 A Cornish Christmas Play 5:45
A Cornish Mummer's Play. Room, a room, brave gallants, room! Within this court, I do resort to show some sport and pastime. Gentlemen and ladies! In the Christmas time.
After this note of preparation, Old Father Christmas capers into the room, saying, Ho, ho, ho! Here comes I, Old Father Christmas. Welcome or welcome not, I hope Old Father Christmas will never be forgot. Ho, ho, ho, ho!
I was born in a rocky country where there was no wood to make me a cradle. I was rocked in a stouring bowl, which made me round-shouldered then, and I'm round-shouldered still.
He then frisks about the room until he thinks he has sufficiently amused the spectators when he makes his exit with this speech. Who went to the orchard to steal apples to make gooseberry pies against Christmas? Not me!
Enter Turkish Knight.
Here comes I, a Turkish knight. Come from the Turkish land to fight. And if St. George do meet me here, I'll try his courage without fear.
Here comes I, St. George, that worthy champion bold, and with my sword and spear I won three crowns of gold. I fought the dragon bold, and brought him to the slaughter. Surely not. By that I won fair Sabre. The king of Egypt's daughter.
St. George, I pray, be not too bold. If thy blood is hot, I'll soon make it cold. Thou Turkish knight, I pray forbear, I'll make thee dread my sword and spear.
They fight until the Turkish knight falls. I have a little bottle which goes by the name of Ailey-Compayne. If the man is alive, let him rise and fight again. The knight here rises on one knee and endeavours to continue the fight, but is again struck down. Oh, pardon me, St. George. Oh, pardon me, I crave. Oh, pardon me this once, and I will be thy slave. I'll never pardon a Turkish knight, therefore arise and try thy might.
The knight gets up, and they again fight, till the knight receives a heavy blow and then drops on the ground as dead.
Is there a doctor to be found to cure a deep and deadly wound? Aye, yes, there is a doctor to be found to cure a deep and deadly wound. What can you cure? I can cure the itch, the palsy and gout. If the devil's in him, I'll pull him out.
The doctor here performs the cure with sundry grimaces, and St. George and Knight again fight when the latter is knocked down and left for dead.
Then another performer enters, and on seeing the dead body says, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if Uncle Tom Pearce won't have him, Aunt Molly must. Here comes I, old, old squire, as black as any friar. As ragged as a colt, to leave fine clothes for malt. Here comes I, old hub-hub-hub-hub. Upon my shoulders I carried a club, and in my hand a frying pan. So am not I, a valiant man? Here comes I, great head and little wit. Put your hand in your pocket, and give what you think fit. Gentlemen and ladies, sitting down at your ease, put your hand in your pockets. Give me what you please.
Gentlemen and ladies, the sport is almost ended. Come, pay to the box. It is highly commended. The box it would speak if it had but a tongue. Come, throw in your money and think it no wrong.
The End of A Cornish Mama's Play
-
10 the_gift_of_the_magi_henry_pb.mp3 13:58
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry.
One dollar and eighty-seven cents, that was all, and sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher, Until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it, which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home.
A furnished flat at eight dollars per week. It did not beg her description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name, Mrs. James Dillingham Young. The Dillingham had been flung into the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now when the income was shrunk to $20, though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D, But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above—he was called Jim and greatly hugged by Mrs.
James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. She's all very good. Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with a powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey back yard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only one dollar and eighty-seven cents with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always were. Only a dollar and eighty-seven cents to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him, something fine and rare and sterling, something just a bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an eight-dollar flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of Longitudinal strips. Obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art. Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs, in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch, that had been his father's and his grandfather's.
The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air-shaft, Della would have let her hair hang down the window some day to dry, just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been a janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy. So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again, nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket. On went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street. Where she stopped, the sign read, Madame Sofroni, Hair-goods of all kinds. One flight up Deloran and collected herself panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the soffroni. "'Will you buy my hair?' asked Della. "'I'll buy your hair,' said Madame. "'Take your hat off, and let's have a sight at the looks of it.' Down rippled the brown cascade. "'Twenty dollars,' said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand. "'Give it to me quick,' said Della. Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.
Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present. She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores. She had turned them all inside out. It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone, and not by Meritricula's ornamentation. As all good things should do, it was even worthy of the watch. As soon as she saw it, she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value, the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the eighty-seven cents. With that chain on his watch, Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company.
Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. When Della reached home, her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons, and lighted the gas, and went to work repairing the ravages. Made by generosity, added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends, a mammoth task. Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, long, carefully and critically. If Jim doesn't kill me, she said to herself, before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl.
But what could I do? Oh, what could I do with A dollar and eighty-seven cents. At seven o'clock the coffee was made, and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove, hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob-chain in her hand and sat in the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair, away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered, "'Please, God, make him think I am still pretty.' The door opened, and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two, and to be burdened with a family.
He needed a new overcoat, and he was without gloves. Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter, at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed on Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her, fixedly, with that peculiar expression on his face. Della wriggled off the table and went for him. "'Jim, darling,' she cried, "'don't look at me that way.' I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again. You won't mind, will you?
I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say Merry Christmas, Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice, what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you.
You've cut your hair, asked Jim laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact. Yet even after the hardest mental labour. "'Cut it off and sold it,' said Della. "'Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?' Jim looked about the room curiously. "'You say your hair is gone?' he said, with an air almost of idiocy. "'You needn't look for it,' said Della. "'It's sold. I tell you, sold and gone, too.' It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered. She went on with sudden serious sweetness. But nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on Jim?
Out of his trance, Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds, let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year, what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on. Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. Don't make any mistake, Del, he said. About me? I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package, you may see why you had me going a while at first.
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper, and then an ecstatic scream of joy, and then, alas, A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the Lord of the flat. For there lay the Combs. The set of Combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in the Broadway window. Beautiful Combs, pure tortoise-shell with jewelled rims, just the shade to wear in her beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned for them without the least hope of possession, and now they were hers. But the tresses that should have adorned the covered adornments were gone.
She hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and smile and say, "'My hair grows fast, Jim.' And then Della leaped up like a singed cat and cried, Oh, oh! Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him, eagerly upon her open palm. The dull, precious metal seemed to flash with the reflection of her bright and ardent spirit. Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over time to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on. Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled. "'Dell,' said he, "'let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them a while.
They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy you combs, and now suppose you put the chops on.' The Magi, as you know, were wise men, wonderfully wise men, who brought gifts to the babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said, That of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest, everywhere they are wisest.
They are the Magi.
The End
-
11 God Bless Us Every One 1:47
God bless us every one.
God bless us every one, prayed Tiny Tim. Crippled and dwarfed of body, Yet so tall of soul, we tiptoe earth to look on him, high-towering over all. He loved the loveless world, nor dreamed, indeed, that it, at best, could give to him the while, but pitying glances, when his only need was but a cheery smile.
And thus he prayed, God bless us, every one. Enfolding all the creeds within the span of his child heart, and so, despising none, was nearer saint than man. I like to fancy God in paradise, lifting a finger o'er the rhythmic swing of chiming harp and song, with eager eyes turned earthward, listening. The anthem stilled, The angels leaning there above the golden walls, the morning sun of Christmas bursting flower-like with the prayer, God bless us, every one.
End of God bless us, every one by James Whitcomb Riley.
-
12 Hang Up the Baby's Stocking 1:52
Hang up the baby's stocking. Hang up the baby's stocking. Be sure you don't forget. The dear little dimpled darling, She ne'er saw Christmas yet, but I've told her all about it, and she opened her big blue eyes, and I'm sure she understood it. She looked so funny and wise. Dear, what a tiny stocking. It doesn't take much to hold such little pink toes as babies away from the frost and cold, but then for the baby's Christmas it will never do at all. Why, Santa wouldn't be looking for anything half so small. I know what will do for the baby. I've thought of the very best plan. I'll borrow a stocking of Grandma the longest that ever I can, and you'll hang it by mine, dear Mother, right here in the corner, so, and write a letter to Santa, and fasten it on to the toe.
Right, this is the baby's stocking that hangs in the corner here. You never have seen her, Santa, for she only came this year. But she's just the blessedest baby. And now, before you go, just cram her stocking with goodies from the top clean down to the toe. End of Hang Up the Baby's Stocking by Emily Huntington Miller
-
13 Hodoo McFiggin's Christmas 6:22
Hoodoo McFiggins' Christmas.
Hoodoo McFiggins Christmas. This Santa Claus business is played out. It's a sneaking, underhand method, and the sooner it's exposed, the better. For a parent to get up under cover of the darkness of night and palm off a ten-cent necktie on a boy who had been expecting a ten-dollar watch, and then say that an angel sent it to him is low, undeniably low. I had a good opportunity of observing how the thing worked this Christmas in the case of a young Hoodoo McFiggin, the son and heir of the McFiggins at whose house I bored. Hoodoo McFiggin is a good boy. A religious boy. He had been given to understand that Santa Claus would bring nothing to his father and mother because grown-up people don't get presents from the angels.
So he saved up all his pocket money, and bought a box of cigars for his father and a seventy-five-cent diamond brooch for his mother. His own fortunes he left in the hands of the angels. But he prayed. He prayed every night for weeks that Santa Claus would bring him a pair of skates, and a puppy dog, and an air gun, and a bicycle, and a Noah's Ark, and a sleigh, and a drum, altogether about a hundred and fifty dollars worth of stuff. I went into Hoodoo's room quite early Christmas morning. I had an idea that the scene would be interesting. I woke him up, and he sat up in bed, his eye glistening with radiant expectation, and began hauling things out of his stocking. The first parcel was bulky.
It was done up quite loosely, and had an odd look generally. Ha! Ha! Hoodoo cried gleefully as he began undoing it. I'll bet it's the puppy dog, all wrapped up in paper. And was it the puppy dog? No, by no means. It was a pair of nice, strong number-four boots, laces and all labeled Hoodoo from Santa Claus, and underneath Ninety-Five Net. The boy's jaw fell with delight. It's Boots, he said, and plunged his hand in again. He began hauling away at another parcel with renewed hope on his face. This time the thing seemed like a little round box. Hoodoo tore the paper off it with a fervorous hand. He shook it. Something rattled inside. It's a watch and chain! It's a watch and chain! he shouted. Then he pulled the lid off.
And was it a watch and chain? No. It was a box of nice, brand-new celluloid collars, a dozen of them all alike and all his own size. The boy was so pleased that you could see his face crack up with pleasure. He waited a few minutes until his intense joy subsided. Then he tried again. This time the packet was long and hard. It resisted the touch and had a sort of funnel shape. "'It's a toy pistol,' said the boy, trembling with excitement. "'Gee, I hope there are lots of caps with it. I'll fire some off now and wake up father.' "'No, my poor child, you will not wake your father with that.' It is a useful thing, but it needs not caps, and it fires no bullets, and you cannot wake a sleeping man with a toothbrush.
Yes, it was a toothbrush. Regular beauty, pure bone all through, and ticketed with a little paper, Hoodoo, from Santa Claus. Again, the expression of intense joy passed over the boy's face, and the tears of gratitude started from his eye. He wiped them away with his toothbrush and passed on. The next packet was much larger, and evidently contained something soft and bulky. It had been too long to go into the stocking, and was tied outside. I wonder what this is, Hoodoo mused, half afraid to open it. Then his heart gave a great leap, and he forgot all his other presents in the anticipation of this one. It's a drum all wrapped up. Drum nothing. It was pants. A pair of the nicest little short pant.
Yellowish-brown short pants, with dear little stripes of color running across both ways, and here again Santa Claus had written, Hoodoo, from Santa Claus, One Fortnet. But there was something wrapped up in it. Oh, yes, there was a pair of braces wrapped up in it. Braces with a little steel sliding thing, so that you could slide your pants up to your neck if you wanted to. The boy gave a dry sob of satisfaction. Then he took out his last present. It's a book, he said, as he unwrapped it. I wonder if it is fairy stories or adventures. Oh, I hope it's adventure. I'll read it all morning. No, Hoodoo. It was not precisely adventures. It was a small family Bible. Hoodoo had now seen all his presents, and he arose and dressed.
But he still had the fun of playing with his toys. That is always the chief delight of Christmas morning. First he played with his toothbrush. He got a whole lot of water and brushed all his teeth with it. This was huge. Then he played with his collars. He had no end of fun with them, taking them all out one by one and swearing at them, and then putting them back and swearing at the whole lot together. The next toy was his pants. He had immense fun there, putting them on and taking them off again, and then trying to guess which side was which by merely looking at them. After that, he took his book and read some adventures called Genesis till breakfast-time. Then he went downstairs and kissed his father and mother.
His father was smoking a cigar, and his mother had her new brooch on. Hoodoo's face was thoughtful, and a light seemed to have broken in upon his mind. Indeed, I think it altogether likely that next Christmas he will hang on to his own money, and take chances on what the angels bring. End of Hoodoo McFiggins Christmas by Stephen Leacock
-
14 Karma 1:11
Karma by Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Christmas was in the air, and all was well with him, but for a few confusing flaws in divers of God's images, because a friend of his would neither buy nor sell. Was he to answer for the axe that fell? He pondered. And the reason for it was, partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus upon the corner, with his beard and bell. Acknowledging an improvident surprise, he magnified a fancy that he wished the friend whom he had wrecked were here again. Not sure of that, he found a compromise, and from the fullness of his heart he fished a dime for Jesus, who had died for men.
-
15 The Little Match Girl 7:01
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen.
It was terribly cold and nearly dark on the last evening of the old year, and the snow was falling fast. In the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl, with bare head and naked feet, roamed through the streets. It is true she had on a pair of slippers when she left home, but they were not of much use. They were very large, so large, indeed, that they had belonged to her mother, and the poor little creature had lost them in running across the street to avoid two carriages, that were rolling along at a terrible rate. One of the slippers she could not find, and a boy seized upon the other and ran away with it, saying that he could use it as a cradle when he had children of his own. So the little girl went on, with her little naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold.
In an old apron she carried a number of matches, and had a bundle of them in her hands. No one had bought anything of her the whole day, nor had anyone given her even a penny. Shivering with the cold and hunger, she crept along. Poor little child. She looked the picture of misery. The snowflakes fell on her long, fair hair, which hung in curls on her shoulders, but she regarded them not. Lights were shining from every window. and there was a savory smell of roast goose, for it was New Year's Eve—yes, she remembered that—in a corner between two houses, one of which projected beyond the other. She sank down and huddled herself together. She had drawn her little feet under her, but she could not keep off the cold, and she dared not go home, for she had sold no matches and could not take home even a penny of money.
Her father would certainly beat her. Besides, it was almost as cold at home as here, for they had only a roof to cover them, through which the wind howled, although the largest holes had been stopped up with straw and rags. Her little hands were almost frozen with the cold. Ah, perhaps a burning match might be some good. If she could draw it from the bundle, and strike it against the wall, just to warm her fingers. She drew out one. Scratch! How it sputtered as it burnt. It gave a warm, bright light, like a little candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really a wonderful light. It seemed to the little girl that she was sitting by a large iron stove, with polished brass feet and a brass ornament.
How the fire burned, and seemed so beautifully warm that the child stretched out her feet as if to warm them. When, lo, the flame of the match went out, the stove vanished, and she had only the remains of the half-burnt match in her hand. She rubbed another match on the wall. It burst into a flame, and where its light fell upon the wall it became as transparent as a veil. As she could see into the room, The table was covered with a snowy white tablecloth, on which stood a splendid dinner service, and a steaming roast goose stuffed with apples and dried plums. And what was still more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled across the floor, with a knife and fork in its breast, to the little girl.
Then the match went out, and there remained nothing but the thick, damp, cold wall before her. She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas tree. It was larger and more beautifully decorated than the one she had seen through the glass door at the rich merchants. Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the show windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out. The Christmas lights rose higher and higher till they looked to her like the stars in the sky. Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. Someone is dying, thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.
She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her, In the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. "'Grandmother,' cried the little one, "'oh, take me with you. I know you will go away when the match burns out. You will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas tree.' And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noonday, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.
In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one. With pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall. She had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year, and the New Year's sun rose and shone upon a little corpse. The child still sat in the stiffness of death, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt. She tried to warm herself, said some. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother on New Year's Day.
Read by Don Good, Don Good V.O.com. End of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen.
-
16 Little tree 1:34
Little Tree, Little Silent Christmas Tree, You are so little, You are more like a flower. Who found you in the green forest, And were you very sorry to come away? See, I will comfort you, Because you smell so sweetly, I will kiss your cool bark and hug you safe and tight, just as your mother would. Only don't be afraid. Look, the Spangles that sleep all the year in a dark box, dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine—the balls, the chains, red and gold, the fluffy threads. Put up your little arms, and I'll give them all to you to hold. Every finger shall have its ring. And there won't be a single place dark or unhappy. Then, when you're quite dressed, you'll stand in the window for everyone to see, and how they'll stare.
Oh, but you'll be very proud, and my little sister and I will take hands, and looking up at our beautiful tree, we'll dance and sing Noel, Noel.
-
17 The Magi 0:59
The Magi by William Butler Yeats.
Now, as at all times, I can see in the mind's eye, in their stiff-painted clothes, the pale, unsatisfied ones appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky, with all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones. And all their helms of silver hovering side by side, and all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied. The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
-
18 Mrs. Santa Claus 5:59
Mrs. Santa Claus. It was Christmas Eve. Old Santa Claus was just ready to start out upon his long journey over the snowy tree-tops and roofs to find the waiting chimneys and the little empty stockings. Such a busy day as it had been, with the Brownies finishing the packing and Mrs. Santa Claus sewing buttons on the last doll's dress and tying the last hair ribbon and smoothing the last curl. But everything was ready. The sleigh was packed from top to bottom, so full that it seemed as if old Santa Claus could never squeeze in himself. There were tops, and drums, and jack-in-the-boxes, and steam-engines, and hundreds of dolls, and barrels of chocolate drops, and peppermint canes were hanging out from the back.
The reindeer were harnessed and prancing, Dasher and Dancer, and Donner and Vixen, and the rest. The sleigh-bells were ringing gaily, and old Santa Claus jumped in and took the reins. "'Good-bye, mother,' he called to Mrs. Santa Claus, who stood in the door to watch the sleigh start. Anything I can bring you from the city, dear?" "'I think I need a new pair of spectacles,' said Mrs. Santa Claus. "'My eyes are growing dim with so much sewing. If the stores are open when you finish to-night, just bring me a stronger pair of glasses.' "'I will. Good-bye!' shouted Santa Claus. With a dash and a jingle of bells, the reindeer jumped to the top of the trees and started, and Mrs. Santa Claus went in to sit in her rocking-chair by the fire and doze.
The workshop was very still. Christmas Eve, you know, is the only time of the whole year when Santa Claus's workmen may rest, so the little brownies who paint the sleds and nail the dollhouses and test the steamboats were curled up in heaps on all the benches, fast asleep and snoring. The candy-kettles were polished and hung in a row upon the kitchen wall. Mrs. Santa Claus sat and rocked by the fire and thought of all the dolls she had dressed. "'There were four hundred with silk dresses,' she said to herself, "'and two hundred with blue. There were five hundred baby dolls, and I never finished dressing them until to-day. I wonder if Santa packed them all. I must go and see.' So Mrs. Santa Claus lighted a candle and went out to the sewing-room, and peered about in every corner.
There were piles of silk and velvet and satin and ribbon all over the floor, but—oh, there sat three dolls—a baby doll, a doll in pink. and a doll in blue. Santa Claus had forgotten them. "'What shall I do? What shall I do?' cried Mrs. Santa Claus, looking out of the window to see if Santa were anywhere in sight. But he was not. "'We counted them all, and there were just enough to go around. Three little girls will have no dolls on Christmas morning. I shall have to go with them myself.' Out in the barn there was just one reindeer standing in his stall. It was Blitzen, who had a lame foot, So he could not take the long journey with the others. He was contentedly munching hay, but Mrs. Santa Claus tucked the dolls under her arm, put on her little red shawl, tied her cap-strings tighter, and hurried out to the barn.
"'Come, Blitzen,' she said, as she saddled him and jumped on his back. "'We must go as fast as ever we can after Santa Claus. He has left three dolls behind.' So Blitzen dropped his hay, and they started. Over the woods and the fields and the fences they dashed, so fast that the wind was left far behind. They looked very funny indeed, for Mrs. Santa Claus had forgotten to take off her apron, and her cap was all awry, but on they hurried. And when they came to the towns, Blitzen stopped at every roof, that Mrs. Santa Claus might look down the chimney. But Santa Claus had always been there first, and the stockings were filled, and the dolls were waiting.
"'We counted them all,' Mrs. Santa Claus kept saying to herself. "'Some one will need a doll.' And sure enough she came to a very wee chimney of a very wee house, and there was a stocking hung, but there was only an apple in it, nothing else. So Mrs. Santa Claus dropped the beautiful doll that was dressed in pink silk into the stocking, and started on once more. Presently they came to another house, and when Mrs. Santa Claus looked down the chimney she saw no stocking at all hanging by the fireplace, and there was no fire even. There was nothing in the room but a table and a broken chair and a bed where a little girl, so thin and pale, lay sleeping, and Mrs. Santa Claus dropped the doll in the blue silk dress right down into the little girl's arms and hurried on again.
When they had come to the very end of the town, Mrs. Santa Claus saw a little girl standing out in the street. She had a bundle of papers to sell, and no one had seen her because she was so small, and she was waiting out in the cold and the snow. Mrs. Santa Claus dropped the baby doll down to the little girl's lap, and then she turned Blitzen toward home again. It was almost Christmas morning when they reached the barn, and—oh, they were very tired. When Santa Claus came back with his empty sleigh and the new spectacles, he found Mrs. Santa Claus fast asleep in her rocking-chair by the fire. "'Poor mother,' he said, "'she's been sewing too much.' And Mrs. Santa Claus woke up. But she never told—about the three dolls."
End of Mrs. Santa Claus by Carolyn S. Bailey. Read by Kara Schallenberg on December 6, 2007. In Oceanside, California.
-
19 Mr. Bluffs' Experiences of Holidays 16:01
Mr. Bluff's Experiences of Holidays.
Mr.
Bluff's Experiences of Holidays.
I hate holidays. said Bachelor Bluff to me, with some little irritation on a Christmas a few years ago. Then he paused an instant, after which he resumed. I don't mean to say that I hate to see people enjoying themselves, but I hate holidays, nevertheless, because to me they are always the saddest and dreariest days of the year. I shudder at the name of holiday. I dread the approach of one, and thank heaven when it is over. I passed through on a holiday, the most horrible sensations, the bitterest feelings, the most oppressive melancholy. In fact, I am not myself at holiday times. Very strange. I ventured to interpose. A plague on it, said he, almost with violence. I'm not inhuman. I don't wish anybody harm.
I'm glad people can enjoy themselves. But I hate holidays all the same. You see, this is the reason. I am a bachelor. I am without kin. I am in a place that did not know me at birth. And so, when holidays come around, there is no place anywhere for me. I have friends, of course. I don't think I've been a very sulky shuttin'n, reticent fellow, and there is many aboard that has a place for me, but not at Christmas-time. At Christmas the dinner is a family gathering, and I've no family. There is such a gathering of kindred on this occasion, such a reunion of family folk, that there is no place for a friend, even if the friend be liked. Christmas, with all its kindliness and charity and goodwill, is, after all, deuced selfish.
Each little set gathers within its own circle, and people like me, with no particular circle, are left in the lurch. So, you see, on the day of all the days in the year that my heart pines for good cheer, I am without an invitation. "'Oh, it's because I pine for good cheer,' said the bachelor, sharply interrupting my attempt to speak, "'that I hate holidays. If I were an infernally selfish fellow I wouldn't hate holidays. I'd go off and have some fun all to myself somewhere, or somehow. But, you see.' I hate to be in the dark when all the rest of the world is in light. I hate holidays, because I ought to be merry and happy on holidays, and can't. "'Don't tell me,' he cried, stopping the word that was on my lips.
"'I tell you, I hate holidays. The shops look merry, do they, with their bright toys and their green branches? The pantomime is crowded with merry hearts, is it? The circus and the show are brimful of fun and laughter, are they? Well, they all—' Make me miserable. I haven't any pretty-faced girls or bright-eyed boys to take to the circus or the show, and all the nice girls and fine boys of my acquaintance have their uncles or their granddads or their cousins—to take them to those places. So, if I go, I must go alone. But I don't go. I can't bear the chill of seeing everybody happy and knowing myself so lonely and desolate. Confound it, sir! I've too much heart to be happy under such circumstances.
I'm too humane, sir! And the result is—I hate holidays. It's miserable to be out, and yet I can't stay at home, for I get thinking of Christmases past. I can't read. The shadow of my heart makes it impossible. I can't walk, for I see nothing but pictures through the bright windows and happy groups of pleasure-seekers. The fact is, I've nothing to do but to hate holidays. But will you not dine with me?
Of course, I had to plead engagement with my own family circle, and I couldn't quite invite Mr. Bluff home that day, when cousin Charles and his wife, and sister Susan and her daughter, and three of my wife's kin had come in from the country, all to make a Merry Christmas with us. I felt sorry, but it was quite impossible, so I wished Mr. Bluff a Merry Christmas and hurried homeward through the cold and nipping air. I did not meet Bachelor Bluff again until a week after Christmas of the next year, when I learned some strange particulars of what occurred to him after our parting on the occasion just described. I will let Bachelor Bluff tell his adventure for himself. "'I went to church,' said he.
And was as sad there as everywhere else. Of course, the evergreens were pretty, and the music fine, but all around me were happy groups of people who could scarcely keep down Merry Christmas long enough to do reverence to sacred Christmas. And nobody was alone but me. Every happy paterfamilias in his pew tantalized me, and the whole atmosphere of the place seemed so much better suited to everyone else than me that I came away hating holidays worse than ever. Then I went to the play and sat down in a box all alone by myself. Everybody seemed on the best of terms with everybody else, and jokes and banter passed from one to another with the most good-natured freedom. Everybody but me was in a little group of friends.
I was the only person in the whole theater that was alone. And then there was such clapping of hands and roars of laughter and shouts of delight at all the fun going on upon the stage, all of which was rendered doubly enjoyable by everybody having somebody with whom to share and interchange the pleasure, that my loneliness got simply unbearable, and I hated holidays, infinitely worse than ever. By five o'clock the holidays seemed so intolerable that I said I'd go and get a dinner. The best dinner the town could provide—a sumptuous dinner for one—a dinner with many courses, with wines of the finest brands, with bright lights, with a cheerful fire, with every condition of comfort—and I'd see if I couldn't for once extract a little pleasure out of a holiday.
The handsome dining-room at the club looked bright, but it was empty. Who dines at this club on Christmas but lonely bachelors? There was a flutter of surprise when I ordered a dinner, and the few attendants were, no doubt, glad of something to break the monotony of the hours. My dinner was well served. The spacious room looked lonely, but the white snowy cloths, the rich window hangings, the warm tints of the walls, the sparkle of the fire in the steel grate, gave the room an air of elegance and cheerfulness, and then the table at which I dined was close to the window, and through the partly drawn curtains were visible centers of lonely cold streets with bright lights from many a window. It is true, but there was a storm, and snow began whirling through the street.
I let my imagination paint the streets as cold and dreary as it would, just to extract a little pleasure by way of contrast from the brilliant room of which I was apparently sole master.
I dined well, and recalled in fancy old youthful Christmases, and pledged mentally many an old friend, and my melancholy was mellowing into a low, sad undertone, when, just as I was raising a glass of wine to my lips, I was startled by a picture at the window-pane. It was a pale, wild, haggard face, in a great cloud of black hair pressed against the glass. As I looked, it vanished. With a strange thrill at my heart, which my lips mocked with a derisive sneer, I finished the wine and set down the glass. It was, of course, only a beggar girl that had crept up to the window and stole a glance at the bright scene within, but still—the pale face troubled me a little and threw a fresh shadow on my heart.
I filled my glass once more with wine and was again about to drink when the face reappeared at the window. It was so white— so thin, with eyes so large, wild and hungry-looking, and the black unkept hair into which the snow had drifted formed so strange and weird a frame to the picture that I was fairly startled. Replacing untasted the liquor on the table, I rose and went close to the pane. The face had vanished, and I could see no object within many feet of the window. The storm had increased, and the snow was driving in wild gusts through the streets, which were empty, save here and there a hurrying wayfarer. The whole scene was cold, wild, and desolate, and I could not repress a keen thrill of sympathy for the child, whoever it was, whose only Christmas was to watch, in cold and storm, the rich banquet ungratefully enjoyed by the lonely bachelor.
I resumed my place at the table. But the dinner was finished, and the wine had no further relish. I was haunted by the vision at the window, and began, with an unreasonable irritation at the interruption, to repeat with fresh warmth my detestation of holidays. One couldn't even dine alone on a holiday with any sort of comfort, I declared. On holidays one was tormented by too much pleasure on one side and too much misery on the other. And then I said, hunting for justification of my dislike of the day, how many other people are, like me, made miserable by seeing the fullness of enjoyment others possess? Oh, yes, I know, sarcastically replied the bachelor to a comment of mine. Of course all magnanimous, generous, and noble-souled people delight in seeing other people made happy, and are quite content to accept this vicarious felicity.
But I, you see, and this dear little girl— Dear little girl. Oh, I forgot," said Bachelor Bluff, blushing a little in spite of a desperate effort not to do so. I didn't tell you. Well, it was so absurd. I kept thinking, thinking of the pale-haggard, lonely little girl on the cold and desolate side of the window-pane, and the overfed, discontented, lonely old Bachelor on the splendid side of the window-pane, and I didn't get much happier thinking about it, I can assure you. I drank glass after glass of the wine, not that I enjoyed its flavor any more, but mechanically as it were, and with a sort of hope thereby to drown unpleasant reminders. I tried to attribute my annoyance in the matter to holidays, and so denounced them more vehemently than ever.
I rose once in a while and went to the window, but could see no one to whom the pale face could have belonged. At last, in no very amiable mood, I got up, put on my wrappers, and went out, and the first thing I did was to run against a small figure crouching in the doorway. A face looked up quickly at the rough encounter, and I saw the pale features of the window-pane. I was very irritated and angry, and spoke harshly, and then, all at once. I am sure I don't know how it happened, but it flashed upon me that I, of all men, had no right to utter a harsh word to one oppressed with so wretched a Christmas as this poor creature was. I couldn't say another word, but began feeling in my pocket for some money, and then I asked a question or two.
And then I don't quite know how it came about. Isn't it very warm here? exclaimed a bachelor bluff, rising and walking about and wiping the perspiration from his brow. Well, you see, he resumed nervously, It was very absurd, but I did believe the girl's story—the old story, you know, of privation and suffering—and just thought I'd go home with a brat and see if what she said was all true. And then I remembered that all the shops were closed and not a purchase could be made. I went back and persuaded the steward to put up for me a hamper of provisions, which the half-wild little youngster helped me carry through the snow, dancing with delight all the way. And isn't this enough? Not a bit, Mr. Bluff.
I must have the whole story. I declare," said Bachelor Bluff, there's no whole story to tell. A widow with children in great need, that was what I found, and they had a feast that night, and a little money to buy them a load of wood and a garment or two the next day. And they were all so bright and so merry and so thankful and so good, that, when I got home that night, I was mightily amazed that, instead of going to bed sour at holidays, I was in a state of great contentment in regard to holidays. In fact, I was really merry. I whistled. I sang. I do believe I cut a caper. The poor wretches I had left had been so merry over their unlooked-for Christmas banquet that their spirits infected mine.
And then I got thinking again. Of course, holidays had been miserable to me, I said. What right had a well-to-do lonely old bachelor, hovering wistfully in the vicinity of happy circles, when all about that there were so many people as lonely as he, and yet oppressed with want? Good gracious! I exclaimed. To think of a man complaining of loneliness with thousands of wretches yearning for his help and comfort, with endless opportunities for work and company, with hundreds of pleasant and delightful things to do—just to think of it! It put me in a great fury at myself to think of it. I tried pretty hard to escape from myself, and began inventing excuses and all that sort of thing. But I rigidly forced myself to look squarely at my own conduct, and then I reconciled my confidence by declaring that, if ever after that day I hated a holiday again, might my holidays end at once and forever.
Did I go and see my protgs again? What a question! Why, well, no matter. If the widow is comfortable now, it is because she has found a way to earn without difficulty enough for her few wants. That's no fault of mine. I would have done more for her, but she wouldn't let me. But just let me tell you about New Year's, the New Year's Day that followed the Christmas I've been describing. It was lucky for me there was another holiday only a week off. Bless you! I had so much to do that day I was completely bewildered, and the hours weren't half long enough. I did make a few social calls, but then I hurried them over and then hastened to my little girl, whose face had already caught a touch of colour, and she, looking quite handsome in her new frock and her ribbons, took me to other poor folk, and—well, that's about the whole story.
So, as to the next Christmas? Well, I didn't dine alone, as you may guess. It was up three stairs, that's true, and there was none of that elegance that marked the dinner of the year before, but it was merry and happy and bright. It was a generous, honest, hearty Christmas dinner. That it was, although I do wish the widow hadn't talked so much about the mysterious way Turkey had been left at her door the night before. And Molly—that's the little girl—and I had a rousing appetite. We went to church early, then we had been down to the Five Points to carry the poor outcasts there something for their Christmas dinner. In fact, we had done wonders of work, and Molly was in high spirits, and so the Christmas dinner was a great success.
Dear me, sir, no. Just as you say, holidays are not in the least wearisome any more. Plague on it. When a man tells me now that he hates holidays, I find myself getting very wroth. I pin him by the buttonhole at once and tell him my experience. The fact is, if I were at dinner on a holiday and anybody should ask me for a sentiment, I should say, God bless all holidays.
End of Mr. Bluff's Experience of Holidays By Oliver Bell Buns.
-
20 The Night After Christmas 3:58
The Night After Christmas by Anne P. L. Field.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jan MacGillivray. "'Twas the night after Christmas in Santa Claus Land, and to rest from his labors St. Nicholas planned, The reindeer were turned out to pasture, and all the ten thousand assistants discharged till the fall. The furry greatcoat was laid safely away, with the boots and the cap with its tassel so gay, and toasting his toes by a merry wood-fire, what more could a weary old Santa desire? So he puffed at his pipe, and remarked to his wife, "'This amply makes up for my strenuous life.' From climbing down chimneys my legs fairly ache, but it's well worth the while for the dear children's sake.
I'd bruise every bone in my body to see the darling's delight in a gift-laden tree. Just then came a sound like a telephone bell. Though why they should have such a thing I can't tell. Saint Nick gave a snort and exclaimed in a rage, Bad luck to inventions of this modern age! He grabbed the receiver. His face wore a frown as he roared in the mouthpiece, I will not come down to exchange any toys like an up-to-date store. Ring off. I'll not listen to anything more. Then he settled himself by the comforting blaze and waxed reminiscent of halcyon days when children were happy with simplest of toys, a doll for the girls and a drum for the boys. But again came that noisy disturber of peace, the telephone bell.
Would the sound never cease? Run and answer it, wife. All my patience has fled. If they keep this thing up, I shall wish I were dead. I have worked night and day the best part of a year to supply all the children, and what do I hear? A boy who declares he received roller-skates when he wanted a gun, and a cross girl who states that she asked for a new Victor talking machine, and I brought her a sled so she thinks I am mean. Poor St. Nicholas looked just the picture of woe. He needed some auto suggestion, you know. To make him think things were all coming out right. For he didn't get one wink of slumber that night. The telephone wire was kept sizzling hot by children disgusted with presents they'd got.
And when the bright sun showed its face in the sky, the Santa Claus family were ready to cry. Just then something happened. A way of escape, though it came in the funniest possible shape. An aeronaut, Sorely in need of a meal descended for breakfast. It seemed quite ideal. For the end of it was, he invited his host out to try the balloon, of whose speed he could boast. Saint Nick, who was nothing if not a good sport, was delighted to go, and as quick as a thought climbed into the car for a flight in the air. No telephone bells can disturb me up there. And wife, If it suits me, I'll count it no crime to stay up till ready for next Christmas-time. Thus saying, he sailed in the giant balloon, and I fear that he will not return very soon.
Now, when you ask Central for Santa Claus Land, she'll say, Discontinued, and you'll understand. End of The Night After Christmas by Ann P. L. Field
-
21 An Old Time Christmas 10:14
An Old Time Christmas.
An Old Time Christmas.
When the holidays came round, the thoughts of Liza Ann Lewis always turned to the good times that she used to have at home. When, following the precedent of ante-bellum days, Christmas lasted all the week, and good cheer held sway. She remembered with regret the gifts that were given, the songs that were sung to the tinkling of the banjo and the dances with which they beguiled the night hours, and the eating. Could she forget it? The great turkey with the fat literally bursting from him. The yellow yam melting into deliciousness in the mouth, or, at some more fortunate season, even the juicy possum grinning in brown and greasy death from the great platter. In the ten years she had lived in New York, she had known no such feast-day.
Food was strangely dear in the metropolis, and then there was always the weekly rental of the poor room to be paid. But she had kept the memory of the old times green in her heart, and ever turned to it with the fondness of one, for something irretrievably lost. That is how Jimmy came to know about it. Jimmy was thirteen, and small for his age, and he could not remember any such times as his mother told him about, although he said with great pride to his partner and rival, Blinky Scott, Cheese, Blink, "'You ought to hear my old lady talk about the days they had down where we come from at Christmas. New York ain't in it with them. You can just bet.' And Blinky, who was a New Yorker clean through with a New Yorker's contempt for anything outside of the city, had promptly replied with a downward spreading of his right hand, "'Ah, forget it!' Jimmy felt a little crestfallen for a minute.
But he lifted himself in his own estimation by threatening to do Blinky, and the cloud rolled by. Liza Ann knew that Jimmy couldn't ever understand what she meant by an old-time Christmas unless she could show him by some faint approach to its merrymaking, and it had been the dream of her life to do this. But every year she had failed, until now. She was a little ahead. Her plan was too good to keep, and when Jimmy went out that Christmas Eve morning to sell his papers, she had disclosed it to him, and bade him hurry home as soon as he was done, for they were to have a real old-time Christmas. Jimmy exhibited as much pleasure as he deemed consistent with his dignity, and promised to be back early.
to add his earnings to the fund for celebration.
When he was gone, Liza Ann counted over her savings lovingly, and dreamed of what she could buy her boy, and what she would have for dinner the next day. Then a voice, a colored man's voice, she knew, floated up to her. Someone in the alley below her window was singing, The Old Folks at Home. All up and down the whole creation, sadly I roam, still longing for the old plantation, and for the old folks at home.
She leaned out of the window and listened, and when the song had ceased, and she drew her head in again, there were tears in her eyes, the tears of memory and longing. But she crushed them away, and laughed tremendously to herself as she said, What a regular old fool I'm a-gittin' to be. Then she went out into the cold, snow-covered streets, for she had work to do that day that would add a mite to her little Christmas store. Down in the street, Jimmy was calling out the morning papers, and racing with Blinky Scott for prospective customers. These were only transients, of course, for each had his regular buyers, whose preferences were scrupulously respected by both, in agreement with a strange silent compact.
The electric cars went clanging to and fro. The streets were full of shoppers with bundles and bunches of holly, and all the sights and sounds were pregnant with the message of the joyous time. People were full of the holiday spirit. The papers were going fast, and the little colored boy's pockets were filled with the desired coins. It would have been all right with Jimmy if the policeman hadn't come up on him just as he was about to toss the bones. And when Blinky Scott had him faded to the amount of five hard-earned pennies. Well, they were trying to suppress youthful gambling in New York, and the officer had to do his duty. The others scuttled away, but Jimmy was so absorbed in the game that he didn't see the cop until he was right above him.
So he was pinched. He blubbered a little and wiped his grimy face with his grimier sleeve until it was one long brown smear. You know, this was Jimmy's first time. The big blue coat looked a little bit ashamed as he marched him down the street. Followed at a distance by a few hooting boys. Some of the holiday shoppers turned to look at them as they passed and murmured, Poor little chap! I wonder what he's been up to now. Others said sarcastically, It seems strange that copper didn't call for help. A few of his brother officers grinned at him as he passed, and he blushed. But the dignity of the law must be upheld, and the crime of gambling among the newsboys was a growing evil. Yes, the dignity of the law must be upheld, and though Jimmy was only a small boy, it would be well to make an example of him.
So his name and age were put down on the blotter, and over against them the offense with which he was charged. Then he was locked up. to await trial the next morning. It's shameful, the bearded sergeant said, how the kids are carrying on these days. People are feeling pretty generous, and they'll toss em a nickel or a dime for the paper and tell em to keep the change for Christmas. And first thing you know, the little beggars are shooting craps or pitching pennies. We've got to make an example of some of them.
Liza Ann Lewis was tearing through her work that day to get home and do her Christmas shopping, and she was singing as she worked some such old song as she used to sing in the good old days back home. She reached her room late and tired, but happy. Visions of awakening up time for her and Jimmy were on her mind, but Jimmy wasn't there. I wonder what that little scamp is. she said, smiling. "'I told him to hurry home, but I reckon he's staying out later with the evening papers, so as to bring home more money.' Hour after hour passed, and he did not come, and then she grew alarmed. At two o'clock in the morning she could stand it no longer, and she went over and awakened Blinky Scott, much to the young gentleman's disgust, who couldn't see why any woman need make such a fuss about a kid.
He told her laconically that, "'Jimmy was pinched for trowin' the bones.' She heard with a sinking heart, and went home to her own room to walk the floor all night and sob. In the morning, with all her Christmas savings tied up in a handkerchief, she hurried down to Jefferson Market Court Room. There was a full blotter that morning, and the judge was rushing through it. He wanted to get home to his Christmas dinner, but he paused long enough when he got to Jimmy's case to deliver a brief but stern lecture upon the evil of child gambling in New York. He said that as it was Christmas Day, he would like to release the prisoner with a reprimand, but he thought that this had been done too often, and that it was high time to make an example of one of the offenders.
Well, it was fine or imprisonment. Liza Ann struggled up through the crowd of spectators, and her Christmas treasure, added to what Jimmy had, paid his fine, and they went out of the courtroom together. When they were in the room again, she put the boy to bed, for there was no fire and no coal to make one. Then she wrapped herself in a shabby shawl and sat huddled up over the empty stove. Down in the alley she heard the voice of the day before singing, O darkies, how my heart grows weary, far from the old folks at home. And she burst into tears.
-
22 The Philanthropist's Christmas 20:42
The Philanthropist's Christmas by James Weber Lynn. "'Did you see this committee yesterday, Mr. Matthews?' asked the philanthropist. His secretary looked up. "'Yes, sir.' "'You recommend them, then?' "'Yes, sir.' "'For fifty thousand?' "'For fifty thousand?' "'Yes, sir.' "'Their corresponding subscriptions are guaranteed?' "'I went over the list carefully, Mr. Carter. The money is promised, and by responsible people.' "'Very well.' said the philanthropist. You may notify them, Mr. Matthews, that my fifty thousand will be available as the bills come in. Yes, sir. Old Mr. Carter laid down the letter he had been reading and took up another. As he perused it, his white eyebrows rose in irritation.
Mr. Matthews! he snapped. Yes, sir. You are careless, sir. I beg your pardon, Mr. Carter. questioned the secretary, his face flushing. The old gentleman tapped impatiently the letter he held in his hand. "'Do you pay no attention, Mr. Matthews, to my rule, that no personal letters containing appeals for aid are to reach me? How do you account for this, may I ask?' "'I beg your pardon,' said the secretary again. "'You will see, Mr. Carter, that the letter is dated three weeks ago. I have had the woman's case carefully investigated. She is undoubtedly of good reputation, and undoubtedly in need, and as she speaks of her father as having associated with you, I thought perhaps you would care to see her letter.
"'A thousand worthless fellows associated with me,' said the old man harshly. "'In a great factory, Mr. Matthews, a boy works alongside of the men he is put with. He does not pick and choose. I dare say this woman is telling the truth.' What of it? You know that I regard my money as a public trust. Were my energy, my concentration, to be wasted by innumerable individual assaults, what would become of them? My fortune would slip through my fingers as unprofitably as sand. You understand, Mr. Matthews? Let me see no more individual letters. You know that Mr. Whittemore has full authority to deal with them. May I trouble you to ring? I am going out. A man appeared very promptly in answer to the bell.
"'Sniffen, my overcoat,' said the philanthropist. "'It is ere, sir,' answered Sniffen, helping the thin old man into the great furfolds. "'There is no word of the dog, I suppose, Sniffen?' "'None, sir. The police was here again yesterday, sir, but they said as ow.' "'The police!' The words were fierce with scorn. "'Eight thousand incompetents!' He turned abruptly and went toward the door, where he halted a moment. "'Mr. Matthews, since that woman's letter did reach me, I suppose I must pay for my carelessness, or yours. Send her—what does she say? Four children? Send her a hundred dollars. But for my sake, send it anonymously. Write her that I pay no attention to such claims.' He went out, and Sniffon closed the door behind him.
"'Takes losing the little dog art, don't he?' remarked Sniffen sadly to the secretary. "'I'm afraid there ain't a chance of findin' him now. He ain't been stole, nor he ain't been found, or they'd have brung him back for the reward. He's been knockin' on the head like as not. He wasn't much of a dog to look at—you see, just a pup, I'd call him. And after he learned that trick of slippin' his collar off—well, I fancy Mr. Carter's seen the last of him. I do indeed.' Mr. Carter, meanwhile, was making his way slowly down the snowy avenue upon his accustomed walk. The walk, however, was dull to-day, for Skittles, his little terrier, was not with him to add interest and excitement. Mr. Carter had found Skittles in the country a year and a half before.
Skittles, then a puppy, was at the time in a most undignified and undesirable position, stuck in a drain tile and unable either to advance or to retreat. Mr. Carter had shoved him forward after a heroic struggle, whereupon Skittles had licked his hand. Something in the little dog's eye, or his action, had induced the rich philanthropist to bargain for him and buy him at a cost of half a dollar. Thereafter, Skittles became his daily companion, his chief distraction, and finally the apple of his eye.
Skittles was of no known parentage, hardly of any known breed, but he suited Mr. Carter. What, the millionaire reflected with a proud cynicism, were his own antecedents if it came to that? But now Skittles had disappeared. As Sniffen said, he had learned the trick of slipping free from his collar. One morning the great front doors had been left open for two minutes while the hallway was aired. Skittles must have slipped down the marble steps unseen, and dodged round the corner. At all events he had vanished, and although the whole police force of the city had been roused to secure his return, it was aroused in vain, and for three weeks, therefore, a small straight white-bearded man in a fur overcoat had walked in mournful irritation alone.
He stood upon a corner uncertainly. One way led to the park, and this he usually took, but to-day he did not want to go to the park. It was too reminiscent of Skittle's. He looked the other way. Down there, if one went far enough, lay slums, and Mr. Carter hated the sight of slums. They always made him miserable and discontented. With all his money and his philanthropy, was there still necessity for such misery in the world? Worse still came the intrusive question at times. Had all his money anything to do with the creation of this misery? He owed no tenements, he paid good wages in every factory, he had given sums, such as few men have given in the history of philanthropy. Still, there were the slums.
However, the worst slums lay some distance off, and he finally turned his back on the park and walked on. It was the day before Christmas. You saw it in people's faces. You saw it in the holly wreaths that hung in windows. You saw it, even as you passed, the splendid forbidding houses on the avenue, in the green that here and there banked massive doors. But most of all you saw it in the shops. Up here the shops were smallish, and chiefly of the provision variety, so there was no bewildering display of gifts, but there were Christmas-trees everywhere, of all sizes. It was astonishing how many people in that neighborhood seemed to favor the old-fashioned idea of a tree. Mr. Carter looked at them with his irritation softening.
If they made him feel a trifle more lonely, they allowed him to feel also a trifle less responsible, for, after all, it was a fairly happy world. At this moment he perceived a curious phenomenon a short distance before him—another Christmas tree. but one which moved, apparently of its own volition, along the sidewalk. As Mr. Carter overtook it, he saw that it was borne, or dragged, rather by a small boy who wore a bright red flannel cap and mittens of the same peculiar material. As Mr. Carter looked down at him, he looked up at Mr. Carter and spoke cheerfully. "'Go in my way, mister.' "'Why?' said the philanthropist, somewhat taken back. I was. "'Mind dragging this a little way?' asked the boy confidently.
"'My hands is cold.' "'Won't you enjoy it more if you manage to take it home by yourself?' "'Oh, it ain't for me,' said the boy. "'Your employer,' said the philanthropist severely, "'is certainly careless if he allows his trees to be delivered in this fashion.' "'I ain't deliverin' it, either,' said the boy. "'This is Bill's tree.' "'Who is Bill?' "'He's a feller with a back that's no good.' "'Is he your brother?' "'No. Take the tree a little way, will you, while I warm myself.' The philanthropist accepted the burden. He did not know why. The boy released, ran forward, jumped up and down, slapped his red flannel mittens on his legs, and then ran back again. After repeating these manoeuvres two or three times, he returned to where the old gentleman stood holding the tree.
"'Thanks,' he said. "'Say, mister, you look like Santa Claus yourself, standin' by the tree with your fur cap and your coat. I bet you don't have to run to keep warm, hey?' There was high admiration in his look. Suddenly his eyes sparkled with an inspiration. "'Say, mister,' he cried, "'will you do something for me?' Come in to Bill's. He lives only a block from here, and just let him see you. He's only a kid, and he'll think he's seen Santa Claus. Sure. We can tell him you're so busy tomorrow you have to go to lots of places today. You won't have to give him anything. We're looking out for all that. Bill got hurt in the summer, and he's been in bed ever since. So we are giving him a Christmas, tree and all.
He gets a bunch of things, an air gun and a train that goes round when you wind her up. They're great. "'You boys are doing this?' "'Well, it's our club at the settlement, and of course Miss Gray thought of it, and she's given Bill the train. Come along, mister.' But Mr. Carter declined. "'All right,' said the boy. "'I guess, what with Pete and all, Bill will have Christmas enough.' "'Who is Pete?' "'Bill's dog. He had him three weeks now, best little pup you ever saw.' A dog which Bill had had three weeks, and in a neighborhood not a quarter of a mile from the avenue—it was three weeks since Skittles had disappeared. That this dog was Skittles was of course most improbable, and yet the philanthropist was ready to grasp at any clue which might lead to the lost terrier.
"'How did Bill get this dog?' he demanded. "'I found him myself. Some kids had tin-canned him, and he came into our entry.' He licked my hand and then sat up on his hind legs. Somebody taught him that, you know. I thought right away, here's a dog for Bill. And I took him over there and fed him, and they kept him in Bill's room two or three days so he shouldn't get scared again and run off. And now he wouldn't leave Bill for anybody. Of course he ain't much of a dog. Pete ain't," he added. He's just a pup, but he's mighty friendly. "'Boy,' said Mr. Carter, I guess I'll just go round and—he was about to add, have a look at that dog, but fearful of raising suspicion, he ended, and see Bill. The tenements to which the boy led him were of brick and reasonably clean.
Nearly every window showed some sign of Christmas. The tree-bearer led the way into a dark hall. Upon flight, Mr. Carter assisting with the tree, and down another dark hall to a door on which he knocked. A woman opened it. "'Here's the tree,' said the boy, in a loud whisper. "'Is Bill's door shut?' Mr. Carter stepped forward out of the darkness. "'I beg your pardon, madame,' he said. "'I met this young man in the street, and he asked me to come here and see a playmate of his who is, I understand, an invalid. But if I am intruding—' "'Come in,' said the woman heartily, throwing the door open. "'Bill will be glad to see you, sir.' The philanthropist stepped inside. The room was decently furnished and clean.
There was a sewing-machine in the corner, and in both the windows hung wreaths of holly. Between the windows was a cleared space, where evidently the tree, when decorated, was to stand.
"'Are all the things here?' eagerly demanded the tree-bearer. "'They're all here, Jimmy,' answered Mrs. Bailey. "'The candy just came.' "'Say!' cried the boy, pulling off his red flannel mittens to blow on his fingers. Won't it be great? But now Bill's got to see Santa Claus. I'll just go in and tell him, and then, when I holler, mister, you come on and pretend you're Santa Claus. And with incredible celerity the boy opened the door at the opposite end of the room and disappeared. Madam, said Mr. Carter, in considerable embarrassment, I must say one word. "'I am Mr. Carter, Mr. Alan Carter. You may have heard my name.' She shook her head. "'No, sir. I live not far from here in the avenue. Three weeks ago I lost a little dog that I valued very much.
I have had all the city searched since then in vain. Today I met the boy who has just left us. He informed me that three weeks ago he found a dog which is at present in the possession of your son. I wonder, is it not just possible that this dog may be mine?' Mrs. Bailey smiled. "'I guess not, Mr. Carter. The dog Jimmy found hadn't come off the avenue, not from the look of him. You know there's hundreds and hundreds of dogs without home, sir, but I will say for this one, he has a kind of a way with him.' "'Hark!' said Mr. Carter.
There was a rustling and a snuffing at the door at the far end of the room, a quick scratching of feet. Then—'Woof! Woof! Woof!' Sharp and clear came happy and patient little barks. The philanthropist's eyes brightened. Yes, he said, that is the dog. I doubt if it can be, sir, said Mrs. Bailey deprecatingly. Open the door, please, commanded the philanthropist, and let us see. Mrs. Bailey complied. There was a quick jump, a tumbling rush, and Skittles, the lost Skittles, was in the philanthropist's arms. Mrs. Bailey shut the door with a troubled face. "'I see it's your dog, sir,' she said. "'But I hope you won't be thinking that Jimmy or I—' "'Madame,' interrupted Mr. Carter, "'I could not be so foolish.
On the contrary, I owe you a thousand thanks.'" Mrs. Bailey looked more cheerful. "'Poor little Billy,' she said. "'It'll come hard on him losing Pete just at Christmas-time, but the boys are so good to him I dare say he'll forget it.'" "'Who are these boys?' inquired the philanthropist. "'Isn't their action somewhat unusual?' "'It's Miss Gray's Club at the settlement, sir,' exclaimed Mrs. Bailey. "'Every Christmas they do this for somebody. It's not charity. Billy and I don't need charity or take it. It's just friendliness. They're good boys.' "'I see,' said the philanthropist. He was still wondering about it, though, when the door opened again and Jimmy thrust out a face shining with anticipation.
"'All ready, mister,' he said. "'Bill's waitin' for you.' "'Jimmy,' began Mrs. Bailey, about to explain. "'The gentleman—' But the philanthropist held up his hand, interrupting her. "'You'll let me see your son, Mrs. Bailey?' he asked gently. "'Why, certainly, sir.' Mr. Carter put Skittles down and walked slowly into the inner room. The bed stood with its side toward him. On it lay a small boy of seven, rigid of body, but with his arms free and his face lighted with joy. "'Hullo, Santa Claus,' he piped, in a voice shrill with excitement. "'Hullo, Bill,' answered the philanthropist sedately. The boy turned his eyes on Jimmy. "'He knows my name,' he said with glee. "'He knows everybody's name,' said Jimmy.
"'Now, you tell him what you want, Bill, and he'll bring it tomorrow.' "'How would you like?' said the philanthropist, reflectively. "'An—an—he hesitated. It seemed so incongruous with that stiff figure on the bed—an air-gun.' "'I guess yes,' said Bill happily. "'And a train of cars,' broke in the impatient Jimmy. "'That goes like sixty when you wind her.' "'Ay,' said Bill." The philanthropist solemnly made notes of this. "'How about,' he remarked, inquiringly, "'a tree?' "'Honest,' said Bill. "'I think it can be managed,' said Santa Claus. He advanced to the bedside. "'I'm glad to have seen you, Bill. You know how busy I am, but I hope—' "'I hope to see you again.' "'Not till next year, of course,' warned Jimmy.
"'Not till then, of course,' assented Santa Claus. "'And now good-bye.' "'You forgot to ask him if he'd been a good boy,' suggested Jimmy. "'I have,' said Bill. "'I've been fine. You ask mother.' "'She gives you—she gives you both a high character,' said Santa Claus. "'Good-bye again.' And so saying, he withdrew. Skittles followed him out. The philanthropist closed the door of the bedroom, and then turned to Mrs. Bailey.
She was regarding him with awestruck eyes. "'Oh, sir,' she said, "'I know now who you are—the Mr. Carter that gives so much away to people.' The philanthropist nodded deprecatingly. "'Just so, Mrs. Bailey,' he said, "'and there is one gift, or loan rather, which I should like to make to you. I should like to leave the little dog with you till after the holidays. I'm afraid I'll have to claim him then, but if you'll keep him till after Christmas and let me find, perhaps, another dog for Billy, I shall be much obliged.' Again the door of the bedroom opened, and Jimmy emerged quietly. "'Bill wants the pup,' he explained. "'Pete! Pete!' came the piping but happy voice from the inner room. Skittles hesitated.
Mr. Carter made no sign. "'Pete! Pete!' shrilled the voice again. "'Slowly, very slowly.' Skittles turned and went back into the bedroom. "'You see,' said Mr. Carter, smiling, "'he won't be too unhappy away from me, Mrs. Bailey.' On his way home the philanthropist saw even more evidences of Christmas gaiety along the streets than before. He stepped out briskly in spite of his sixty-eight years. He even hummed a little tune. When he reached the house on the avenue he found his secretary still at work. "'Oh, by the way, Mr. Matthews,' he said, "'did you send that letter to the woman saying I never paid attention to personal appeals? No? Then write her please, enclosing my cheque for two hundred dollars and wish her a very Merry Christmas in my name, will you?' And hereafter, will you always let me see such letters as that one, of course, after careful investigation?
I fancy, perhaps, I may have been too rigid in the past. "'Certainly, sir,' answered the bewildered secretary. He began fumbling excitedly for his notebook. "'I've found the little dog,' continued the philanthropist. "'You will be glad to know that.' "'You have found him,' cried the secretary. "'Have you got him back, Mr. Carter? Where was he?' He was detained on Oak Street, I believe, said the philanthropist. No, I have not got him back yet. I have left him with a young boy till after the holidays. He settled himself to his papers, for philanthropists must toil even on the twenty-fourth of December. But the secretary shook his head in a daze. "'I wonder what's happened,' he said to himself."
End of The Philanthropist's Christmas By James Weber Linn.
-
23 The Queerest Christmas 18:20
The Queerest Christmas.
The Queerest Christmas by Grace Margaret Gallagher Betty stood at her door, gazing drearily down the long empty corridor in which the breakfast gong echoed mournfully. All the usual brisk scenes of that hour, groups of girls in Peter Thompson suits, or starched shirt-waists, or a pair of energetic ones, red-cheeked and shining eyed from a run in the snow, had vanished as by the hand of some evil magician. Silent and lonely was the corridor. "'And it's the day before Christmas,' groaned Betty. Two chill little tears hung on her eyelashes. The night before, in the excitement of getting the girls off with all their trunks and packages intact, she had not realized the homesickness of the deserted school.
Now it seemed to pierce her very bones. Oh, dear, why did father have to lose his money? "'Twas easy enough last September to decide I wouldn't take the expensive journey home these holidays, and for all of us to promise we wouldn't give each other as much as a Christmas card." But now—the two chilled tears slipped over the edge of her eyelashes. Well, I know how I'll spend this whole day. I'll come right up here after breakfast and cry and cry and cry. Somewhat fortified by this cheering resolve, Betty went to breakfast. Whatever the material joys of that meal might be, it certainly was not a feast of reason and a flow of soul. Betty, whose sense of humor never perished, even in such a frost, looked round the table at the eight grim-faced girls doomed to a Christmas in school, and quoted mischievously to herself, "'On with the dance, let joy be unconfined.' Breakfast bolted, she lagged back to her room, stopping to stare out of the corridor windows.
She saw nothing of the snowy landscape, however. Instead, a picture, the gayest medley, of many colors and figures danced before her eyes, Christmas-trees thumping in through the door, mysterious bundles scurried into dark corners, little brothers and sisters flying about with festoons of mistletoe, Scarlet Ribbon and Holly, everywhere sound and laughter and excitement. The motto of Betty's family was, Never do to-day what you can put off till to-morrow. Therefore the preparations of a fortnight were always crowded into a day. The year before, Betty had rushed till her nerves were taut and her temper snapped, had shaken the twins, raged at the housemaid, and had gone to bed at midnight, weeping with weariness.
But in memory only, the joy of the day remained. I think I could endure this jail of a school, and not getting one single present, but it breaks my heart to give one least little thing to any one. Why, whoever heard of such a Christmas? Won't you hunt for that blue? Broken my thread again. Give me those scissors. Betty jumped out of her daydream. She had wandered into Cork, and the three O'Neill's surrounded her, staring. I beg your pardon, I heard you, and it was so like home the day before Christmas. Did you hear the heathen rage? cried Catherine. Dolls for Aunt Anne's mission. explained Constance. "'You're so forehanded that all your presents went a week ago, I suppose.' Ilinor swept clear a chair.
"'The clan O'Neill is never forehanded.' "'You'd think I was, from the number of thumbs I've grown this morning. Oh, misery!' Ilinor jerked a snarl of thread out on the floor. Betty had never cared for cork, but now the hot, worried faces of its girls appealed to her. "'Let me help. I'm a regular silkworm.' The O'Neills assented with eagerness, and Betty began to sew in a capable, swift way that made the other stare and sigh with relief. The dolls were many, the O'Neills slow. Betty worked till her feet twitched on the floor, yet she enjoyed the morning, for it held an entirely new sensation—that of helping someone else get ready for Christmas. "'Done! We never should have finished if you hadn't helped.
Thank you, Betty Luther, very, very much. You're a duck.' Let's run to luncheon together, quick." Somehow the big corridors did not seem half so bleak echoing to those warm O'Neill voices. "'This morning's just spun by, but—oh, this long, dreary afternoon,' sighed Betty as she wandered into the library. "'Oh, me, there goes Alice Johns with her arms loaded with presents to mail, and I can't give a single soul anything. Do you know where Quotations for Occasions has gone?' Betty turned to face pretty Rosamond Howitt, the only senior left behind. "'Gone to be rebound? I heard Miss Dye say so.' "'Oh, dear. I needed it so. Could I help? I know a lot of rhymes and tags of proverbs and things like that.' "'Oh, if you would help me, I'd be so grateful.
Won't you come to my room? You see, I promised a friend in town who is to have a Christmas dinner, and who's been very kind to me that I'd paint the place cards and write some quotation appropriate to each guest. I'm shamefully late over it. My own gifts took such a time, but the painting at least is done.' Rosamond led the way to her room, and there displayed the cards, which she had painted. You can't think of my helplessness, if it were a Greek verb now, or a lost and straight angle. But poetry—Betty trotted back and forth between the room and the library, delved into books, and even evolved a verse which she audaciously tagged, Old Play, in imitation of Sir Walter Scott. I think they are really and truly very bright, and I know Mrs.
Fernall would be delighted. Rosamond wrapped up the cards carefully. I can't begin to tell you how you've helped me. It was sweet in you to give me your whole afternoon." The dinner bell rang at that moment, and the two went down together. "'Come for a little run. I haven't been out all day,' whispered Rosamond, slipping her hand into Betty's as they left the table. A great round moon swung cold and bright over the pines by the lodge. "'Down the road a bit, just a little way, to the church,' suggested Betty. They stepped out into the silent country road. "'Why?' The little mission is as gay as—as—Christmas! I wonder why. Betty glanced at the bright windows of the small plain church. Oh, some Christmas Eve doings, she answered.
Some one stepped quickly out from the church door. Oh, Miss Vernon, I am relieved. I had begun to fear you could not come. The girl saw it was the tall old rector, his white hair shining silver bright in the moonbeams. "'We are just two girls from the school, sir,' said Rosamond. "'Dear, dear,' his voice was both impatient and distressed, "'I hoped you were my organist. We are all ready for our Christmas Eve service, but we can do nothing without the music.' "'I can play the organ a little,' said Betty. "'I'd be glad to help.' "'You can? My dear child, how fortunate! But—do you know the service?' "'Yes, sir. It's my church.' No vested choir stood ready to march triumphantly chanting into the choir stalls.
Only a few boys and girls waited in the dim old choir loft, where Rosamond seated herself quietly. Betty's fingers trembled so at first that the music sounded dull and far away, but her courage crept back to her in the silence of the church, and the organ seemed to help her with a brave power of its own. In the dark church only the altar and a great gold star above it shone bright. Through an open window somewhere behind her, she could hear the winter wind rattling the ivy leaves and bending the trees. Yet, somehow, she did not feel lonesome and forsaken this Christmas Eve, far away from home, but safe and comforted and sheltered. The voice of the old rector reached her faintly in pauses. Habit led her along the service, and the star at the altar held her eyes.
Strange new ideas and emotions flowed in upon her brain. Tears stole softly into her eyes, yet she felt in her heart a sweet glow. Slowly the Christmas picture that had flamed and danced before her all day, painted in the glory of holly and mistletoe and tinsel, faded out, and another shaped itself, solemn and beautiful, in the altar light. "'My dear child, I thank you very much.' The old rector held Betty's hand in both his. "'I cannot have a Christmas morning service. Our people have too much to do to come then. But I was especially anxious that our evening service should have some message, some inspiration for them, and your music has made it so. You have given me great aid. May your Christmas be a blessed one.' "'I was glad to play, sir.
Thank you,' answered Betty simply. "'Let's run!' she cried to Rosamund, and they raced back to school. She fell asleep that night without one smallest tear. The next morning Betty dressed hastily, and catching up her mandolin, set out into the corridor. Something swung against her hand as she opened the door. It was a great bunch of holly, glossy green leaves and glowing berries, and hidden in the leaves a card. Betty, Merry Christmas, was all but only one girl wrote that dainty hand. A winter rose, whispered Betty happily, and stuck the bunch into the ribbon of her mandolin. Down the corridor she ran until she faced a closed door. Then, twanging her mandolin, she burst out with all her power into a gay Christmas carol.
High and sweet sang her voice in the silent corridor all through the gay carol. Then, sweeter still, it changed into a Christmas hymn. Then, from behind the closed door, sounded voices, "'Merry Christmas, Betty Luthor!' Then Constance O'Neill's deep, smooth alto flowed into Betty's soprano, and at the last all nine girls joined in Adeste Fidelis. Christmas morning began with music and laughter. "'This is your place, Betty. You are Lord of Christmas morning.' Betty stood blushing, red as the holly in her hand, before the breakfast-table. Miss Hyle, the teacher at the head of the table, had given up her place. The breakfast was a merry one. After it somebody suggested that they all go skating on the pond.
Betty hesitated and glanced at Miss Hyle and Miss Thrasher, the two sad-looking teachers. She approached them and said, "'Won't you come skating, too?' Miss Thrasher, hardly older than Betty herself and pretty in a wide-frightened way, refused, but almost cheerfully. "'I have a Christmas-box to open and Christmas letters to write. Thank you very much.' Betty's heart sank as she saw Miss Hyle's face. Goodness, she's coming! Miss Hyle was the most unpopular teacher in school. Neither ill-tempered nor harsh, she was so cold, remote, and rigid in face, voice and manner that the warmest-blooded shivered away from her. The least sensitive shrank. "'I have no skates, but I should like to borrow a pair to learn, if I may.
I have never tried,' she said. The tragedies of a beginner on skates are, to the observers, especially if such be schoolgirls, subjects for unalloyed mirth. The nine girls choked and turned their backs, and even giggled, allowed as Miss Hyle went prone, now backward with a whack, now forward in a limp crumple. But amusement became admiration. Miss Hyle stumbled, fell, laughed merrily, scrambled up, struck out, and skated. Presently she was swinging up the pond in stroke with Betty and Eleanor O'Neill. "'Miss Hyle, you're great!' cried Betty at the end of the morning. "'I've taught dozens and scores to skate, but never anybody like you. You've a genius for skating.' Miss Hyle's blue eyes shot a sudden flash at Betty that made her whole severe face light up.
I've never had a chance to learn. At home there never is any ice, but I've always been athletic. "'Where is your home, Miss Hyle?' asked Betty. "'Conpor, India.' "'India?' gasped Ilinor. "'How delightful! Oh, won't you tell us about it, Miss Hyle?' So it was that Miss Hyle found herself talking about something besides triangles to girls who really wanted to hear, and so it was that the flash came often into her eyes. "'I have had a happy morning, thank you, Betty,' and all," she said it very simply, yet a quick throb of pity and liking beat in Betty's heart. "'How stupid we are about judging people,' she thought, yet Betty had always prided herself on her character reading. "'Hurrah! The mail and express are in!' The girls ran excitedly to their rooms.
"'Betty alone went to hers without interest. "'Why, Helma, what's happened?' The little round-faced Swedish maid mopped the big tears with her duster and choked out, "'Nothing, ma'am.' "'Of course there is. You're crying like everything.' Hilma wept aloud. "'Christmas day it is, and mine family and mine friends have party now—all day.' "'Where?' Hilma jerked her head toward the window. "'Oh, you mean in town? Why can't you go?' "'I work.' "'And never before am I from home Christmas Day!' Betty shivered. "'Never before am I from home Christmas Day,' she whispered. She went close to the girl, very tall and slim and bright beside the dumpy flaxen Hilma. "'What work do you do?' "'The cook. He cooks the dinner and the supper.
I put it on and waited on the young ladies and washed the dishes. The others all are gone.' Betty laughed suddenly. Hilma, go put on your best clothes quick and go down to your party. I'm going to do your work. Hilma's eyes rounded with amazement. The cook, he be mad. No, he won't. He won't care whether it's Hilma or Betty if things get done all right. I know how to wait on tables and wash dishes. There's no housekeeper here to object. Run along, Hilma, be back by nine o'clock, and— Merry Christmas. Hilma's face beamed through her tears. She was speechless with joy, but she seized Betty's slim brown hand and kissed it loudly. "'What larks? Is it a joke? Betty, you're the handsomest butler!' Betty, in a white-shirt-waist suit, a jolly red bow pinned on her white apron and a little cap cocked on her dark hair, waved them to their seats at the holly-deck table.
"'Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!' "'Nobody is ill, Betty!' Rosamund asked, anxiously. "'If I had three guesses, I should use every one that our maid wanted to go into town for the day, and Betty took her place.' It was Miss Hyle's calm voice. Betty blushed. It was her turn now to flash back a glance, and those two sparks kindled the fire of friendship. It was a jolly Christmas dinner, with a butler eating with the family. And now the dishes, thought Betty. It must be admitted the washing up after a Christmas dinner of twelve is not a subject for much joy. "'I propose we'll help Betty wash the dishes,' cried Rosamond Howitt. Out in the kitchen every one laughed and talked and got in the way and had a good time, and if the milk pitcher was knocked on the floor and the pudding bowl emptied in Betty's lap, why, it was all Merry Christmas.' After that they all skated again.
When they came in, little Miss Thrasher, looking almost gay in a rose-red gown, met them in the corridor. "'I thought it would be fun,' she said shyly, "'to have supper in my room. I have a big box from home. I couldn't possibly eat all the things myself, and if you'll bring chaffing-dishes and spoons and those things, I'll cook it, and we can sit round my open fire.' Miss Thrasher's room was homelike, with its fire of white birch and its easy chairs, and Miss Thrasher herself proved to be a pleasant hostess. After supper Miss Hyle told a tale of India, Miss Thrasher gave a rocky mountain adventure, and the girls contributed ghost and burglar stories till each guest was in a thrill of delightful horror.
"'We've had really a fine day. I expected to die of homesickness, but it's been jolly. So did I, but I've actually been happy.' Thus the girls commented as they started for bed. "'I have enjoyed my day,' said little Miss Thrasher. "'Very much.' "'Yes, indeed. It's been a merry Christmas.' Miss Hyles spoke almost eagerly. Betty gave a little jump. She realized each one of them was holding her hand and pressing it a little. "'Thank you. It's been a lovely evening. Good night.' Rosamond had invited Betty to share her roommate's bed, but both girls were too tired and sleepy for any confidence. "'It's been the queerest Christmas,' thought Betty, as she drifted toward sleep. "'Why, I haven't given one single soul one single present.' Yet she smiled, drowsily happy, and then the room seemed to fill with a bright warm light, and round the bed there danced a great Christmas wreath, made up of the faces of the three O'Neills and the thin old rector, with his white hair and pretty Rosamond, and frightened Miss Thrasher and the homesick girls, and lonely Miss Hyle and tear-dimmed Hilma.
And all the faces smiled and nodded and called, Merry Christmas, Betty, Merry Christmas.
End of The Queerest Christmas by Grace Marguerite Gallagher.
-
24 A Rhyme for Christmas 2:43
A Rhyme for Christmas, by John Challing.
Publication delayed by the author's determined but futile attempt to find the rhyme.
If Browning only were here, this yulish time of year, this mewlish time of year, Stubbornly, still refusing to add to the rhymes we've been using since the first Christmas glee, one might say, chantingly rendered by rudest hinds of the pelt-clad shepherding kinds, who didn't know song from B U L L FOOT. Pah! Happily the old Egyptian taw, though I'd hardly wager it baw. B or Bumble for that, and that's flat. But the thing that I wanted to get at is a rhyme for Christmas. Nay, nay, nay, nay, not isthmus. The T and the H sounds covertly are gnawing the nice oracular senses until one may hear them gnar. And the terminal too, for mas, is muss. So that will not do for us. Try for it, sigh for it, cry for it, die for it.
Oh, but if Browning were here to apply for it, he'd rhyme you Christmas. He'd make a mist-pass over something or other, or find you the rhyme's very brother in lovers that kissed fast to baffle the moon. As he'd lose the T final, as fast T as it blended with two, mark the spinal Elysian, tip-clip, as exquisitely, nicely, and hyper-exactly sliced to precisely the extremest technical need. Or he'd twist glass, or he'd have a Kissed lass, or shake neath our noses some great giant fist-mass. No matter. If Robert were here, he could do it, though it took us till Christmas next year to see through it.
-
25 The Story of Christmas 7:03
The Story of Christmas by Nora A.
Smith. A great spiritual efficiency lies in storytelling. Froebel. Christmas Day, you know, dear children, is Christ's Day. Christ's birthday. And I want to tell you why we love it so much, and why we try to make everyone happy when it comes each year. A long, long time ago, more than eighteen hundred years, the baby Christ was born on Christmas Day. A baby so wonderful and so beautiful, who grew up to be a man so wise, so good, so patient and sweet, that every year the people who know about him love him better and better, and are more and more glad when his birthday comes again. You see that he must have been very good and wonderful, for people have always remembered his birthday and kept it lovingly for eighteen hundred years.
He was born long years ago, in a land far, far away across the seas. Before the baby Christ was born, Mary, his mother, had to make a long journey with her husband Joseph. They made this journey to be taxed or counted, for in those days this could not be done in the town where people happened to live. But they must be numbered in the place where they were born. In that far-off time the only way of travelling was on horse or camel, or a good, patient donkey. Camels and horses cost a great deal of money, and Mary was very poor, so she rode on a quiet, safe donkey, while Joseph walked by her side, leading him and leaning on his stick. Mary was very young and beautiful, I think, but Joseph was a great deal older than she.
People dress nowadays in those distant countries just as they did so many years ago, so we know that Mary must have worn a long, thick dress, falling all about her in heavy folds, and that she had a soft white veil over her head and neck, and across her face. Mary lived in Nazareth, and the journey they were making was to Bethlehem, many miles away. They were a long time travelling, I am sure, for donkeys are slow, though they are so careful, and Mary must have been very tired before they came to the end of their journey. They had travelled all day, and it was almost dark when they came near to Bethlehem, to the town where the baby Christ was to be born. There was the place they were to stay, a kind of inn or lodging-house, but not at all like those you know about.
They have them today in that far-off country, just as they built them so many years ago. It was a low, flat-roofed stone building, with no windows and only one large door. There were no nicely furnished bedrooms inside, and no soft white beds for the tired travellers. There were only little places built into the stones of the wall, something like the berths on a steamboat nowadays. Each traveller brought his own bedding. No pretty garden was in front of the inn, for the road ran close to the very door, so that its dust lay upon the door-sill. All around the house, to a high, rocky hill, at the back, a heavy stone fence was built, so that the people and the animals inside might be kept safe. Mary and Joseph could not get very near the inn, for the whole road in front was filled with camels and donkeys and sheep and cows, while a great many men were going to and fro, taking care of the animals.
Some of these people had come to Bethlehem to pay their taxes, as Mary and Joseph had done, and others were staying for the night on their way to Jerusalem, a large city a little further on. The yard was filled, too, with camels and sheep, and men were lying on the ground beside them, resting and watching and keeping them safe. The inn was so full, and the yard was so full of people, that there was no room for anybody else, and the keeper had to take Joseph and Mary through the house and back to the high hill, where they found another place that was used for a stable. This had only a door and front, and deep caves were behind, stretching far into the rocks. This is the spot where Christ was born.
Think, how poor a place! But Mary was glad to be there, after all, and when the Christ-child came, he was like other babies, and had so lately come from heaven that he was happy everywhere. There were mangers all around the cave, where the cattle and sheep were fed, and great heaps of hay and straw were lying on the floor. Then, I think, there were brown-eyed cows and oxen there, and quiet, woolly sheep, and perhaps even some dogs that had come in to take care of the sheep. And there in the cave, by and by, the wonderful baby came, and they wrapped him up and laid him in a manger. All the stars in the sky shone brightly that night, for they knew the Christ child was born, and the angels in heaven sang together for joy.
The angels knew about the lovely child, and were glad that he had come to help the people on earth to be good. There lay the beautiful baby with a manger for his bed, and oxen and sheep all sleeping quietly around him. His mother watched him and loved him, and by and by many people came to see him, for they had heard that a wonderful child was to be born in Bethlehem. All the people in the inn visited him, and even the shepherds left their flocks in the fields and sought the child and his mother. But the baby was very tiny, and could not talk any more than any other child. So he lay in his mother's lap, or in the manger, and only looked at the people. So after they had seen him and loved him, they went away again.
After a time when the baby had grown larger, Mary took him back to Nazareth, and there he lived and grew up. And he grew to be such a sweet, wise, loving boy, such a tender, helpful man, and he said so many good and beautiful things that everyone who knew him loved him. Many of the things he said are in the Bible, you know, and a great many beautiful stories of the things he used to do while he was on Earth. He loved little children like you very much, and often used to take them up in his arms and talk to them. And this is the reason we love Christmas Day so much, and try to make everybody happy when it comes around each year. This is the reason, because Christ, who was born on Christmas Day, has helped us all to be good so many, many times, and because He was the best Christmas present the world ever had.
End of The Story of Christmas by Nora A. Smith
-
26 A Story That Never Ends 14:22
A Story That Never Ends by Mrs. C. J. Woodbury.
Tommy was very angry. He rushed upstairs and into his mother's room, utterly forgetting his knock or, Am I welcome, mother? Bang! echoed the door behind him with a noise that resounded over the whole house. Why he was angry was plain enough. His eye was black, nose bleeding, coat torn, collar hanging. His mother took it off as he bent over the washbowl. Oh, Tommy, she said. "'You've been fighting again.' "'Well, mother,' he exclaimed, "'what do you expect me to do? That Bob Sikes threw rocks at me again and called me names. He said I was—' "'Hush,' said his mother. "'You can only grow more angry as you speak. Is it hard for you now to remember the rule—the good things about others, the naughty things about yourself?' "'Good!' There is nothing good about him.
I hate him. I wish he was dead. I do. I wish I could kill him. Sternly, his mother took him by the arm and led him before the mirror. One look at the face he saw there silenced him. To all intents and purposes, you have killed him. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. You cannot but remember who said it, Tommy. It is late in the afternoon. The sun is going down. "'To-morrow is his birthday. Hadn't you better forgive Bob?' "'The sun may go down, and the sun may come up for all I care,' he answered. "'I'll never forgive him.' Without further word, his mother bathed his heated face and led him to her bed. "'Lie down and rest,' she said. "'You are over-excited. Quiet will help you.' He lay and looked at her as she sat quietly and gravely at her work under the picture.
Ever since he could remember, her chair at this hour of the day had been in that corner, and low over it had always hung, just as it hung now, that picture, so often explained to him, the walk to Emmaus. How calm and quiet his mother was, and the room! How still and cool after that crowded street! Shutting his aching eyes, he could see it again now, the swearing mob of boys and men shoving him on, their brutal faces and gestures, the quarrel, the blows, those he had given and taken. He felt them again, and the burning choke of a final grip and wrestle. Oh, how his head throbbed and ached! It seemed as if the blood would burst through. He opened his eyes again. The room was growing darker. He almost forgot his pain for a few moments, noticing how the sunlight was straightened to a narrow lane, which reached from the extreme southern end of the window to the floor in front of his mother's chair.
He watched the last rays as they slowly left the floor and stole up her dress to her lap and her breast, leaving all behind and below in shadow. Now they had reached her face. It was bent over her work. Well, he knew that was some Christmas gift. May be for him. Some Christmas gift, and tomorrow was Christmas. He looked again to see if he could discover what she was making. But the light had left her now. And had risen to the picture. Queer picture, that was. What funny clothes those men wore, those long gabardines, Mother had called them, reaching almost to the ground, shoes that showed the toes, and hoods for hats. One of them had none. How closely they looked at him! They didn't even see which way they were going.
And what a long way it was, stretching out there, dusty and hot. The room was quite dark now, save for the light on the narrow road there. What was yonder little village in the distance? What kind of a place was Emmaus? His mother had told him about it. Only one street, a long and narrow one, and very few trees, and one or two trading shops only, and the houses low and flat-roofed, with no glass in them, and the sun shining down hot, and straight between them, and—oh, how his head ached!—he was out there looking for Bob Sykes. Maybe that was he lying on this rude bench with the low cedar-bush over it. If it were, he would settle matters with him quick. He would show him—but it wasn't Bob. It was only a sheepdog asleep.
So Tommy turned away and walked slowly along the middle of the street. His face burned with the heat of the sun on his bruises. He was very thirsty. Climbing a little hill over which the road lay, he saw on the other side of it another boy coming toward him. He was a rather peculiar-looking boy, with a face thoughtful but pleasant. He was carrying a heavy sheepskin bag over his shoulder. Tommy determined to ask him if he knew where there was some water. Hello, he said. As the boy drew near, the boy stopped and smiled at Tommy without making reply. Where are you going? said Tommy. I am carrying this bag of tools to my father, the boy answered. Do you live here? asked Tommy. It doesn't seem like much of a place.
No, said the boy. It isn't much of a place, but I live here. What sort of tools have you got in your bag? Who is your father?
My father is a carpenter, answered the boy. Tommy gave a long, low whistle. A carpenter. Why, my father owns a store, and we live in one of the best houses in town. Fairfield is the name of my town. The boy seemed neither to notice the whistle nor the brag, but, allowing the bag to slip from his shoulders to the ground, stood. Still smiling before Tommy. Tommy, who somehow had forgotten his pain and thirst, felt embarrassed for a moment. He never before had made that announcement without its awakening at least a little sensation, even if it were no more than a boast in return.
This is a dull old town, he finally said. Many jolly boys around? A good many, answered the boy. Do you get any time to play? I suppose, though, you don't. You have to work most of the time," added Tommy encouragingly. I work a good deal, said the boy. I get time to play, however. I like it. Which? The work or the play? Both. Well, said Tommy after a pause, do you ever have any trouble with the boys you play with?
No, said the boy. I don't think so. Well... You must be a queer sort of boy. Now, there's a Bob Sykes. Perhaps you've noticed that my eye is hurt, and my face scratched some. Well, we had a little difficulty just a few moments ago. He insulted me, and I won't take an insult from anyone, and I told him to shut up his mouth, and he sassed me back and called me names, and said I was stuck up, and thought I was better than the other boys, and he'd show me that I wasn't. Of course, I wouldn't stand that, so I've had a fight, and it isn't the first one either. Yes, said the boy, I know that. I feel very sorry for Bob. He hasn't any mother to go to, you know. He had to wash the blood and dirt off his face as best he could at the town pump, and then wait around the streets until his father came from work.
It is pretty hard for a boy to have no place to lay his head. Why? "'Do you know Bob Sykes?' asked Tommy. "'Yes,' answered the boy. "'I've been with him a good deal.' "'Queer now,' mused Tommy. "'I don't remember of ever seeing you around. "'But now tell me what you would have done if he had provoked you, and insulted you, too.' "'I would have forgiven him,' answered the boy. "'Well, I did.' There was one spell I just started in and forgave him every day for a week. That was seven times. I would have forgiven him seventy times seven. That is just what my mother always says. Perhaps you know my mother. She knows me, too, replied the boy. That is odd. I didn't think she knew any of the boys Bob knows.
Bob does not know me, replied the boy. I know him. Just then Tommy's attention was attracted by a flock of little brown birds passing over their heads. One of the birds flew low and fluttered as if wounded, and fell in the dust near, where it lay beating its little wings, panting and dying. The boy tenderly picked it up. "'Somebody's hit him with a sling-shot,' said Tommy carelessly. The boy smoothed the bruised wing and straightened the crushed and broken body. The bird ceased fluttering. "'I'm most sorry,' said Tommy. "'I didn't forgive Bob. It makes me feel bad, what you told me about him having no home. Now, Mother is something like you. She don't mind one's being poor. Why, if I took Bob home with me, Mother wouldn't seem to see his clothes and ragged shoes.
She'd just talk to him and treat him like he was the best-dressed boy in town.' There's Bill Logan came home to dinner with me once. Mother made me ask him. He is a real poor boy. Has to work. His mother washes. He didn't know what to do, nor how to act. He kept his hands in his pockets most all the time. Aunt Lily said it was shocking, but Mother said, Never mind. She said she was glad he had his pockets, for his hands were rough and not too clean, and she thought they mortified him. Father went and kissed her then. Don't tell this. I don't know what makes me run on and tell you all these things. I never spoke of them before. But I know Father was a poor, young working man when he married Mother.
The boy raised his hand, and the sparrow gave a twitter of delight and flew heavenward. Why, exclaimed Tommy in amazement, you've cured him. He's all right. How did you do it? Do you feel sorry for the sparrows as well as Bob? I pity every sparrow that is hurt, said the boy. And isn't Bob of more consequence than a sparrow? I wish, said Tommy, I hadn't fought with Bob. It was most all my fault. I've a good mind to tell him so. I wish I was better acquainted with you. If I played with such a boy as you are now, I'd be better, I am certain. Suppose you come after school nights and play in our yard. Never mind your clothes. Can't you come?" Yes, I will come if you want me to," answered the boy, looking steadfastly at him a moment.
But now I must be about my father's business.
He stooped, lifted the bag of tools to his shoulders, and before Tommy could stay him, had moved some steps away. Don't go yet. Tell me some more about what you'd do. And Tommy turned to follow him.
Was it the boy? And was that a bag of tools on his back? It had grown strangely longer and heavier now, so that it dragged on the ground, and the face was the face of the picture, and, lo, it turned toward him, and the hand was raised in benediction and farewell. I am with you always. And he was gone. Oh, come back, come back! sobbed Tommy, reaching at his arms and struggling to run after him. Poor boy, said his mother, wiping the blinding tears from his eyes. Your sleep didn't do you much good.
I've not been asleep, said Tommy. I've been talking with him. And he spoke low with a longing reverence and pointed to the picture. It was a dream, my child. Mother! It was a vision. I saw him, when he was a little boy in his own town, Nazareth. And, Mother, I even told him it wasn't much of a place to live in. He talked to me about Bob. He said you knew him. I saw him cure a little bird, and—oh, Mother—he said he would be with me always. He is a little boy like me. I know what to do now. He showed me. I must find Bob. I must have him forgive me. I want to bring him home with me into my bed for tonight. He stopped. Mother, he said solemnly, tomorrow is his birthday.
End of A Story That Never Ends by Mrs. C. J. Woodbury
-
27 To An Old Fogey 2:28
Org by Corey Samuel, in December, two thousand and seven.
O frankly bald and obviously stout, and so you find that Christmas, as a fate, dispassionately viewed, is getting out of date. The studied festal air is overdone, the humor of it grows a little thin. You fail, in fact, to gather where the fun comes in. Visions of very heavy meals arise that tend to make your organism shiver, roast beef that irks, and pies that agonize the liver. Those pies at which you annually wince, hearing the tale how happy months will follow, proportioned to the total mass of mince you swallow. Visions of youth whose reverence is scant, Who, with the brutal verve of boyhood's prime, insist on being taken to the pantomime. Of infants sitting up extremely late, who run you on toboggans down the stair, or make you fetch a rug and simulate a bear.
This takes your faultless trousers at the knees, the other hurts them rather more behind, and both affect a fracture in your ease of mind. My good dyspeptic, this will never do. Your weary withers must be sadly wrung, Yet once I well believed that even you were young. Time was when you devoured, like other boys, plum-pudding sequent on a turkey-hen, With cracker-mottos hinting of the joys of men. Time was when mid the maidens you would pull the fiery raisin with profound delight, When sprigs of mistletoe seemed beautiful and right. Old Christmas changes not. Long, long ago he won the treasure of eternal youth. Yours is the dotage, if you want to know the truth. Come now, I'll cure your case and ask no fee.
Make others' happiness, this once your own. All else may pass. That joy can never be outgrown.
Merry Christmas.
-
28 Twas the Night Before Christmas 3:51
Twas the night before Christmas, a visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clark Moore. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. T'was the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads, and Mama in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap. When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window, I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the lustre of midday to objects below, when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles, his courses they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name. Now dasha, now dancer, now prancer and vixen, on comet, on cupid, on donder and blitzing. To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, now dash away, dash away, dash away all, as dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky. So up to the housetop the courses they flew, with a sleigh full of toys, and St.
Nicholas too. And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little oof. As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes how they twinkled, his dimples how merry. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke had encircled his head like a reef. He had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and blumper, a jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself. A wink in his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk, and laying his finger aside on his nose, and giving a nod up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, and away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out a sot. Happy Christmas to all, Antip. All a good night. And it was The Night Before Christmas by Clement Seymour.
-
29 Vera's First Chrisstmas Adventure 25:19
Vera's First Christmas Adventure by Arnold Bennett. Read for LibriVox by Andy Minter. I. Five days before Christmas. Cheswardine came home to his wife from a week's sojourn in London on business. Vera, in her quality of the best-dressed woman in Bursley, met him on the doorstep, or thereabouts, of their charming but childless home, attired in a tea-gown that would have ravished a far less impressionable male than her husband, while he, in his quality of a prosaic and flourishing earthenware manufacturer, pretended to take the tea-gown as a matter of course. and gave her the sober, solid kiss of a man who has been married six years, and is getting used to it. Still, the tea-gown had pleased him, and by certain secret symptoms Vera knew that it had pleased him.
She hoped much from that tea-gown. She hoped that he had come home in a more pacific temper than he had shown when he left her, and that she would carry her point after all.
Now, naturally, When a husband, in easy circumstances, the possessor of a pretty and pampered wife, spends a week in London and returns five days before Christmas, certain things are rightly and properly to be expected from him. It would need outstanding courage, an amazing lack of a sense of the amenity of conjugal existence in such a husband, to enable him to disappoint such reasonable expectations. And Cheswardine, though capable of pulling the kerb very tight on the caprices of his wife, was a highly decent fellow. He had no intention to disappoint. He knew his duty. So that, during afternoon tea, with the tea-gown in a cosy corner of the great Chippendale drawing-room, he began to unfasten a small wooden case, which he had brought into the house in his own hand, Opened it with considerable precaution, making a fine mess of packing-stuff on the carpet, and gradually drew to light a pair of vases of Venetian glass.
He put them on the mantelpiece. "'There,' he said, proudly, and with a virtuous air. They were obviously costly antique vases, exquisite in form, exquisite in the graduated tints of their pale blue and rose. Seventeenth century! He said. They're very nice, Vera agreed, with a show of enthusiasm. What are they for? Your Christmas present, Cheswardine explained, and added, My dear. Oh, Stephen, she murmured. A kiss on these occasions is only just, and Cheswardine had one. Duveen's told me they were quite unique, he said modestly, and I believe em. You might imagine that a pair of Venetian vases of the seventeenth century, stated by Juvenes to be unique, would have satisfied a woman who had a generous dress allowance and lacked absolutely nothing that was essential.
But Vera was not satisfied. She was, on the contrary, profoundly disappointed. For the presence of those vases proved that she had not carried her point. They deprived her of hope, The unpleasantness before Cheswardine went to London had been more or less apropos of a Christmas present. Vera had seen in Bostock's vast emporium, in the neighbouring town of Hanbridge, a music-stool, in the style known as Art Nouveau, which had enslaved her fancy. She had taken her husband to see it, and it had not enslaved her husband's fancy in the slightest degree. It was made in light woods, and the woods were curved and twisted, As though they had recently spent seven years in a purgatory for sinful trees. Here and there, in the design, onyx stones had been set in the wood.
The seat itself was beautifully soft. What captured Vera was chiefly the fact that it did not open at the top, as most elaborate music-stools do, but at either side. You pressed a button, onyx, and the panel fell down, displaying your music in little compartments, ready to hand. And the eastern moiety of the music-stool was for piano pieces, and the western moiety for songs. In short, it was the last word of music-stools. Nothing could possibly manure. But Cheswardine did not like it, and did not conceal his opinion. He argued that it would not go with the Chippendale furniture, and Vera said that all beautiful things went together, and Cheswardine admitted that they did, rather dryly. You see, they took the matter seriously, because the house was their hobby.
They were always changing its interior, which was more than they could have done for a child, even if they had had one. And Cespedine's finer and soberer taste was always fighting against Vera's predilection for the novel and the bazaar. Apart from clothes, Vera had not much more than the taste of a mouse. They did not quarrel in Bostock's. Indeed, they did not quarrel anywhere. But after Vera had suggested that he might at any rate humour her by giving her the music-stool for a Christmas present, she seemed to think that this would somehow help it to go with the Chippendale, and Cheswardine had politely but firmly declined. There had been a certain coolness, and quite six tears. Vera had caused it to be understood that even if Chesmerdyne was not interested in music, and even if he did hate music, and did call the Broadwood Ebony Grand ugly, that was no reason why she should be deprived of a pretty and original music-stool that would keep her music tidy, and that would be hers.
As for it not going with the Chippendale, that was simply an excuse, etc. Hence it is not surprising that the Venetian vases of the seventeenth century left Vera cold, and that the domestic prospects for Christmas were a little cold. However Vera, with wifely and submissive tact, made the best of things, and that evening she began to decorate the hall, dining-room, and drawing-room with holly and mistletoe. Before the pair retired to rest, the true Christmas feeling Slightly tinged with a tender melancholy permeated the house, and the servants were growing excited in advance. The servants weren't going to have a dinner-party with crackers and port, and a table-centre unmatched in the five towns.
The servants weren't going to invite their friends to an evening's jollity. The servants were merely going to work somewhat harder, and have somewhat less sleep. But such is the magical effect of holly and mistletoe, twined round picture cords and hung under chandeliers, that the excitement of the servants was entirely pleasurable. And as Vera shut the bedroom door, she said, with a delightful, forgiving smile, "'I saw a lovely cigar-cabinet at Bostock's yesterday.' "'Oh,' said Chesfordine, touched. "'He had no cigar-cabinet, and he wanted one.' And Vera knew that he wanted one. And Vera slept in the sweet consciousness of her thoughtful wifeliness. The next morning, at breakfast, Chesburne demanded, "'Getting pretty hard up, aren't you, Maria?' He called her Maria when he wished to be Arch.
"'Well,' she said, "'as a matter of fact, I am. What with the—' And he gave her a five-pound note.' It happened so every year. He provided her with the money to buy him a Christmas present. But it is, I hope, unnecessary to say that the connection between her present to him and the money he furnished was never crudely mentioned. She made an opportunity, before he left for the works, to praise the Venetian vases, and she insisted that he should wrap up well, because he was showing signs of one of his bad colds.
Two. In the early afternoon she went to Bostock's Emporium at Hanbridge to buy the cigar cabinet and a few domestic trifles. Bostock's is a good shop. I do not say that it has the classic and serene dignity of Brunt's over the way, where one orders one's dining-room sweets and one's frocks for the January dances, but it is a good shop, and one of the chief glories of the Paris of the five towns. It has frontages in three streets. And it might be called the Shop of the Hundred Windows. You can buy pretty nearly anything at Bostock's, from an Art Nouveau music-stool up to the highest cheese, for there is a provision department. You can't get cheese at Brunt's. Vera made her uninteresting purchases first in the basement, and then she went upstairs to the special Christmas department.
which certainly was wonderful. A blaze and splendour of electric light, a glitter of gilded, iridescent toys and knick-knacks, a smiling, excited, pushing multitude of faces, young and old, and the cashiers in their cages, gathering in money as fast as they could lay their tired hands on it. A joyous, brilliant scene, calculated to bring soft tears of satisfaction to the board of directors that presided over Bostock's. It was a record Christmas for Bostock's. The electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets in all the five towns to bring customers to Bostock's. Children dreamt of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff, and remained to pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's, but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit.
People seemed to become intoxicated when they went into Bostock's, to close their heads in a frenzy of buying. And there the Art Nouveau music-stool stood in the corner, where Vera had originally seen it. She approached it, not thinking of the terrible danger. The compartments for music lay invitingly open. "'Four pounds, nine and six, Mrs. Chestwoodine,' said a shop-walker, who knew her. She stopped to finger it. Well, of course everybody is acquainted with that peculiar ecstasy that undoubtedly does overtake you in good shops sometimes, especially at Christmas. I prefer to call it ecstasy rather than intoxication, but I have heard it called even drunkenness. It is a magnificent and overwhelming experience, like good wine.
A blind instinct seizes your reason and throws her out of the window of your soul, and then assumes entire control of the volitional machinery. You listen to no arguments, you care for no consequences, you want a thing, you must have it, you do have it. Vera was caught unawares by this magnificent and overwhelming experience, just as she stooped to finger the music-stool. A fig for the cigar cabinet, a fig for her husband's objections. After all, she was a grown-up woman. Twenty-nine or thirty, and entitled to a certain freedom. She was not, and would not, be a slave. It would look perfect in the drawing-room. "'I'll take it,' she said. "'Yes, Mrs. Jesperdine. A unique thing, quite unique. Penkethman!' And Vera followed Penkethman to a cash-desk, and received half a guinea out of a five-pound note.
"'I want it carefully packed,' said Vera. "'Yes, ma'am. It will be delivered in the morning.' She was just beginning to realise that she had been under the sinister influence of the ecstasy, and that she had not bought the cigar cabinet, and that she had practically no more money, and that Stephen's rule against credit was the strictest of all his rules, when she caught sight of Mr. Charles Woodruff buying toys, doubtless for his nephews and nieces. Mr. Woodruff was the bachelor friend of the family. He had loved Vera before Stephen loved her, and he was still attached to her. Stephen and he were chums of the most advanced kind. Why, Stephen and Vera thought nothing of bickering in front of Mr.
Woodruff, who rated them both, and sided with neither. "'Hullo,' said Woodruff, flushing and moving his long, clumsy limbs when she touched him on the shoulder. "'I'm just buying a few toys.' She helped him to buy toys, and then he asked her to go and have tea with him at the newly-opened Sub Rosa Tea Rooms in Machin Street. She agreed, and in passing the music-stool gave a small parcel which she was carrying to Penkethman, and told him he might as well put it in the music-stool. She was glad to have tea with Charlie Woodruff. It would distract her, prevent her from thinking. The ecstasy had almost died out, and she had a violent desire not to think. 3. A terrible blow fell upon her the next morning.
Stephen had one of his bad colds, one of his worst. The mere cold she could have supported with fortitude, but he was forced to remain indoors, and his presence in the house she could not support with fortitude. The music-stool would be sure to arrive before lunch, and he would be there to see it arrive. The ecstasy had fully expired now, and she had more leisure to think than she wanted. She could not imagine what mad instinct had compelled her to buy the music-stool. Once out of the shop, these instincts are always difficult to imagine. She knew that Stephen would be angry. He might perhaps go to the length of returning the music-stool whence it came, for though she was a pretty and pampered woman, Stephen had a way, in the last resort, of being master of his own house, and she could not even placate him with the gift of a cigar cabinet.
She could not buy a five-guinea cigar cabinet with ten and six. She had no other money in the world. She never had money, yet money was always running through her fingers. Stephen treated her generously, gave her an ample allowance, but he would under no circumstances permit credit. Nor would he pay her allowance in advance. She had nothing to expect till the new year. She attended to his cold, and telephoned to the works for a clock to come up, and she refrained from telling Stephen that he must have been very careless while in London to catch a cold like that. Her self-denial in this respect surprised Stephen, but he put it down to the beneficent influence of Christmas and the Venetian vases.
Bostock's pair-horse van arrived before the garden gate earlier than her worst fears had anticipated, and Bostock's men were evidently in a tremendous hurry that morning. In quite an abnormally small number of seconds, the wooden case containing the fragile music-stool was lying in the inner hall, waiting to be unpacked. Having signed the delivery-book, Vera stood staring at the accusatory package. Stephen was lounging over the dining-room fire, perhaps dozing. She would have the thing swiftly transported upstairs and hidden in an attic for a time. But just then Stephen popped out of the dining-room. Stephen's masculine curiosity had been aroused by the advent of Bostock's van. He had observed the incoming of the package from the window, and he had ventured to the hall to inspect it.
The event had roused him wonderfully from the heavy torpor which a cold induces. He wore a dressing-gown, the pockets of which bulged with handkerchiefs. "'You oughtn't to be out here, Stephen,' said his wife. "'Nonsense,' he said. "'Why, upon my soul, this steam-heat is warmer than the dining-room fire.' Vera, silenced by the voice of truth, could not reply. Stephen bent his great height to inspect the package. It was an appetising Christmas package. Straw escaped from between its ribs, and it had an air of being filled with something at once large and delicate. "'Oh!' observed Stephen, humorously. "'Ah! So! This is it, is it? Ah! Oh! Very good!' And he walked round it. How on earth had he learnt that she had bought it?
She had not mentioned the purchase to Mr. Woodruff. "'Yes, Stephen,' she said timidly, "'that's it, and I hope—' "'It ought to hold a tidy few cigars, that ought,' remarked Stephen, complacently. "'He took it for the cigar cabinet.' She paused, struck. She had to make up her mind in an instant. "'Oh, yes,' she murmured. "'A thousand?' "'Yes, a thousand,' she said. "'I thought so,' murmured Stephen. "'I mustn't kiss you because I've got a cold,' said he. "'But all the same, I'm awfully obliged, Vera. "'Suppose we have it open now, eh? "'Then we could decide where it is to go, "'and I could put my cigars in it.' "'Oh, no,' she protested. "'Oh, no, Stephen, that's not fair. It mustn't be open before Christmas morning.' "'But I gave you my vases yesterday.' "'That's different,' she said.
"'Christmas is Christmas.' "'Oh, very well,' he yielded. "'That's all right, my dear.' Then he began to sniff. "'There's a doosed odd smell from it,' he said. "'Perhaps it's the wood,' she faltered. "'I hope it isn't,' he said. "'I expect it's the straw.' A deuced odd smell. We'll have the thing put in the side-hall next to the clock. It'll be out of the way there, and I can come and gaze at it when I feel depressed. Eh, Maria?" He was undoubtedly charmed at the prospect of owning so large and precious a cigar cabinet. Considering that the parcel which he had given to Penkethman to put in the music-stool comprised a half-pound of Bostock's very ripest Gorgonzola cheese, bought at the cook's special request, The smell which proceeded from the mysterious inwards of the packing-case did not surprise Vera at all, but it disconcerted her nonetheless, and she wondered how she could get the cheese out.
For thirty hours the smell from the unopened packing-case waxed in vigour and strength. Stephen's cold grew worse, and prevented him from appreciating its full beauty, but he savoured enough of it to induce him to compare it facetiously with the effluvium of a dead rat, and he said several times that Bostock really ought to use better straw. He was frequently to be seen in the hall, gloating over his cigar cabinet. Once he urged Vera to have it opened, and so get rid of the straw, but she refused, and found the nerve to tell him that he was exaggerating the odour. She was at a loss what to do. She could not get up in the middle of the night and unpack the package and hide its guilty secret. Indeed, to unpack the package would bring about her ruin instantly, for the package unpacked.
Stephen would naturally expect to see the cigar cabinet. And so the hours crept on to Christmas and Vera's undoing. She gave herself a headache. It was just thirty hours after the arrival of the package when Mr. Woodruff dropped in for tea. Stephen was asleep in the dining-room, which apartment he particularly affected during his colds. Woodruff was shown into the drawing-room, where Vera was having her headache. Vera brightened. In fact, she suddenly grew very bright, and she gave Woodruff tea, and took some herself, and Woodruff passed an enjoyable twenty minutes. The two Venetian vases were on the mantelpiece. Vera rose into ecstasies about them, and called upon Charlie Woodruff to rise too.
He got up from his chair to examine the vases, which Vera had placed close together, side by side, at the corner of the mantelpiece nearest to him. Vera and Woodruff also stood close together, side by side, and just as Woodruff was about to handle the vases, Vera knocked his arm. His arm collided with one vase, that vase collided with the next, and both fell to earth, to the hard, unfeeling, unyielding tiles of the hearth. Four. They were smashed to atoms. Vera screamed. She screamed twice and ran out of the room. "'Steven! Stephen!' she cried hysterically. "'Charlie has broken my vases, both of them. It is too bad of him. He's really too clumsy.' There was a terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal fragments on the hearth.
"'But,' began Charlie Woodruff, And that was all he did say. He and Vera and Stephen had been friends since infancy, so she had the right not to conceal her feelings before him. Stephen had the same right, and they both exercised it. "'But,' began Charlie again, "'oh, never mind,' Stephen stopped him curtly. "'Accidents can't be helped. I shall get another pair,' said Woodruff. "'No, you won't,' replied Stephen. "'You can't. There isn't another pair in the world. See?' The two men simultaneously perceived that Vera was weeping. She was very pretty in tears, but that did not prevent the masculine world from feeling awkward and self-conscious. Charlie had notions about going out and burying himself.
"'Come, Vera, come,' her husband enjoined, blowing his nose with unnecessary energy. Bad as his cold was. "'I like those vases more than anything you've ever given me,' Vera blubbered charmingly. Patting her eyes. Stephen glanced at Woodruff. As who should say, "'Well, my boy, you uncork those tears. I'll leave you to deal with them. You see, I'm an invalid in a dressing-gown. I leave you,' and went. "'No, no, but look, here, here, I say,' Charlie Woodruff expostulated to Vera when he was alone with her. He often started an expostulation with that singular phrase. "'I'm awfully sorry. I don't know how it happened. You must let me give you something else.' Vera shook her head. "'No,' she said, "'I wanted Stephen Awfully to give me that music-stool that I told you about a fortnight ago.
But he gave me the vases instead, and I liked them ever so much better.' "'I shall give you the music-stool. If you wanted it a fortnight ago, you want it now. It won't make up for the vases, of course, but—' "'No, no,' said Vera positively. "'Why not? I do not wish you to give me anything. It wouldn't be quite nice,' Vera insisted. "'But I give you something every Christmas.' "'Do you?' asked Vera innocently. "'Yes, and you and Stephen give me something.' Besides, Stephen doesn't quite like the music-stool. What's that got to do with it? You'll like it. I'm giving it to you, not him. I shall go over to Bostock's to-morrow morning and get it. I forbid you to. I shall. Woodruff departed. Within five minutes the Cheswardine coachman was driving off in the dog-cart to Hanbridge, with the packing-case in the back of the cart, and a note.
He brought back the cigar-cabinet. Stephen had not stirred from the dining-room. Afraid to encounter a tearful wife. Presently his wife came into the dining-room, bearing the vast load of the cigar cabinet in her delicate arms. "'I thought it might amuse you to fill it with your cigars, just to pass the time,' she said. Stephen's thought was, "'Well, women take the cake.' It was a thought that occurs frequently to the husbands of Vera's. There was ripe gorgonzola at dinner. Stephen met it as one meets a person whom one fancies one has met somewhere, but cannot remember where. The next afternoon the music-stool came for the second time into the house. Charlie brought it in his dog-cart. It was unpacked, ostentatiously, by the radiant Vera.
What could Stephen say in depreciation of this gift from their oldest and best friend? As a fact, he could and did say a great deal, but he said it when he happened to be all alone in the drawing-room, and had observed the appalling way in which the music-stool did not go with the Chippendale. "'Look at the deep thing!' he exclaimed to himself. "'Look at it!' However, the Christmas dinner-party was a brilliant success. And after it, Vera sat on the Art Nouveau music-stool, and twittered songs, and what with her being so attractive and bird-like, and what with the Christmas feeling in the air, well, Stephen resigned himself to the music-stool.
End of Vera's First Christmas Adventure by Arnold Bennett
-
30 A Visit From Saint Nicholas 4:06
A visit from St. Nicholas by Clement C.
Moore.
T'was the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds. While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads, and Mama in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap. When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.
With a little old driver so lively and quick I knew at a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his courses they came, And he whistled, and he shouted, and he called them by name. Now Dasher, now Dancer, now Prancer and Vixen, on Comet, on Cupid, on Dunder and Blitzen. To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, now dash away, dash away, dash away all. And as dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they met with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So up to the housetops the courses they flew, with a sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney St.
Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes, how they twinkled, his dimples, how merry, his cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a Bow, and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk and laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.