Title: Christmas Stories
Author: Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Christmas Stories" ***


Libraries.)



                           Christmas Stories



                            [Illustration]

                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                 NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
                        ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

                       MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
                      LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
                               MELBOURNE

                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
                                TORONTO



                           Christmas Stories


                                  By
                             Jacob A. Riis


                               New York
                         The Macmillan Company
                                 1923

                         _All rights reserved_



                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


                    Copyright, 1897, 1898 and 1909,
                          By THE CENTURY CO.

                           Copyright, 1911,
                   By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.

              Copyright, 1903, 1904, 1909, 1914 and 1923,
                       By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

           Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1923.


                      THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY
                               NEW YORK



CONTENTS


                                                    PAGE

  THE KID HANGS UP HIS STOCKING                        1

  IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?                              8

  THE CROGANS' CHRISTMAS IN THE SNOWSHED              17

  THE OLD TOWN                                        33

  HIS CHRISTMAS GIFT                                  53

  THE SNOW BABIES' CHRISTMAS                          59

  JACK'S SERMON                                       75

  MERRY CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS                    84

  WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW IN THE TENEMENTS        123

  NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS                                  138

  THE LITTLE DOLLAR'S CHRISTMAS JOURNEY              150

  LITTLE WILL'S MESSAGE                              165

  THE BURGOMASTER'S CHRISTMAS                        177



                           Christmas Stories



THE KID HANGS UP HIS STOCKING


The clock in the West Side Boys' Lodging-house ticked out the seconds
of Christmas eve as slowly and methodically as if six fat turkeys were
not sizzling in the basement kitchen against the morrow's spread,
and as if two-score boys were not racking their brains to guess what
kind of pies would go with them. Out on the avenue the shop-keepers
were barring doors and windows, and shouting "Merry Christmas!" to
one another across the street as they hurried to get home. The drays
ran over the pavement with muffled sounds; winter had set in with a
heavy snow-storm. In the big hall the monotonous click of checkers on
the board kept step with the clock. The smothered exclamations of the
boys at some unexpected, bold stroke, and the scratching of a little
fellow's pencil on a slate, trying to figure out how long it was yet
till the big dinner, were the only sounds that broke the quiet of the
room. The superintendent dozed behind his desk.

A door at the end of the hall creaked, and a head with a shock of
weather-beaten hair was stuck cautiously through the opening.

"Tom!" it said in a stage-whisper. "Hi, Tom! Come up an' git on ter de
lay of de Kid."

A bigger boy in a jumper, who had been lounging on two chairs by the
group of checker players, sat up and looked toward the door. Something
in the energetic toss of the head there aroused his instant curiosity,
and he started across the room. After a brief whispered conference the
door closed upon the two, and silence fell once more on the hall.

They had been gone but a little while when they came back in haste. The
big boy shut the door softly behind him and set his back against it.

"Fellers," he said, "what d'ye t'ink? I'm blamed if de Kid ain't gone
an' hung up his sock fer Chris'mas!"

The checkers dropped, and the pencil ceased scratching on the slate, in
breathless suspense.

"Come up an' see," said Tom, briefly, and led the way.

The whole band followed on tiptoe. At the foot of the stairs their
leader halted.

"Yer don't make no noise," he said, with a menacing gesture.
"You, Savoy!"--to one in a patched shirt and with a mischievous
twinkle,--"you don't come none o' yer monkey-shines. If you scare de
Kid you'll get it in de neck, see!"

With this admonition they stole upstairs. In the last cot of the double
tier of bunks a boy much smaller than the rest slept, snugly tucked
in the blankets. A tangled curl of yellow hair strayed over his baby
face. Hitched to the bedpost was a poor, worn little stocking, arranged
with much care so that Santa Claus should have as little trouble in
filling it as possible. The edge of a hole in the knee had been drawn
together and tied with a string to prevent anything falling out. The
boys looked on in amazed silence. Even Savoy was dumb.

Little Willie, or, as he was affectionately dubbed by the boys, "the
Kid," was a waif who had drifted in among them some months before.
Except that his mother was in the hospital, nothing was known about
him, which was regular and according to the rule of the house. Not
as much was known about most of its patrons; few of them knew more
themselves, or cared to remember. Santa Claus had never been anything
to them but a fake to make the colored supplements sell. The revelation
of the Kid's simple faith struck them with a kind of awe. They sneaked
quietly downstairs.

"Fellers," said Tom, when they were all together again in the big
room,--by virtue of his length, which had given him the nickname of
"Stretch," he was the speaker on all important occasions,--"ye seen
it yerself. Santy Claus is a-comin' to this here joint to-night. I
wouldn't 'a' believed it. I ain't never had no dealin's wid de ole guy.
He kinder forgot I was around, I guess. But de Kid says he is a-comin'
to-night, an' what de Kid says goes."

Then he looked round expectantly. Two of the boys, "Gimpy" and Lem,
were conferring aside in an undertone. Presently Gimpy, who limped, as
his name indicated, spoke up.

"Lem says, says he----"

"Gimpy, you chump! you'll address de chairman," interrupted Tom, with
severe dignity, "or you'll get yer jaw broke, if yer leg _is_ short,
see!"

"Cut it out, Stretch," was Gimpy's irreverent answer. "This here ain't
no regular meetin', an' we ain't goin' to have none o' yer rot. Lem,
he says, says he, let's break de bank an' fill de Kid's sock. He won't
know but it wuz ole Santy done it."

A yell of approval greeted the suggestion. The chairman, bound to
exercise the functions of office in season and out of season, while
they lasted, thumped the table.

"It is regular motioned an' carried," he announced, "that we break de
bank fer de Kid's Chris'mas. Come on, boys!"

The bank was run by the house, with the superintendent as paying
teller. He had to be consulted, particularly as it was past banking
hours; but the affair having been succinctly put before him by a
committee, of which Lem and Gimpy and Stretch were the talking members,
he readily consented to a reopening of business for a scrutiny of the
various accounts which represented the boys' earnings at selling
papers and blacking boots, minus the cost of their keep and of sundry
surreptitious flings at "craps" in secret corners. The inquiry
developed an available surplus of three dollars and fifty cents. Savoy
alone had no account; the run of craps had recently gone heavily
against him. But in consideration of the season, the house voted a
credit of twenty-five cents to him. The announcement was received with
cheers. There was an immediate rush for the store, which was delayed
only a few minutes by the necessity of Gimpy and Lem stopping on
the stairs to "thump" one another as the expression of their entire
satisfaction.

The procession that returned to the lodging-house later on, after
wearing out the patience of several belated storekeepers, might have
been the very Santa's supply-train itself. It signalized its advent by
a variety of discordant noises, which were smothered on the stairs by
Stretch, with much personal violence, lest they wake the Kid out of
season. With boots in hand and bated breath, the midnight band stole
up to the dormitory and looked in. All was safe. The Kid was dreaming,
and smiled in his sleep. The report roused a passing suspicion that he
was faking, and Savarese was for pinching his toe to find out. As this
would inevitably result in disclosure, Savarese and his proposal were
scornfully sat upon. Gimpy supplied the popular explanation.

"He's a-dreamin' that Santy Claus has come," he said, carefully working
a base-ball bat past the tender spot in the stocking.

"Hully Gee!" commented Shorty, balancing a drum with care on the end
of it, "I'm thinkin' he ain't far out. Look's ef de hull shop'd come
along."

It did when it was all in place. A trumpet and a gun that had made vain
and perilous efforts to join the bat in the stocking leaned against the
bed in expectant attitudes. A picture-book with a pink Bengal tiger and
a green bear on the cover peeped over the pillow, and the bedposts and
rail were festooned with candy and marbles in bags. An express-wagon
with a high seat was stabled in the gangway. It carried a load of fir
branches that left no doubt from whose livery it hailed. The last touch
was supplied by Savoy in the shape of a monkey on a yellow stick, that
was not in the official bill of lading.

"I swiped it fer de Kid," he said briefly in explanation.

When it was all done the boys turned in, but not to sleep. It was long
past midnight before the deep and regular breathing from the beds
proclaimed that the last had succumbed.

The early dawn was tinging the frosty window panes with red when from
the Kid's cot there came a shriek that roused the house with a start
of very genuine surprise.

"Hello!" shouted Stretch, sitting up with a jerk and rubbing his eyes.
"Yes, sir! in a minute. Hello, Kid, what to----"

The Kid was standing barefooted in the passageway, with a base-ball
bat in one hand and a trumpet and a pair of drumsticks in the other,
viewing with shining eyes the wagon and its cargo, the gun and all
the rest. From every cot necks were stretched, and grinning faces
watched the show. In the excess of his joy the Kid let out a blast on
the trumpet that fairly shook the building. As if it were a signal,
the boys jumped out of bed and danced a breakdown about him in their
shirt-tails, even Gimpy joining in.

"Holy Moses!" said Stretch, looking down, "if Santy Claus ain't been
here an' forgot his hull kit, I'm blamed!"



IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?



  "DEAR MR. RIIS:


    "A little chap of six on the Western frontier writes to us:

        "'Will you please tell me if there is a Santa Claus? Papa says
          not.'

    "Won't you answer him?"


That was the message that came to me from an editor last December
just as I was going on a journey. Why he sent it to me I don't know.
Perhaps it was because, when I was a little chap, my home was way up
toward that white north where even the little boys ride in sleds behind
reindeer, as they are the only horses they have. Perhaps it was because
when I was a young lad I knew Hans Christian Andersen, who surely ought
to know, and spoke his tongue. Perhaps it was both. I will ask the
editor when I see him. Meanwhile, here was his letter, with Christmas
right at the door, and, as I said, I was going on a journey.

I buttoned it up in my greatcoat along with a lot of other letters I
didn't have time to read, and I thought as I went to the depot what a
pity it was that my little friend's papa should have forgotten about
Santa Claus. We big people do forget the strangest way, and then we
haven't got a bit of a good time any more.

No Santa Claus! If you had asked that car full of people I would have
liked to hear the answers they would have given you. No Santa Claus!
Why, there was scarce a man in the lot who didn't carry a bundle that
looked as if it had just tumbled out of his sleigh. I felt of one
slyly, and it was a boy's sled--a "flexible flyer," I know, because he
left one at our house the Christmas before; and I distinctly heard the
rattling of a pair of skates in that box in the next seat. They were
all good-natured, every one, though the train was behind time--that is
a sure sign of Christmas. The brakeman wore a piece of mistletoe in his
cap and a broad grin on his face, and he said "Merry Christmas" in a
way to make a man feel good all the rest of the day. No Santa Claus, is
there? You just ask him!

And then the train rolled into the city under the big gray dome to
which George Washington gave his name, and by-and-by I went through a
doorway which all American boys would rather see than go to school a
whole week, though they love their teacher dearly. It is true that last
winter my own little lad told the kind man whose house it is that he
would rather ride up and down in the elevator at the hotel, but that
was because he was so very little at the time and didn't know things
rightly, and, besides, it was his first experience with an elevator.

As I was saying, I went through the door into a beautiful white hall
with lofty pillars, between which there were regular banks of holly
with the red berries shining through, just as if it were out in the
woods! And from behind one of them there came the merriest laugh you
could ever think of. Do you think, now, it was that letter in my pocket
that gave that guilty little throb against my heart when I heard it, or
what could it have been? I hadn't even time to ask myself the question,
for there stood my host all framed in holly, and with the heartiest
handclasp.

"Come in," he said, and drew me after. "The coffee is waiting."
And he beamed upon the table with the veriest Christmas face as he
poured it out himself, one cup for his dear wife and one for me. The
children--ah! you should have asked _them_ if there was a Santa Claus!

And so we sat and talked, and I told my kind friends that my own dear
old mother, whom I have not seen for years, was very, very sick in
far-away Denmark and longing for her boy, and a mist came into my
hostess's gentle eyes and she said, "Let us cable over and tell her how
much we think of her," though she had never seen her. And it was no
sooner said than done. In came a man with a writing-pad, and while we
drank our coffee this message sped under the great stormy sea to the
far-away country where the day was shading into evening already, though
the sun was scarce two hours high in Washington:


                                              THE WHITE HOUSE.

  _Mrs. Riis, Ribe, Denmark_:

  Your son is breakfasting with us. We send you our love and sympathy.

                                 THEODORE AND EDITH ROOSEVELT.


For, you see, the house with the holly in the hall was the White
House, and my host was the President of the United States. I have to
tell it to you, or you might easily fall into the same error I came
near falling into. I had to pinch myself to make sure the President
was not Santa Claus himself. I felt that he had in that moment given
me the very greatest Christmas gift any man ever received: my little
mother's life. For really what ailed her was that she was very old, and
I know that when she got the President's dispatch she must have become
immediately ten years younger and got right out of bed. Don't you know
mothers are that way when any one makes much of their boys? I think
Santa Claus must have brought them all in the beginning--the mothers, I
mean.

I would just give anything to see what happened in that old town that
is full of blessed memories to me, when the telegraph ticked off that
message. I will warrant the town hurried out, burgomaster, bishop,
beadle and all, to do honor to my gentle old mother. No Santa Claus,
eh? What was that, then, that spanned two oceans with a breath of love
and cheer, I should like to know. Tell me that!

After the coffee we sat together in the President's office for a little
while while he signed commissions, each and every one of which was just
Santa Claus's gift to a grown-up boy who had been good in the year that
was going; and before we parted the President had lifted with so many
strokes of his pen clouds of sorrow and want that weighed heavily on
homes I knew of to which Santa Claus had had hard work finding his way
that Christmas.

It seemed to me as I went out of the door, where the big policeman
touched his hat and wished me a Merry Christmas, that the sun never
shone so brightly in May as it did then. I quite expected to see the
crocuses and the jonquils, that make the White House garden so pretty,
out in full bloom. They were not, I suppose, only because they are
official flowers and have a proper respect for the calendar that runs
Congress and the Executive Departments, too.

I stopped on the way down the avenue at Uncle Sam's paymaster's to see
what he thought of it. And there he was, busy as could be, making ready
for the coming of Santa Claus. No need of my asking any questions here.
Men stood in line with bank-notes in their hands asking for gold, new
gold-pieces, they said, most every one. The paymaster, who had a sprig
of Christmas green fixed in his desk just like any other man, laughed
and shook his head and said "Santa Claus?" and the men in the line
laughed too and nodded and went away with their gold.

One man who went out just ahead of me I saw stoop over a poor woman
on the corner and thrust something into her hand, then walk hastily
away. It was I who caught the light in the woman's eye and the blessing
upon her poor wan lips, and the grass seemed greener in the Treasury
dooryard, and the sky bluer than it had been before, even on that
bright day. Perhaps--well, never mind! if any one says anything to you
about principles and giving alms, you tell him that Santa Claus takes
care of the principles at Christmas, and not to be afraid. As for him,
if you want to know, just ask the old woman on the Treasury corner.

And so, walking down that Avenue of Good-will, I came to my train again
and went home. And when I had time to think it all over I remembered
the letters in my pocket which I had not opened. I took them out and
read them, and among them were two sent to me in trust for Santa Claus
himself which I had to lay away with the editor's message until I got
the dew rubbed off my spectacles. One was from a great banker, and
it contained a check for a thousand dollars to help buy a home for
some poor children of the East Side tenements in New York, where the
chimneys are so small and mean that scarce even a letter will go up
through them, so that ever so many little ones over there never get on
Santa Claus's books at all.

The other letter was from a lonely old widow, almost as old as my dear
mother in Denmark, and it contained a two-dollar bill. For years, she
wrote, she had saved and saved, hoping some time to have five dollars,
and then she would go with me to the homes of the very poor and be
Santa Claus herself. "And wherever you decided it was right to leave
a trifle, that should be the place where it would be left," read the
letter. But now she was so old that she could no longer think of such
a trip and so she sent the money she had saved. And I thought of a
family in one of those tenements where father and mother are both lying
ill, with a boy, who ought to be in school, fighting all alone to keep
the wolf from the door, and winning the fight. I guess he has been too
busy to send any message up the chimney, if indeed there is one in his
house; but you ask him, right now, whether he thinks there is a Santa
Claus or not.

No Santa Claus? Yes, my little man, there is a Santa Claus, thank God!
Your father had just forgotten. The world would indeed be poor without
one. It is true that he does not always wear a white beard and drive
a reindeer team--not always, you know--but what does it matter? He
is Santa Claus with the big, loving, Christmas heart, for all that;
Santa Claus with the kind thoughts for every one that make children and
grown-up people beam with happiness all day long. And shall I tell you
a secret which I did not learn at the post-office, but it is true all
the same--of how you can always be sure your letters go to him straight
by the chimney route? It is this: send along with them a friendly
thought for the boy you don't like: for Jack who punched you, or Jim
who was mean to you. The meaner he was the harder do you resolve to
make it up: not to bear him a grudge. That is the stamp for the letter
to Santa. Nobody can stop it, not even a cross-draught in the chimney,
when it has that on.

Because--don't you know, Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas: and
ever and ever so many years ago when the dear little Baby was born
after whom we call Christmas, and was cradled in a manger out in the
stable because there was not room in the inn, that Spirit came into
the world to soften the hearts of men and make them love one another.
Therefore, that is the mark of the Spirit to this day. Don't let
anybody or anything rub it out. Then the rest doesn't matter. Let them
tear Santa's white beard off at the Sunday-school festival and growl in
his bearskin coat. These are only his disguises. The steps of the real
Santa Claus you can trace all through the world as you have done here
with me, and when you stand in the last of his tracks you will find the
Blessed Babe of Bethlehem smiling a welcome to you. For then you will
be home.



THE CROGANS' CHRISTMAS IN THE SNOWSHED


A storm was brewing in the mountains. The white glare of the earlier
day had been supplanted by a dull gray, and the peaks that shut the
winter landscape in were "smoking," sure harbinger of a blizzard
already raging in the high Sierras. The pines above the Crogans' cabin
stood like spectral sentinels in the failing light, their drooping
branches heavy with the snow of many storms. Mrs. Tom Crogan sat at the
window looking listlessly into the darkening day.

In the spring she had come with her husband from the little Minnesota
town that was their home, full of hope and the joy of life. The
mountains were beautiful then with wild flowers and the sweet smell
of fragrant firs, and as she rocked her baby to sleep in their deep
shadows she sang to him the songs her mother had crooned over her
cradle in her tuneful Swedish tongue. Life then had seemed very fair,
and the snowshed hardly a shadow across it. For to her life there were
two sides: one that looked out upon the mountains and the trees and
the wild things that stirred in God's beautiful world; the other the
blind side that turned toward the darkness man had made in his fight
to conquer that world. Tom Crogan was a dispatcher at a signal station
in the great snowsheds that stretched forty miles or more up the
slopes of the Sierras, plunging the road to the Land of Sunshine into
hour-long gloom just when the jagged "saw-tooth" peaks, that give the
range its name, came into sight. Travelers knew them to their grief:
a huge crawling thing of timber and stout planks--so it seemed as one
caught fleeting glimpses of it in the brief escapes from its murky
embrace--that followed the mountain up, hugging its side close as it
rose farther and farther toward the summit. Hideous always, in winter
buried often out of sight by the smashing avalanches Old Boreas hurled
at the pigmy folk who dared challenge him in his own realm; but within
the shelter of the snowsheds they laughed at his bluster, secure from
harm, for then it served its appointed purpose.

The Crogans' house fronted or backed--whichever way one chose to look
at it--upon the shed. Tom's office, where the telegraph ticker was
always talking of men and things in the desert sands to the east, or
in the orange groves over the Divide, never saw the sunshine it told
of. It burrowed in perpetual gloom. Nine times a day trains full of
travelers, who peered curiously at the signalmen with their lanterns
and at Tom as so many human moles burrowing in the mountain, came and
went, and took the world of men with them, yawning as they departed
at the prospect of more miles of night. At odd intervals long freight
trains lingered, awaiting orders, and lent a more human touch. For the
engineer had time to swap yarns with Tom, and the brakemen looked in to
chuck the baby under the chin and to predict, when their smudge faces
frightened him, that he would grow up to be as fine a railroader as
his father: his yell was as good as a whistle to "down brakes." Even a
wandering hobo once in a while showed his face from behind the truck on
which he was stealing a ride 'cross country, and grimaced at Mrs. Tom,
safe in the belief that she would not give him away. And she didn't.

But now the winter had come with the heavy snows that seemed never to
end. She could not venture out upon the mountain where the pines stood
buried many feet deep. In truth there was no getting out. Her life
side was banked up, as it were, to stay so till spring came again.
As she sat watching the great white waste that sloped upward toward
the lowering sky she counted the months: two, three, four--five,
probably, or six, to wait. For this was Christmas, and the winter was
but fairly under way. Five months! The winters were hard enough on the
plains, but the loneliness of these mountains! What glad visiting and
holiday-making were going on now in her old home among kindred and
friends! There it was truly a season of kindliness and good cheer;
they had brought their old Norse Yule with them across the seas. She
choked back a sob as she stirred the cradle with her foot. For Tom's
sake she would be brave. But no letter nor word had come from the East,
and this their first Christmas away from home!

There was a man's step on the stairs from the office, and Tom Crogan
put his head through the doorway.

"Got a bite for a hungry man?" he asked, blinking a bit at the white
light from without.

The baby woke up and gurgled. Tom waved the towel at him, drying his
face at the sink, and hugged his wife as she passed.

"Storm coming," he said, glancing out at the weather and listening to
the soughing of the wind in the pines.

"Nothing else here," she replied, setting the table; "nothing this long
while, and, oh, Tom!"--she set down the plate and went over to him--"no
word from home, and this is Christmas Eve. Nothing even for the baby."

He patted her back affectionately, and cheered her after the manner of
a man.

"Trains all late, the snow is that deep, more particular in the East,
they say. Mail might not come through for a week. Baby don't know the
difference so long as he is warm. And coal we've got a-plenty."

"Then it will be New Year's," she pursued her own thoughts drearily.
Tom was not a good comforter just then.

He ate like a tired man, in silence. "Special on the line," he said,
as he stirred the sugar in his coffee. "When the road opens up she'll
follow right on the Overland."

"Some o' your rich folks, most like, going for a holiday on the Coast,"
she commented without interest. Tom nodded. She gave the stove lid an
impatient twist.

"Little they know," she said bitterly, "or care either, how we live
up here in the sheds. They'd oughter take their turn at it a while.
There's the Wrights with Jim laid up since he broke his leg at the time
o' the wreck, and can't seem to get no strength. And the Coulsons with
their old mother in this grippin' cold, an' all the sickness they've
had, an' he laid off, though he wasn't to blame, an' you know it, Tom.
If it hadn't been for you what would 'a' come to the Overland runnin'
straight for that wrecked freight with full head o' steam----"

Tom looked up good-humoredly and pushed back his plate.

"Why, Mary! what's come over you? I only done what I was there to
do--and they took notice all right. Don't you remember the Company
wrote and thanked me for bein' spry?"

"Thanked you!" contemptuously. "What good is that? Here we be, an'
like to stay till----You can come up if you want to."

The invitation was extended, ungraciously enough, to a knot of men
clustered about the steps. They trooped in, a gang of snow-shovelers
fresh from their fight with the big drifts, and stood about the stove,
the cold breath of outdoors in their looks and voices. Their talk was
of their work just finished. The road was clear, but for how long? And
they flapped their frozen mittens toward the window through which the
snow could be seen already beginning to fall in large, ominous flakes.
The Special was discussed with eager interest. No one knew who it
was--an unusual thing. Generally words came along the line giving the
news, but there had been no warning of this one.

"Mebbe it's the President inspectin'," ventured one of the crew.

"I tank it bane some o' dem Wall Street fellers on one big bust," threw
in a husky Swede.

In the laugh that followed this sally the ticker was heard faintly
clicking out a message in the office below.

Tom listened. "Overland three hours late," he said, and added with a
glance outside as he made ready to go: "like as not they'll be later'n
that; they won't keep Christmas on the Coast this while."

The snow-shovelers trailed out after Tom with many a fog-horn salute of
Merry Christmas to his wife and to the baby. The words, well meant,
jarred harshly upon Mrs. Crogan.

Merry Christmas! It sounded in her ear almost like a taunt. When they
were gone she stood at the window, struggling with a sense of such
bitter desolation as she had never known till then. The snow fell
thick now, and was whirled across the hillside in fitful gusts. In
the gathering darkness trees and rocks were losing shape and color;
nothing was left but the white cold, the thought of which chilled her
to the marrow. Through the blast the howl of a lone wolf came over the
ridge, and she remembered the story of Donner Lake, just beyond, and
the party of immigrants who starved to death in the forties, shut in by
such a winter as this. There were ugly tales on the mountain of things
done there, which men told under their breath when the great storms
thundered through the cañons and all were safe within. She had heard
the crew of the rotary say that there was as much as ten feet of snow
on some of the levels already, and the winter only well begun. Without
knowing it she fell to counting the months to spring again: two, three,
four, five! With a convulsive shudder she caught up the child and fled
to the darkest corner of the room. Crouching there by the fire her
grief and bitterness found vent in a flood of rebellious tears.

Down in his dark coop Tom Crogan, listening to a distant roar and the
quickening rhythm of the rails, knew that the Overland was coming.
Presently it shot out from behind the shoulder of the mountain.
Ordinarily it passed swiftly enough, but to-day it slowed up and came
to a stop at the station. The conductor hurried into the office and
held an anxious consultation with Tom, who shook his head decisively.
If the storm kept up there would be no getting out that night. The
cut over at the lake that had just been cleared was filling up again
sure with the wind blowing from the north. There was nothing to do but
wait, anyhow until they knew for certain. The conductor agreed with bad
grace, and the rotary was started up the road to reconnoiter. The train
discharged its weary and worried passengers, who walked up and down the
dark cavern to stretch their legs, glancing indifferently at the little
office where the telegraph kept up its intermittent chatter.

Suddenly it clicked out a loud warning: "Special on way. Clear the
track."

Tom rapped on his window and gave quick orders. The men hurried to
carry them out.

"Not far she'll go," they grinned as they set the switch and made all
safe. At the turn half a mile below the red eye of the locomotive
gleamed already in the dusk. In a few minutes it pulled in with a
shriek of its whistle that woke the echoes of the hills far and near,
and stood panting in a cloud of steam. Trackmen and signalmen craned
their necks to see the mysterious stranger. Even Mrs. Tom had dried
her tears and came out to look at the despised bigbugs from the East,
rebellion yet in her homesick heart.

The news that the "Big Boss" might be on board had spread to the
passenger train, and crowds flocked from the sleepers, curious to get
a glimpse of the railroad magnate who had made such a stir in the
land. His power was so great that common talk credited him with being
stronger than Congress and the courts combined. The newspapers recorded
all his doings as it did the President's, but with this difference,
that while everybody knew all about the Man in the White House, few if
any seemed to know anything real about the railroad man's private life.
In the popular estimation he was a veritable Sphinx. At his country
home in the East he had bought up the land for five miles around--even
the highways--to keep intruders out. Here now was an unexpected chance,
and the travelers crowded up to get a look at him.

But they saw no luxurious private car with frock-coated officials and
liveried servants. An every-day engine with three express cars in
tow stood upon the track, and baggagemen in blue overalls yelled for
hand-trucks, and hustled out boxes and crates consigned to "The agent
at Shawnee." Yet it was not an every-day train nor an ordinary crew;
for all of them, conductor, brakemen, engineer and fireman, wore holly
in their caps and broad grins on their faces. The locomotive flew two
white flags with the words "Merry Christmas" in red letters, and across
the cars a strip of canvas was strung their whole length, with the
legend "The Christmas Train" in capitals a foot long. Even in the gloom
of the snowshed it shone out, plain to read.

Tom in his office rubbed his eyes for another and better look when the
conductor of the Special, pushing his way through the wondering crowds,
flung open the door.

"Here's yer docyments," he said, slapping down a paper, "and the orders
are that ye're to see they gets 'em."

Tom Crogan took up the paper as if dazed, and looked at the entries
without in the least understanding what it all meant. He did not see
the jam of railroad men and passengers who had crowded into the office
on the heels of the conductor until they filled it to the doors.
Neither did he notice that his wife had come with them and was standing
beside him looking as mystified as he. Mechanically he read out the
items in the way-bill, while the conductor checked them off with many
a wink at the crowd. What nightmare was this? Had some delirious Santa
Claus invaded the office of the Union Pacific Railroad, and turned
it into a toy shop and dry-goods bazar combined, with a shake of his
reindeer bells? Or was it a huge, wretched, misbegotten joke? Surely
stranger bill of lading never went over the line, or over any railroad
line before. This was what he read:

  "Crate of fat turkeys, one for every family on the station (their
  names followed).

  "One ditto of red apples.

  "One ditto of oranges, to be similarly apportioned.

  "For Tom Crogan, one meerschaum pipe.

  "For James Wright, lately injured in the service and not yet
  recovered, a box of books, and allowance of full pay during
  disability. Ordered to report at Sacramento until fully restored.

  "For John Coulson, Christmas gifts, including a warm flannel
  wrapper for his old mother; also notice of back pay allowed since
  suspension, with full restoration to place and pay.

  "For Mrs. Thomas Crogan, not on the official payroll, but whom the
  Company takes this opportunity to thank for assistance rendered her
  husband on a recent occasion, one dress pattern, with the wishes of
  the Superintendent's office for a very Merry Christmas.

  "For Master Thomas Crogan, not yet on the official payroll, being
  under age, a box of toys, including rubber ball and sheep, doll and
  Noah's ark, with the compliments of the Company for having chosen
  so able a railroad man for his father.

  "For Master Thomas Crogan, as a token of regard from passengers on
  the Overland of November 18, one rocking-horse, crated."

"Oh, Tom!"--Mrs. Crogan caught her breath with a gasp--"and he not a
year old!"

Tom looked up to find the room full of people laughing at him and at
her, but there was hearty, happy good-will in the laugh, and Mrs. Tom
was laughing back.

The conductor got up to go, but checked himself abruptly. "If I didn't
come near to forget," he said and reached for his pocket. "Here, Tom,
this is for you from the Superintendent. If it ain't a secret read it
aloud."

The message was brief:


  _Thomas Crogan, Esq._,
    Agent and Dispatcher at Shawnee Station:

    The compliments of the season and of the Superintendent's office
    to you. Have a Merry Christmas, Tom, up in your shed, for we want
    you down on the Coast after New Year's.

                                                  FRANK ALDEN,
                                                  Superintendent.


Tom looked up with a smile. He had got his bearings at last. There was
no doubt about that signature. His eyes met his wife's, brimming with
sudden joy. The dream of her life was made real.

The railroad men raised a cheer in which there was a note of regret,
for Tom was a prime favorite with them all, and crowded up to shake
hands. The passengers followed suit, ready to join in, yet mystified
still. But now, when they heard from the conductor of the Special how
Tom by quick action had saved the Overland, the very train they were
on, from running into a wrecked freight two months before, many of them
remembered the story of it--how Tom, being left alone when everybody
else lost his head in the smashup, had sprinted down the track with
torpedoes, while his wife set the switch and waved the signal lantern,
and had just caught the Limited around the curve, and how narrow had
been the escape from a great disaster. And their quick sympathy went
out to the young couple up in the lonely heights, who a few moments
before had been less to them than the inert thing of iron and steel
that was panting on the track outside like a huge monster after a hard
run.

When it was learned that both trains were stalled, perhaps for all
night, the recollection that it was Christmas Eve gave sudden direction
to their sympathies. Since friends on the Coast must wait they would
have their Christmas where they were, if it were in a snowshed. In
less time than any one could have made a formal motion the trainful of
excited passengers, just now so disgruntled, resolved itself into a
committee of arrangements to which were added both the train crews.

A young balsam from the mountainside made its appearance, no one knew
exactly how, and in a trice it shone with a wealth of candles and toys
at which the baby, struggling up to a sitting posture in his cradle,
looked with wide-eyed wonder. The Crogans' modest living-room was
made festive with holly and evergreen and transformed into a joyous
dining-room before Mrs. Tom could edge in a word of protest. All the
memories of her cherished Yule surged in upon her as the room filled
with the smell of roast turkey and mince pie and what not of good
cheer, borne in by a procession of white-clad waiters who formed a
living chain between the dining-car and the station. When in the wake
of them the veritable rocking-horse, hastily unpacked, was led in by a
hysterical darky, and pranced and pawed its way across the floor, its
reins jingling with silver bells, Thomas Crogan, Junior, considered it,
sitting bolt upright, one long minute, sighed and, overwhelmed by such
magnificence, went calmly to sleep. It was too much for one Christmas
Eve, and he not a year old.

When as many as could crowd in were seated with Tom Crogan and his
wife--the conductors and engineers of the two trains representing the
road--the clergyman in the party arose to remind them all that they
were far from home and friends, keeping Christmas in the mountain
wilderness.

"But," he said, "though a continent separates us we meet with them all
here to-night before the face of Him who came as a helpless Babe to the
world of sin and selfishness, and brought peace and good-will to men."
And he read to them how "It came to pass in those days, that there went
out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,"
and the story of the Child that is old, yet will be ever new while the
world stands.

In the reverent hush that had fallen upon the company a tenor voice
rose clear and sweet in the old hymn:

    "It came upon the midnight clear
        That glorious song of old."

When the lines were reached:

    "Still through the cloven skies they come
        With peaceful wings unfurl'd,"

many of the passengers joined in and sang the verse to the end. The
familiar words seemed to come with a comforting message to every one in
the little cabin.

In the excitement they had all forgotten the weather. Unseen by every
one the moon had come out and shone clear in an almost cloudless sky.
The storm was over. A joyful toot of the rotary's whistle, as dinner
neared its end, announced its return with the welcome news that the
road was open once more.

With many hearty handshakes, and wishes for happy years to come,
the unexpected Christmas party broke up. But there was yet a small
ceremony left. It was performed by a committee of three of the Overland
passengers who had friends or kin on board the train Tom Crogan had
saved. They had quietly circulated among the rest, and now, with the
conductor shouting "All aboard!" they put an envelope into Tom's hand,
with the brief directions "for moving expenses," and jumped on their
car as the engine blew its last warning whistle and the airbrakes
wheezed their farewell.

Tom opened it and saw five crisp twenty-dollar bills tucked neatly
inside.

The Limited pulled out on the stroke of midnight, with cheering
passengers on every step and in every window. Tom and his wife stood
upon the step of the little station and waved their handkerchiefs as
long as the bull's-eye on the last car was in sight. When it was gone
and they were left with the snowshed and the Special breathing sleepily
on its siding she laid her head on his shoulder. A rush of repentant
tears welled up and mingled with the happiness in her voice.

"Oh, Tom!" she said. "Did ye ever know the like of it? I am fair sorry
to leave the old shed."



THE OLD TOWN


I do not know how the forty years I have been away have dealt with
"Jule-nissen," the Christmas elf of my childhood. He was pretty old
then, gray and bent, and there were signs that his time was nearly
over. So it may be that they have laid him away. I shall find out when
I go over there next time. When I was a boy we never sat down to our
Christmas Eve dinner until a bowl of rice and milk had been taken up to
the attic, where he lived with the marten and its young, and kept an
eye upon the house--saw that everything ran smoothly. I never met him
myself, but I know the house-cat must have done so. No doubt they were
well acquainted; for when in the morning I went in for the bowl, there
it was, quite dry and licked clean, and the cat purring in the corner.
So, being there all night, he must have seen and likely talked with him.

I suspect, as I said, that they have not treated my Nisse fairly in
these matter-of-fact days that have come upon us, not altogether for
our own good, I fear. I am not even certain that they were quite
serious about him then, though to my mind that was very unreasonable.
But then there is nothing so unreasonable to a child as the cold
reason of the grown-ups. However, if they have gone back on him, I know
where to find him yet. Only last Christmas when I talked of him to the
tenement-house mothers in my Henry Street Neighborhood House,[1]--all
of them from the ever faithful isle,--I saw their eyes light up with
the glad smile of recognition, and half a dozen called out excitedly,
"The Little People! the Leprecawn ye mean, we know him well," and they
were not more pleased than I to find that we had an old friend in
common. For the Nisse, or the Leprecawn, call him whichever you like,
was a friend indeed to those who loved kindness and peace. If there
was a house in which contention ruled, either he would have nothing
to do with it, like the stork that built its nest on the roof, or
else he paid the tenants back in their own coin, playing all kinds of
tricks upon them and making it very uncomfortable. I suppose it was
this trait that gave people, when they began to reason so much about
things, the notion that he was really the wraith, as it were, of their
own disposition, which was not so at all. I remember the story told of
one man who quarrelled with everybody, and in consequence had a very
troublesome Nisse in the house that provoked him to the point of moving
away; which he did. But as the load of furniture was going down the
street, with its owner hugging himself in glee at the thought that
he had stolen a march on the Nisse, the little fellow poked his head
out of the load and nodded to him, "We are moving to-day." At which
naturally he flew into a great rage. But then, that was just a story.

       [1] The Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement, New York.

The Nisse was of the family, as you see, very much of it, and certainly
not to be classed with the cattle. Yet they were his special concern;
he kept them quiet, and saw to it, when the stableman forgot, that they
were properly bedded and cleaned and fed. He was very well known to the
hands about the farm, and they said that he looked just like a little
old man, all in gray and with a pointed red nightcap and long gray
beard. He was always civilly treated, as he surely deserved to be, but
Christmas was his great holiday, when he became part of it, indeed, and
was made much of. So, for that matter, was everything that lived under
the husbandman's roof, or within reach of it. The farmer always set a
lighted candle in his window on Christmas Eve, to guide the lonesome
wanderer to a hospitable hearth. The very sparrows that burrowed in the
straw thatch, and did it no good, were not forgotten. A sheaf of rye
was set out in the snow for them, so that on that night at least they
should have shelter and warmth unchallenged, and plenty to eat. At all
other times we were permitted to raid their nests and help ourselves
to a sparrow roast, which was by long odds the greatest treat we had.
Thirty or forty of them, dug out of any old thatch roof by the light of
the stable lantern and stuffed into Ane's long stocking, which we had
borrowed for a game-bag, made a meal for the whole family, each sparrow
a fat mouthful. Ane was the cook, and I am very certain that her
pot-roast of sparrow would pass muster at any Fifth Avenue restaurant
as the finest dish of reed-birds that ever was. However, at Christmas
their sheaf was their sanctuary, and no one as much as squinted at
them. Only last winter when Christmas found me stranded in a little
Michigan town, wandering disconsolate about the streets, I came across
such a sheaf raised on a pole in a dooryard, and I knew at once that
one of my people lived in that house and kept Yule in the old way. So I
felt as if I were not quite a stranger.

All the animals knew perfectly well that the holiday had come, and kept
it in their way. The watch-dog was unchained. In the midnight hour
on the Holy Eve the cattle stood up in their stalls and bowed out of
respect and reverence for Him who was laid in a manger when there was
no room in the inn, and in that hour speech was given them, and they
talked together. Claus, our neighbor's man, had seen and heard it, and
every Christmas Eve I meant fully to go and be there when it happened;
but always long before that I had been led away to bed, a very sleepy
boy, with all my toys hugged tight, and when I woke up the daylight
shone through the frosted window-panes, and they were blowing good
morning from the church tower; it would be a whole year before another
Christmas. So I vowed, with a sigh at having neglected a really sacred
observance, that I would be there sure on the next Christmas Eve. But
it was always so, every year, and perhaps it was just as well, for
Claus said that it might go ill with the one who listened, if the cows
found him out.

Blowing in the Yule from the grim old tower that had stood eight
hundred years against the blasts of the North Sea was one of the
customs of the Old Town that abide, however it fares with the Nisse;
that I know. At sun-up, while yet the people were at breakfast, the
town band climbed the many steep ladders to the top of the tower, and
up there, in fair weather or foul,--and sometimes it blew great guns
from the wintry sea,--they played four old hymns, one to each corner
of the compass, so that no one was forgotten. They always began with
Luther's sturdy challenge, "A Mighty Fortress is our God," while
down below we listened devoutly. There was something both weird and
beautiful about those far-away strains in the early morning light of
the northern winter, something that was not of earth and that suggested
to my child's imagination the angels' song on far Judean hills. Even
now, after all these years, the memory of it does that. It could not
have been because the music was so rare, for the band was made up of
small storekeepers and artisans who thus turned an honest penny on
festive occasions. Incongruously enough, I think, the official town
mourner who bade people to funerals was one of them. It was like the
burghers' guard, the colonel of which--we thought him at least a
general, because of the huge brass sword he trailed when he marched at
the head of his men--was the town tailor, a very small but very martial
man. But whether or no, it was beautiful. I have never heard music
since that so moved me. When the last strain died away came the big
bells with their deep voices that sang far out over field and heath,
and our Yule was fairly under way.

A whole fortnight we kept it. Real Christmas was from Little Christmas
Eve, which was the night before the Holy Eve proper, till New Year.
Then there was a week of supplementary festivities before things
slipped back into their wonted groove. That was the time of parties
and balls. The great ball of the year was on the day after Christmas.
Second Christmas Day we called it, when all the quality attended at the
club-house, where the Amtmand and the Burgomaster, the Bishop and the
Rector of the Latin School, did the honors and received the people.
That was the grandest of the town functions. The school ball, late in
autumn, was the jolliest, for then the boys invited each the girl
he liked best, and the older people were guests and outsiders, so to
speak. The Latin School, still the "Cathedral School," was as old as
the Domkirke itself, and when it took the stage it was easily first
while it lasted. The Yule ball, though it was a rather more formal
affair, for all that was neither stiff nor tiresome; nothing was in the
Old Town; there was too much genuine kindness for that. And that it was
the recognized occasion when matches were made by enterprising mammas,
or by the young themselves, and when engagements were declared and
discussed as the great news of the day. We heard of all those things
afterward and thought a great fuss was being made over nothing much.
For when a young couple were declared engaged, that meant that there
was no more fun to be out of them. They were given, after that, to go
mooning about by themselves and to chasing us children away when we ran
across them; until they happily returned to their senses, got married,
and became reasonable human beings once more.

When we had been sent to bed on the great night, Father and Mother went
away in their Sunday very best, and we knew they would not return until
two o'clock in the morning, a fact which alone invested the occasion
with unwonted gravity, for the Old Town kept early hours. At ten
o'clock, when the watchman droned his sleepy lay, absurdly warning the
people to

    Be quick and bright,
    Watch fire and light,
    Our clock it has struck ten,

it was ordinarily tucked in and asleep. But that night we lay awake
a long time listening to the muffled sound of heavy wheels in the
snow rolling unceasingly past, and trying to picture to ourselves the
grandeur they conveyed. Every carriage in the town was then in use and
doing overtime. I think there were as many as four.

When we were not dancing or playing games, we literally ate our way
through the two holiday weeks. Pastry by the mile did we eat, and
general indigestion brooded over the town when it emerged into the
white light of the new year. At any rate it ought to have done so. It
is a prime article of faith with the Danes to this day that for any one
to go out of a friend's house, or of anybody's house, in the Christmas
season without partaking of its cheer, is to "bear away their Yule,"
which no one must do on any account. Every house was a bakery from
the middle of December until Christmas Eve, and oh! the quantities of
cakes we ate, and such cakes! We were sixteen normally, in our home,
and Mother mixed the dough for her cakes in a veritable horse-trough
kept for that exclusive purpose. As much as a sack of flour went in, I
guess, and gallons of molasses and whatever else went to the mixing.
For weeks there had been long and anxious speculations as to "what
Father would do," and gloomy conferences between him and Mother over
the state of the family pocket-book, which was never plethoric; but at
last the joyful message ran through the house from attic to kitchen
that the appropriation had been made, "even for citron," which meant
throwing all care to the winds. The thrill of it, when we children
stood by and saw the generous avalanche going into the trough! What
would not come out of it! The whole family turned to and helped make
the cakes and cut the "pepper-nuts," which were little squares of
spiced cake-dough we played cards for and stuffed our pockets with,
gnawing them incessantly. Talk about eating between meals: ours was a
continuous performance for two solid weeks. The pepper-nuts were the
real staple of Christmas to us children. We paid forfeits with them in
the game of scratch-nose (jackstraws), when the fellow fishing for his
straw stirred the others and had his nose scratched with the little
file in the bunch as extra penalty; in "Under which tree lies my pig?"
in which the pig was a pepper-nut, the fingers of the closed hands
the trees; and in Black Peter. In this last the loser had his nose
blackened with the snuff from the candle until advancing civilization
substituted a burnt cork. Christmas without pepper-nuts would have been
a hollow mockery indeed. We rolled the dough in long strings like
slender eels and then cut it, a little on the bias. They were good,
those nuts, when baked brown. I wish I had some now.

It all stood for the universal desire that in the joyous season
everybody be made glad. I know that in the Old Town no one went hungry
or cold during the holidays, if indeed any one ever did. Every one gave
of what he had, and no one was afraid of pauperizing anybody by his
gifts, for they were given gladly and in love, and that makes all the
difference--did then and does now. At Christmas it is perfectly safe to
let our scientific principles go and just remember the Lord's command
that we love one another. I subscribe to them all with perfect loyalty,
and try to practise them till Christmas week comes in with its holly
and the smell of balsam and fir, and the memories of childhood in the
Old Town; then--well, anyway, it is only a little while. New Year and
the long cold winter come soon enough.

Christmas Eve was, of course, the great and blessed time. That was
the one night in the year when in the gray old Domkirke services were
held by candle-light. A myriad wax candles twinkled in the gloom, but
did not dispel it. It lingered under the great arches where the voice
of the venerable minister, the responses of the congregation, and
above it all the boyish treble of the choir billowed and strove, now
dreamily with the memories of ages past, now sharply, tossed from angle
to corner in the stone walls, and again in long thunderous echoes,
sweeping all before it on the triumphant strains of the organ, like a
victorious army with banners crowding through the halls of time. So it
sounded to me, as sleep gently tugged at my eyelids. The air grew heavy
with the smell of evergreens and of burning wax, and as the thunder of
war drew farther and farther away, in the shadow of the great pillars
stirred the phantoms of mailed knights whose names were hewn in the
grave-stones there. We youngsters clung to the skirts of Mother as we
went out and the great doors fell to behind us. And yet those Christmas
Eves, with Mother's gentle eyes forever inseparable from them, and with
the glad cries of Merry Christmas ringing all about, have left a touch
of sweet peace in my heart which all the years have not effaced, nor
ever will.

At home the great dinner of the year was waiting for us; roast goose
stuffed with apples and prunes, rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar
on it, and a great staring butter eye in the middle. The pudding was
to lay the ground-work with, and it was served in deep soup-plates. It
was the dish the Nisse came in on, and the cat. On New Year's Eve both
these were left out; but to make up for it an almond was slipped into
the "gröd," and whoever found it in his plate got a present. It was no
device to make people "fletch," but it served the purpose admirably.
At Christmas we had doughnuts after the goose, big and stout and good.
However I managed it, I don't know, but it is a tradition in the
family, and I remember it well, that I once ate thirteen on top of the
big dinner. Evidently I was having a good time. Dinner was, if not the
chief end of man, at least an item in his make-up, and a big one.[2]

       [2] The reader who is not afraid of dyspepsia by suggestion
       may consider the following Christmas bill of fare which
       obtained among the peasants east of the Old Town: On a large
       trencher a layer of pork and ribs, on top of that a nest of
       fat sausages, in which sat a roast duck.

When it had had time to settle and all the kitchen work was done,
Father took his seat at the end of the long table, with all the
household gathered about, the servants included and the baby without
fail, and read the story of The Child: "And it came to pass in those
days," while Mother hushed the baby. Then we sang together "A Child is
Born in Bethlehem," which was the simplest of our hymns, and also the
one we children loved best, for it told of how in heaven we were to
walk to church

                  On sky-blue carpets, star-bedeckt,

which was a great comfort. Children love beautiful things, and we had
few of them. The great and precious treasure in our house was the rag
carpet in the spare room which we were allowed to enter only on festive
occasions such as Christmas. It had an orange streak in it which I can
see to this day. Whenever I come across one that even remotely suggests
it, it gives me yet a kind of solemn feeling. We had no piano,--that
was a luxury in those days,--and Father was not a singer, but he led
on bravely with his tremulous bass and we all joined in, Ane the cook
and Maria the housemaid furtively wiping their eyes with their aprons,
for they were good and pious folk and this was their Christmas service.
So we sang the ten verses to end, with their refrain "Hallelujah!
hallelujah," that always seemed to me to open the very gates of Yule.

And it did, literally; for when the last hallelujah died away the
door of the spare room was flung wide and there stood the Christmas
tree, all shining lights, and the baby was borne in, wide-eyed, to
be the first, as was proper; for was not this The Child's holiday?
Unconsciously we all gave way to those who were nearest Him, who had
most recently come from His presence and were therefore in closest
touch with the spirit of the holiday. So, when we joined hands and
danced around the tree, Father held the baby, and we laughed and were
happy as the little one crowed his joy and stretched his tiny arms
toward the light.

Light and shadow, joy and sorrow, go hand in hand in the world. While
we danced and made merry, there was one near for whom Christmas was but
grief and loss. Out in the white fields he went from farm to farm, a
solitary wanderer, the folklore had it, looking for plough or harrow
on which to rest his weary limbs. It was the Wandering Jew, to whom
this hope was given, that, if on that night of all in the year he could
find some tool used in honest toil over which the sign of the cross had
not been made, his wanderings would be at an end and the curse depart
from him, to cleave thence-forward to the luckless farmer.[3] He never
found what he sought in my time. The thrifty husbandman had been over
his field on the eve of the holiday with a watchful eye to his coming.
When the bell in the distant church tower struck the midnight hour,
belated travellers heard his sorrowful wail as he fled over the heath
and vanished.

       [3] An unromantic variation of this was the belief that the
       farmer who left his plough out on Christmas would get a
       drubbing from his wife within a twelvemonth. I hope whoever
       held to that got what he richly deserved.

When Ansgarius preached the White Christ to the vikings of the North,
so runs the legend of the Christmas tree, the Lord sent His three
messengers, Faith, Hope, and Love, to help light the first tree.
Seeking one that should be high as hope, wide as love, and that bore
the sign of the cross on every bough, they chose the balsam fir, which
best of all the trees in the forest met the requirements. Perhaps that
is a good reason why there clings about the Christmas tree in my old
home that which has preserved it from being swept along in the flood
of senseless luxury that has swamped so many things in our money-mad
day. At least so it was then. Every time I see a tree studded with
electric lights, garlands of tinsel-gold festooning every branch, and
hung with the hundred costly knicknacks the storekeepers invent year
by year "to make trade," until the tree itself disappears entirely
under its burden, I have a feeling what a fraud has been practised on
the kindly spirit of Yule. Wax candles are the only real thing for
a Christmas tree, candles of _wax_ that mingle their perfume with
that of the burning fir, not the by-product of some coal-oil or other
abomination. What if the boughs do catch fire; they can be watched, and
too many candles are tawdry, anyhow. Also, red apples, oranges, and
old-fashioned cornucopias made of colored paper, and made at home, look
a hundred times better and fitter in the green; and so do drums and toy
trumpets and waldhorns, and a rocking-horse reined up in front that
need not have cost forty dollars, or anything like it.

I am thinking of one, or rather two, a little piebald team with a
wooden seat between, for which Mother certainly did not give over
seventy-five cents at the store, that as "Belcher and Mamie"--the names
were bestowed on the beasts at sight by Kate, aged three, who bossed
the play-room--gave a generation of romping children more happiness
than all the expensive railroads and trolley-cars and steam-engines
that are considered indispensable to keeping Christmas nowadays. And
the Noah's Ark with Noah and his wife and all the animals that went two
by two--ah, well! I haven't set out to preach a sermon on extravagance
that makes no one happier, but I wish--The legend makes me think of
the holly that grew in our Danish woods. We called it Christ-thorn,
for to us it was of that the crown of thorns was made with which the
cruel soldiers mocked our Saviour, and the red berries were the drops
of blood that fell from His anguished brow. Therefore the holly was a
sacred tree, and to this day the woods in which I find it seem to me
like the forest where the Christmas roses bloomed in the night when the
Lord was born, different from all other woods, and better.

Mistletoe was rare in Denmark. There was known to be but one oak in
all the land on which it grew. But that did not discourage the young.
We had our kissing games which gave the boys and girls their chance to
choose sides, and in the Christmas season they went on right merrily.
There was rarely a night that did not bring the children together under
some roof or other. They say that kissing goes by favor, but we had not
arrived at that point yet, though we had our preferences. In the game
of Post Office, for instance, he was a bold boy who would dare call out
the girl he really liked, to get the letter that was supposed to be
awaiting her. You could tell for a dead certainty who was his choice
by watching whom he studiously avoided asking for. I have a very vivid
recollection of having once really dared with sudden desperation, and
of the defiant flushed face, framed in angry curls, that confronted me
in the hall, the painful silence while we each stood looking the other
way and heard our playmates tittering behind the closed door,--for
well they knew,--and her indignant stride as she went back to her seat
unkissed, with me trailing behind, feeling like a very sheepish boy,
and no doubt looking the part.

The Old Year went out with much such a racket as we make nowadays,
but of quite a different kind. We did not blow the New Year in, we
"smashed" it in. When it was dark on New Year's Eve, we stole out with
all the cracked and damaged crockery of the year that had been hoarded
for the purpose and, hieing ourselves to some favorite neighbor's door,
broke our pots against it. Then we ran, but not very far or very fast,
for it was part of the game that if one was caught at it, he was to
be taken in and treated to hot doughnuts. The smashing was a mark of
favor, and the citizen who had most pots broken against his door was
the most popular man in town. When I was in the Latin School, a cranky
burgomaster, whose door had been freshly painted, gave orders to the
watchmen to stop it and gave them an unhappy night, for they were hard
put to it to find a way it was safe to look, with the streets full of
the best citizens in town, and their wives and daughters, sneaking
singly by with bulging coats on their way to salute a friend. That was
when our mothers--those who were not out smashing in New Year--came
out strong, after the fashion of mothers. They baked more doughnuts
than ever that night, and beckoned the watchman in to the treat; and
there he sat, blissfully deaf while the street rang with the thunderous
salvos of our raids; until it was discovered that the burgomaster
himself was on patrol, when there was a sudden rush from kitchen doors
and a great scurrying through streets that grew strangely silent.

The town had its revenge, however. The burgomaster, returning home in
the midnight hour, stumbled in his gate over a discarded Christmas
tree hung full of old boots and many black and sooty pots that went
down around him with great smash in the upset, so that his family came
running out in alarm to find him sprawling in the midst of the biggest
celebration of all. His dignity suffered a shock which he never got
over quite. But it killed the New Year's fun, too. For he was really a
good fellow, and then he was the burgomaster, and chief of police to
boot. I suspect the fact was that the pot smashing had run its course.
Perhaps the supply of pots was giving out; we began to use tinware more
about that time. That was the end of it, anyhow.

We boys got square, too, with the watchmen. We knew their habit
of stowing themselves away in the stage-coach that stood in the
market-place when they had cried the hour at ten o'clock, and we
caught them napping there one dark night when we were coming home from
a party. The stage had doors that locked on the outside. We slammed
them shut and ran the conveyance, with them in it wildly gesticulating
from the windows, through the main street of the town, amid the cheers
of the citizens whom the racket aroused from their slumbers. We were
safe enough. The watchmen were not anxious to catch us, maddened as
they were by our prank, and they were careful not to report us either.
I chuckled at that exploit more than once when, in years long after,
I went the rounds of the midnight streets with Haroun-al-Roosevelt,
as they called New York's Police Commissioner, to find his patrolmen
sleeping soundly on their posts when they should have been catching
thieves. Human nature, police human nature, anyhow, is not so
different, after all, in the old world and in the new.

With Twelfth Night our Yule came to an end. In that night, if a girl
would know her fate, she must go to bed walking backward and throw a
shoe over her left shoulder, or hide it under her pillow, I forget
which, perhaps both, and say aloud a verse that prayed the Three Holy
Kings to show her the man

    Whose table I must set,
    Whose bed I must spread,
    Whose name I must bear,
    Whose bride I must be.

The man who appeared to her in her sleep was to be her husband. There
was no escape from it, and consequently she did not try. He was her
Christmas gift, and she took him for better or for worse. Let us hope
that the Nisse played her no scurvy trick, and that it was for better
always.



HIS CHRISTMAS GIFT


"The prisoner will stand," droned out the clerk in the Court of General
Sessions. "Filippo Portoghese, you are convicted of assault with intent
to kill. Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed
upon you?"

A sallow man with a hopeless look in his heavy eyes rose slowly in
his seat and stood facing the judge. There was a pause in the hum and
bustle of the court as men turned to watch the prisoner. He did not
look like a man who would take a neighbor's life, and yet so nearly
had he done so, of set purpose it had been abundantly proved, that his
victim would carry the disfiguring scar of the bullet to the end of his
life, and only by what seemed an almost miraculous chance had escaped
death. The story as told by witnesses and substantially uncontradicted
was this:

Portoghese and Vito Ammella, whom he shot, were neighbors under the
same roof. Ammella kept the grocery on the ground floor. Portoghese
lived upstairs in the tenement. He was a prosperous, peaceful man, with
a family of bright children, with whom he romped and played happily
when home from his barber shop. The Black Hand fixed its evil eye upon
the family group and saw its chance. One day a letter came demanding a
thousand dollars. Portoghese put it aside with the comment that this
was New York, not Italy. Other letters followed, threatening harm to
his children. Portoghese paid no attention, but his wife worried. One
day the baby, little Vito, was missing, and in hysterics she ran to her
husband's shop crying that the Black Hand had stolen the child.

The barber hurried home and sought high and low. At last he came upon
the child sitting on Ammella's doorstep; he had wandered away and
brought up at the grocery; asked where he had been, the child pointed
to the store. Portoghese flew in and demanded to know what Ammella was
doing with his boy. The grocer was in a bad humor, and swore at him.
There was an altercation, and Ammella attacked the barber with a broom,
beating him and driving him away from his door. Black with anger,
Portoghese ran to his room and returned with a revolver. In the fight
that followed he shot Ammella through the head.

He was arrested and thrown into jail. In the hospital the grocer
hovered between life and death for many weeks. Portoghese lay in the
Tombs awaiting trial for more than a year, believing still that he was
the victim of a Black Hand conspiracy. When at last the trial came on,
his savings were all gone, and of the once prosperous and happy man
only a shadow was left. He sat in the court-room and listened in moody
silence to the witnesses who told how he had unjustly suspected and
nearly murdered his friend. He was speedily convicted, and the day of
his sentence was fixed for Christmas Eve. It was certain that it would
go hard with him. The Italians were too prone to shoot and stab, said
the newspapers, and the judges were showing no mercy.

The witnesses had told the truth, but there were some things they did
not know and that did not get into the evidence. The prisoner's wife
was ill from grief and want; their savings of years gone to lawyer's
fees, they were on the verge of starvation. The children were hungry.
With the bells ringing in the glad holiday, they were facing bitter
homelessness in the winter streets, for the rent was in arrears and the
landlord would not wait. And "Papa" away now for the second Christmas,
and maybe for many yet to come! Ten, the lawyer and jury had said: this
was New York, not Italy. In the Tombs the prisoner said it over to
himself, bitterly. He had thought only of defending his own.

So now he stood looking the judge and the jury in the face, yet hardly
seeing them. He saw only the prison gates opening for him, and the gray
walls shutting him out from his wife and little ones for--how many
Christmases was it? One, two, three--he fell to counting them over
mentally and did not hear when his lawyer whispered and nudged him with
his elbow. The clerk repeated his question, but he merely shook his
head. What should he have to say? Had he not said it to these men and
they did not believe him? About little Vito who was lost, and his wife
who cried her eyes out because of the Black Hand letters. He----

There was a step behind him, and a voice he knew spoke. It was the
voice of Ammella, his neighbor, with whom he used to be friends
before--before that day.

"Please, your Honor, let this man go! It is Christmas, and we should
have no unkind thoughts. I have none against Filippo here, and I ask
you to let him go."

It grew very still in the court-room as he spoke and paused for an
answer. Lawyers looked up from their briefs in astonishment. The
jurymen in the box leaned forward and regarded the convicted man and
his victim with rapt attention. Such a plea had not been heard in that
place before. Portoghese stood mute; the voice sounded strange and far
away to him. He felt a hand upon his shoulder that was the hand of a
friend, and shifted his feet uncertainly, but made no response. The
gray-haired judge regarded the two gravely but kindly.

"Your wish comes from a kind heart," he said. "But this man has been
convicted. The law must be obeyed. There is nothing in it that allows
us to let a guilty man go free."

The jurymen whispered together and one of them arose.

"Your Honor," he said, "a higher law than any made by man came into the
world at Christmas--that we love one another. These men would obey it.
Will you not let them? The jury pray as one man that you let mercy go
before justice on this Holy Eve."

A smile lit up Judge O'Sullivan's face. "Filippo Portoghese," he said,
"you are a very fortunate man. The law bids me send you to prison for
ten years, and but for a miraculous chance would have condemned you to
death. But the man you maimed for life pleads for you, and the jury
that convicted you begs that you go free. The Court remembers what you
have suffered and it knows the plight of your family, upon whom the
heaviest burden of your punishment would fall. Go, then, to your home.
And to you, gentlemen, a happy holiday such as you have given him and
his! This court stands adjourned."

The voice of the crier was lost in a storm of applause. The jury
rose to their feet and cheered judge, complainant, and defendant.
Portoghese, who had stood as one dazed, raised eyes that brimmed with
tears to the bench and to his old neighbor. He understood at last.
Ammella threw his arm around him and kissed him on both cheeks, his
disfigured face beaming with joy. One of the jurymen, a Jew, put his
hand impulsively in his pocket, emptied it into his hat, and passed the
hat to his neighbor. All the others followed his example. The court
officer dropped in half a dollar as he stuffed its contents into the
happy Italian's pocket. "For little Vito," he said, and shook his hand.

"Ah!" said the foreman of the jury, looking after the reunited friends
leaving the court-room arm in arm; "it is good to live in New York. A
merry Christmas to you, Judge!"



THE SNOW BABIES' CHRISTMAS


"All aboard for Coney Island!" The gates of the bridge train slammed,
the whistle shrieked, and the cars rolled out past rows of houses
that grew smaller and lower to Jim's wondering eyes, until they quite
disappeared beneath the track. He felt himself launching forth above
the world of men, and presently he saw, deep down below, the broad
stream with ships and ferry-boats and craft going different ways, just
like the tracks and traffic in a big, wide street; only so far away was
it all that the pennant on the topmast of a vessel passing directly
under the train seemed as if it did not belong to his world at all. Jim
followed the white foam in the wake of the sloop with fascinated stare,
until a puffing tug bustled across its track and wiped it out. Then
he settled back in his seat with a sigh that had been pent up within
him twenty long, wondering minutes since he limped down the Subway at
Twenty-third Street. It was his first journey abroad.

Jim had never been to the Brooklyn Bridge before. It is doubtful if he
had ever heard of it. If he had, it was as of something so distant,
so unreal, as to have been quite within the realm of fairyland, had
his life experience included fairies. It had not. Jim's frail craft
had been launched in Little Italy, half a dozen miles or more up-town,
and there it had been moored, its rovings being limited at the outset
by babyhood and the tenement, and later on by the wreck that had made
of him a castaway for life. A mysterious something had attacked one
of Jim's ankles, and, despite ointments and lotions prescribed by the
wise women of the tenement, had eaten into the bone and stayed there.
At nine the lad was a cripple with one leg shorter than the other by
two or three inches, with a stepmother, a squalling baby to mind for
his daily task, hard words and kicks for his wage; for Jim was an
unprofitable investment, promising no returns, but, rather, constant
worry and outlay. The outlook was not the most cheering in the world.

But, happily, Jim was little concerned about things to come. He lived
in the day that is, fighting his way as he could with a leg and a half
and a nickname,--"Gimpy" they called him for his limp,--and getting
out of it what a fellow so handicapped could. After all, there were
compensations. When the gang scattered before the cop, it did not occur
to him to lay any of the blame to Gimpy, though the little lad with
the pinched face and sharp eyes had, in fact, done scouting duty most
craftily. It was partly in acknowledgment of such services, partly as a
concession to his sharper wits, that Gimpy was tacitly allowed a seat
in the councils of the Cave Gang, though in the far "kid" corner. He
limped through their campaigns with them, learned to swim by "dropping
off the dock" at the end of the street into the swirling tide, and
once nearly lost his life when one of the bigger boys dared him to
run through an election bonfire like his able-bodied comrades. Gimpy
started to do it at once, but stumbled and fell, and was all but burned
to death before the other boys could pull him out. This act of bravado
earned him full membership in the gang, despite his tender years; and,
indeed, it is doubtful if in all that region there was a lad of his age
as tough and loveless as Gimpy. The one affection of his barren life
was the baby that made it slavery by day. But, somehow, there was that
in its chubby foot groping for him in its baby sleep, or in the little
round head pillowed on his shoulder, that more than made up for it all.

Ill luck was surely Gimpy's portion. It was not a month after he had
returned to the haunts of the gang, a battle-scarred veteran now since
his encounter with the bonfire, when "the Society's" officers held up
the huckster's wagon from which he was crying potatoes with his thin,
shrill voice, which somehow seemed to convey the note of pain that
was the prevailing strain of his life. They made Gimpy a prisoner,
limp, stick, and all. The inquiry that ensued as to his years and home
setting, the while Gimpy was undergoing the incredible experience of
being washed and fed regularly three times a day, set in motion the
train of events that was at present hurrying him toward Coney Island
in midwinter, with a snow-storm draping the land in white far and
near, as the train sped seaward. He gasped as he reviewed the hurrying
event of the week: the visit of the doctor from Sea Breeze, who had
scrutinized his ankle as if he expected to find some of the swag of the
last raid hidden somewhere about it. Gimpy never took his eyes off him
during the examination. No word or cry escaped him when it hurt most,
but his bright, furtive eyes never left the doctor or lost one of his
movements. "Just like a weasel caught in a trap," said the doctor,
speaking of his charge afterward.

But when it was over, he clapped Gimpy on the shoulder and said it was
all right. He was sure he could help.

"Have him at the Subway to-morrow at twelve," was his parting
direction; and Gimpy had gone to bed to dream that he was being dragged
down the stone stairs by three helmeted men, to be fed to a monster
breathing fire and smoke at the foot of the stairs.

Now his wondering journey was disturbed by a cheery voice beside him.
"Well, bub, ever see that before?" and the doctor pointed to the gray
ocean line dead ahead. Gimpy had not seen it, but he knew well enough
what it was.

"It's the river," he said, "that I cross when I go to Italy."

"Right!" and his companion held out a helping hand as the train pulled
up at the end of the journey. "Now let's see how we can navigate."

And, indeed, there was need of seeing about it. Right from the step
of the train the snow lay deep, a pathless waste burying street
and sidewalk out of sight, blocking the closed and barred gate
of Dreamland, of radiant summer memory, and stalling the myriad
hobby-horses of shows that slept their long winter sleep. Not a whinny
came on the sharp salt breeze. The strident voice of the carpenter's
saw and the rat-tat-tat of his hammer alone bore witness that there
was life somewhere in the white desert. The doctor looked in dismay at
Gimpy's brace and high shoe, and shook his head.

"He never can do it. Hello, there!" An express wagon had come into view
around the corner of the shed. "Here's a job for you." And before he
could have said Jack Robinson, Gimpy felt himself hoisted bodily into
the wagon and deposited there like any express package. From somewhere
a longish something that proved to be a Christmas-tree, very much
wrapped and swathed about, came to keep him company. The doctor climbed
up by the driver, and they were off. Gimpy recalled with a dull sense
of impending events in which for once he had no shaping hand, as he
rubbed his ears where the bitter blast pinched, that to-morrow was
Christmas.

A strange group was that which gathered about the supper-table at Sea
Breeze that night. It would have been sufficiently odd to any one
anywhere; but to Gimpy, washed, in clean, comfortable raiment, with
his bad foot set in a firm bandage, and for once no longer sore with
the pain that had racked his frame from babyhood, it seemed so unreal
that once or twice he pinched himself covertly to see if he were really
awake. They came weakly stumping with sticks and crutches and on club
feet, the lame and the halt, the children of sorrow and suffering from
the city slums, and stood leaning on crutch or chair for support while
they sang their simple grace; but neither in their clear childish
voices nor yet in the faces that were turned toward Gimpy in friendly
scrutiny as the last comer, was there trace of pain. Their cheeks were
ruddy and their eyes bright with the health of outdoors, and when
they sang about the "Frog in the Pond," in response to a spontaneous
demand, laughter bubbled over around the table. Gimpy, sizing his
fellow-boarders up according to the standards of the gang, with the
mental conclusion that he "could lick the bunch," felt a warm little
hand worming its way into his, and, looking into a pair of trustful
baby eyes, choked with a sudden reminiscent pang, but smiled back at
his friend and felt suddenly at home. Little Ellen, with the pervading
affections, had added him to her family of brothers. What honors were
in store for him in that relation Gimpy never guessed. Ellen left no
one out. When summer came again she enlarged the family further by
adopting the President of the United States as her papa, when he came
visiting to Sea Breeze; and by rights Gimpy should have achieved a pull
such as would have turned the boss of his ward green with envy.

It appeared speedily that something unusual was on foot. There was a
subdued excitement among the children which his experience diagnosed
at first flush as the symptoms of a raid. But the fact that in all
the waste of snow on the way over he had seen nothing rising to the
apparent dignity of candy-shop or grocery-store made him dismiss
the notion as untenable. Presently unfamiliar doings developed. The
children who could write scribbled notes on odd sheets of paper, which
the nurses burned in the fireplace with solemn incantations. Something
in the locked dining-room was an object of pointed interest. Things
were going on there, and expeditions to penetrate the mystery were
organized at brief intervals, and as often headed off by watchful
nurses.

When, finally, the children were gotten upstairs and undressed, from
the headposts of each of thirty-six beds there swung a little stocking,
limp and yawning with mute appeal. Gimpy had "caught on" by this time:
it was a wishing-bee, and old Santa Claus was supposed to fill the
stockings with what each had most desired. The consultation over, baby
George had let him into the game. Baby George did not know enough to do
his own wishing, and the thirty-five took it in hand while he was being
put to bed.

"Let's wish for some little dresses for him," said big Mariano, who was
the baby's champion and court of last resort; "that's what he needs."
And it was done. Gimpy smiled a little disdainfully at the credulity of
the "kids." The Santa Claus fake was out of date a long while in his
tenement. But he voted for baby George's dresses, all the same, and
even went to the length of recording his own wish for a good baseball
bat. Gimpy was coming on.

Going to bed in that queer place fairly "stumped" Gimpy. "Peelin'"
had been the simplest of processes in Little Italy. Here they pulled
a fellow's clothes off only to put on another lot, heavier every way,
with sweater and hood and flannel socks and mittens to boot, as if the
boy were bound for a tussle with the storm outside rather than for
his own warm bed. And so, in fact, he was. For no sooner had he been
tucked under the blankets, warm and snug, than the nurses threw open
all the windows, every one, and let the gale from without surge in and
through as it listed; and so they left them. Gimpy shivered as he felt
the frosty breath of the ocean nipping his nose, and crept under the
blanket for shelter. But presently he looked up and saw the other boys
snoozing happily like so many little Eskimos equipped for the North
Pole, and decided to keep them company. For a while he lay thinking of
the strange things that had happened that day, since his descent into
the Subway. If the gang could see him now. But it seemed far away, with
all his past life--farther than the river with the ships deep down
below. Out there upon the dark waters, in the storm, were they sailing
now, and all the lights of the city swallowed up in gloom? Presently he
heard through it all the train roaring far off in the Subway and many
hurrying feet on the stairs. The iron gates clanked--and he fell asleep
with the song of the sea for his lullaby. Mother Nature had gathered
her child to her bosom, and the slum had lost in the battle for a life.

The clock had not struck two when from the biggest boy's bed in the
corner there came in a clear, strong alto the strains of "Ring, ring,
happy bells!" and from every room childish voices chimed in. The nurses
hurried to stop the chorus with the message that it was yet five hours
to daylight. They were up, trimming the tree in the dining-room; at
the last moment the crushing announcement had been made that the candy
had been forgotten, and a midnight expedition had set out for the city
through the storm to procure it. A semblance of order was restored,
but cat naps ruled after that, till, at day-break, a gleeful shout
from Ellen's bed proclaimed that Santa Claus had been there, in very
truth, and had left a dolly in her stocking. It was the signal for
such an uproar as had not been heard on that beach since Port Arthur
fell for the last time upon its defenders three months before. From
thirty-six stockings came forth a veritable army of tops, balls, wooden
animals of unknown pedigree, oranges, music-boxes, and cunning little
pocket-books, each with a shining silver quarter in, love-tokens of one
in the great city whose heart must have been light with happy dreams
in that hour. Gimpy drew forth from his stocking a very able-bodied
baseball bat and considered it with a stunned look. Santa Claus was a
fake, but the bat--there was no denying that, and he _had_ wished for
one the very last thing before he fell asleep!

Daylight struggled still with a heavy snow-squall when the signal was
given for the carol "Christmas time has come again," and the march down
to breakfast. That march! On the third step the carol was forgotten
and the band broke into one long cheer that was kept up till the door
of the dining-room was reached. At the first glimpse within, baby
George's wail rose loud and grievous: "My chair! my chair!" But it died
in a shriek of joy as he saw what it was that had taken its place.
There stood the Christmas-tree, one mass of shining candles, and silver
and gold, and angels with wings, and wondrous things of colored paper
all over it from top to bottom. Gimpy's eyes sparkled at the sight,
skeptic though he was at nine; and in the depths of his soul he came
over, then and there, to Santa Claus, to abide forever--only he did not
know it yet.

To make the children eat any breakfast, with three gay sleds waiting to
take the girls out in the snow, was no easy matter; but it was done at
last, and they swarmed forth for a holiday in the open. All days are
spent in the open at Sea Breeze,--even the school is a tent,--and very
cold weather only shortens the brief school hour; but this day was to
be given over to play altogether. Winter it was "for fair," but never
was coasting enjoyed on New England hills as these sledding journeys on
the sands where the surf beat in with crash of thunder. The sea itself
had joined in making Christmas for its little friends. The day before,
a regiment of crabs had come ashore and surrendered to the cook at Sea
Breeze. Christmas morn found the children's "floor"--they called the
stretch of clean, hard sand between high-water mark and the surf-line
by that name--filled with gorgeous shells and pebbles, and strange
fishes left there by the tide overnight. The fair-weather friends who
turn their backs upon old ocean with the first rude blasts of autumn
little know what wonderful surprises it keeps for those who stand by it
in good and in evil report.

When the very biggest turkey that ever strutted in barnyard was
discovered steaming in the middle of the dinner-table and the report
went round in whispers that ice-cream had been seen carried in pails,
and when, in response to a pull at the bell, Matron Thomsen ushered in
a squad of smiling mamas and papas to help eat the dinner, even Gimpy
gave in to the general joy, and avowed that Christmas was "bully."
Perhaps his acceptance of the fact was made easier by a hasty survey of
the group of papas and mamas, which assured him that his own were not
among them. A fleeting glimpse of the baby, deserted and disconsolate,
brought the old pucker to his brow for a passing moment; but just then
big Fred set off a snapper at his very ear, and thrusting a pea-green
fool's-cap upon his head, pushed him into the roistering procession
that hobbled round and round the table, cheering fit to burst. And the
babies that had been brought down from their cribs, strapped, because
their backs were crooked, in the frames that look so cruel and are
so kind, lifted up their feeble voices as they watched the show with
shining eyes. Little baby Helen, who could only smile and wave "by-by"
with one fat hand, piped in with her tiny voice, "Here I is!" It was
all she knew, and she gave that with a right good will, which is as
much as one can ask of anybody, even of a snow baby.

If there were still lacking a last link to rivet Gimpy's loyalty to
his new home for good and all, he himself supplied it when the band
gathered under the leafless trees--for Sea Breeze has a grove in
summer, the only one on the island--and whiled away the afternoon
making a "park" in the snow, with sea-shells for curbing and boundary
stones. When it was all but completed, Gimpy, with an inspiration that
then and there installed him leader, gave it the finishing touch by
drawing a policeman on the corner with a club, and a sign, "Keep off
the grass." Together they gave it the air of reality and the true local
color that made them feel, one and all, that now indeed they were at
home.

Toward evening a snow-storm blew in from the sea, but instead of
scurrying for shelter, the little Eskimos joined the doctor in hauling
wood for a big bonfire on the beach. There, while the surf beat
upon the shore hardly a dozen steps away, and the storm whirled the
snow-clouds in weird drifts over sea and land, they drew near the fire,
and heard the doctor tell stories that seemed to come right out of the
darkness and grow real while they listened. Dr. Wallace is a southerner
and lived his childhood with Br'er Rabbit and Mr. Fox, and they saw
them plainly gamboling in the firelight as the story went on. For the
doctor knows boys and loves them, that is how.

No one would have guessed that they were cripples, every one of
that rugged band that sat down around the Christmas supper-table,
rosy-cheeked and jolly--cripples condemned, but for Sea Breeze, to
lives of misery and pain, most of them to an early death and suffering
to others. For their enemy was that foe of mankind, the White Plague,
that for thousands of years has taken tithe and toll of the ignorance
and greed and selfishness of man, which sometimes we call with one
name--the slum. Gimpy never would have dreamed that the tenement held
no worse threat for the baby he yearned for than himself, with his
crippled foot, when he was there. These things you could not have
told even the fathers and mothers; or if you had, no one there but
the doctor and the nurses would have believed you. They knew only too
well. But two things you could make out, with no trouble at all, by
the lamplight: one, that they were one and all on the homeward stretch
to health and vigor--Gimpy himself was a different lad from the one
who had crept shivering to bed the night before; and this other, that
they were the sleepiest crew of youngsters ever got together. Before
they had finished the first verse of "America" as their good night,
standing up like little men, half of them were down and asleep with
their heads pillowed upon their arms. And so Miss Brass, the head
nurse, gathered them in and off to bed.

"And now, boys," she said as they were being tucked in, "your prayers."
And of those who were awake each said his own: Willie his "Now I lay
me," Mariano his "Ave," but little Bent from the Eastside tenement
wailed that he didn't have any. Bent was a newcomer like Gimpy.

"Then," said six-year-old Morris, resolutely,--he also was a Jew,--"I
learn him mine vat my fader tol' me." And getting into Bent's crib,
he crept under the blanket with his little comrade. Gimpy saw them
reverently pull their worsted caps down over their heads, and presently
their tiny voices whispered together, in the jargon of the East Side,
their petition to the Father of all, who looked lovingly down through
the storm upon his children of many folds.

The last prayer was said, and all was still. Through the peaceful
breathing of the boys all about him, Gimpy, alone wakeful, heard the
deep bass of the troubled sea. The storm had blown over. Through the
open windows shone the eternal stars, as on that night in the Judean
hills when shepherds herded their flocks and

                  "The angels of the Lord came down."

He did not know. He was not thinking of angels; none had ever come to
his slum. But a great peace came over him and filled his child-soul. It
may be that the nurse saw it shining in his eyes and thought it fever.
It may be that she, too, was thinking in that holy hour. She bent over
him and laid a soothing hand upon his brow.

"You must sleep now," she said.

Something that was not of the tenement, something vital, with which his
old life had no concern, welled up in Gimpy at the touch. He caught her
hand and held it.

"I will if you will sit here," he said. He could not help it.

"Why, Jimmy?" She stroked back his shock of stubborn hair. Something
glistened on her eyelashes as she looked at the forlorn little face on
the pillow. How should Gimpy know that he was at that moment leading
another struggling soul by the hand toward the light that never dies?

"'Cause," he gulped hard, but finished manfully--"'cause I love you."

Gimpy had learned the lesson of Christmas,

                  "And glory shone around."



JACK'S SERMON


Jack sat on the front porch in a very bad humor indeed. That was in
itself something unusual enough to portend trouble; for ordinarily Jack
was a philosopher well persuaded that, upon the whole, this was a very
good world and Deacon Pratt's porch the centre of it on week-days.
On Sundays it was transferred to the village church, and on these
days Jack received there with the family. If the truth were told, it
would probably have been found that Jack conceived the services to be
some sort of function specially designed to do him honor at proper
intervals, for he always received an extra petting on these occasions.
He sat in the pew beside the deacon through the sermon as decorously
as befitted a dog come to years of discretion long since, and wagged
his tail in a friendly manner when the minister came down and patted
him on the head after the benediction. Outside he met the Sunday-school
children on their own ground, and on their own terms. Jack, if he
didn't have blood, had sense, which for working purposes is quite as
good, if not so common. The girls gave him candy and called him Jack
Sprat. His joyous bark could be heard long after church as he romped
with the boys by the creek on the way home. It was even suspected
that on certain Sabbaths they had enjoyed a furtive cross-country
run together; but by tacit consent the village overlooked it and put
it down to the dog. Jack was privileged and not to blame. There was
certainly something, from the children's point of view, also, in favor
of Jack's conception of Sunday.

On week-day nights there were the church meetings of one kind and
another, for which Deacon Pratt's house was always the place, not
counting the sociables which Jack attended with unfailing regularity.
They would not, any of them, have been quite regular without Jack.
Indeed, many a question of grave church polity had been settled only
after it had been submitted to and passed upon in meeting by Jack. "Is
not that so, Jack?" was a favorite clincher to arguments which, it was
felt, had won over his master. And Jack's groping paw cemented a treaty
of good-will and mutual concession that had helped the village church
over more than one hard place. For there were hard heads and stubborn
wills in it as there are in other churches; and Deacon Pratt, for all
he was a just man, was set on having his way.

And now all this was changed. What had come over the town Jack couldn't
make out, but that it was something serious nobody was needed to
tell him. Folks he used to meet at the gate, going to the trains of
mornings, on neighborly terms, hurried past him without as much as a
look. Deacon Jones, who gave him ginger-snaps out of the pantry-crock
as a special bribe for a hand-shake, had even put out his foot to kick
him, actually kick him, when he waylaid him at the corner that morning.
The whole week there had not been as much as a visitor at the house,
and what with Christmas in town--Jack knew the signs well enough; they
meant raisins and goodies that came only when they burned candles on
trees in the church--it was enough to make any dog cross. To top it
all, his mistress must come down sick, worried into it all, as like as
not, he had heard the doctor say. If Jack's thoughts could have been
put into words as he sat on the porch looking moodily over the road,
they would doubtless have taken something like this shape, that it was
a pity that men didn't have the sense of dogs, but would bear grudges
and make themselves and their betters unhappy. And in the village there
would have been more than one to agree with him secretly.

Jack wouldn't have been any the wiser had he been told that the trouble
that had come to town was that of all things most worrisome, a church
quarrel. What was it about and how did it come? I doubt if any of
the men and women who strove in meeting for principle and conscience
with might and main, and said mean things about each other out of
meeting, could have explained it. I know they all would have explained
it differently, and so added fuel to the fire that was hot enough
already. In fact, that was what had happened the night before Jack
encountered his special friend, Deacon Jones, and it was in virtue of
his master's share in it that he had bestowed the memorable kick upon
him. Deacon Pratt was the valiant leader of the opposing faction.

To the general stress of mind the holiday had but added another cause
of irritation. Could Jack have understood the ethics of men he would
have known that it strangely happens that:

    "Forgiveness to the injured does belong,
    But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong,"

and that everybody in a church quarrel having injured everybody else
within reach for conscience sake, the season of good-will and even the
illness of that good woman, the wife of Deacon Pratt, admittedly from
worry over the trouble, practically put a settlement of it out of the
question. But being only a dog he did not understand. He could only
sulk; and as this went well enough with things as they were in general,
it proved that Jack was, as was well known, a very intelligent dog.

He had yet to give another proof of it, that very day, by preaching to
the divided congregation its Christmas sermon, a sermon that is to this
day remembered in Brownville; but of that neither they nor he, sitting
there on the stoop nursing his grievances, had at that time any warning.

It was Christmas Eve. Since the early Lutherans settled there, away
back in the last century, it had been the custom in the village to
celebrate the Holy Eve with a special service and a Christmas tree; and
preparations had been going forward for it all the afternoon. It was
noticeable that the fighting in the congregation in no wise interfered
with the observance of the established forms of worship; rather, it
seemed to lend a keener edge to them. It was only the spirit that
suffered. Jack, surveying the road from the porch, saw baskets and
covered trays carried by, and knew their contents. He had watched the
big Christmas tree going down on the grocer's sled, and his experience
plus his nose supplied the rest. As the lights came out one by one
after twilight, he stirred uneasily at the unwonted stillness in his
house. Apparently no one was getting ready for church. Could it be that
they were not going; that this thing was to be carried to the last
ditch? He decided to go and investigate.

His investigations were brief, but entirely conclusive. For the second
time that day he was spurned, and by a friend. This time it was the
deacon himself who drove him from his wife's room, whither he had
betaken him with true instinct to ascertain the household intentions.
The deacon seemed to be, if anything, in a worse humor than even Jack
himself. The doctor had told him that afternoon that Mrs. Pratt was a
very sick woman, and that, if she was to pull through at all, she must
be kept from all worriment in an atmosphere which fairly bristled with
it. The deacon felt that he had a contract on his hands which might
prove too heavy for him. He felt, too, with bitterness, that he was an
ill-used man, that all his years of faithful labor in the vineyard went
for nothing because of some wretched heresy which the enemy had devised
to wreck it; and all his humbled pride and his pent-up wrath gathered
itself into the kick with which he sent poor Jack flying back where he
had come from. It was clear that the deacon was not going to church.

Lonely and forsaken, Jack took his old seat on the porch and pondered.
The wrinkles in his brow multiplied and grew deeper as he looked down
the road and saw the Joneses, the Smiths, and the Allens go by toward
the church. When the Merritts had passed, too, under the lamp, he knew
that it must be nearly time for the sermon. They always came in after
the long prayer. Jack took a turn up and down the porch, whined at the
door once, and, receiving no answer, set off down the road by himself.

The church was filled. It had never looked handsomer. The rival
factions had vied with each other in decorating it. Spruce and hemlock
sprouted everywhere, and garlands of ground-ivy festooned walls and
chancel. The delicious odor of balsam and of burning wax-candles was in
the air. The people were all there in their Sunday clothes and the old
minister in the pulpit; but the Sunday feeling was not there. Something
was not right. Deacon Pratt's pew alone of them all was empty, and the
congregation cast wistful glances at it, some secretly behind their
hymn-books, others openly and sorrowfully. What the doctor had said in
the afternoon had got out. He himself had told Mrs. Mills that it was
doubtful if the deacon's wife got around, and it sat heavily upon the
conscience of the people.

The opening hymns were sung; the Merritts, late as usual, had taken
their seats. The minister took up the Book to read the Christmas gospel
from the second chapter of Luke. He had been there longer than most of
those who were in the church to-night could remember, had grown old
with the people, had loved them as the shepherd who is answerable to
the Master for his flock. Their griefs and their troubles were his.
If he could not ward them off, he could suffer with them. His voice
trembled a little as he read of the tidings of great joy. Perhaps it
was age; but it grew firmer as he proceeded toward the end:--

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good-will toward men.'"

The old minister closed the Book and looked out over the congregation.
He looked long and yearningly, and twice he cleared his throat, only
to repeat, "on earth peace, good-will toward men." The people settled
back in their seats, uneasily; they strangely avoided the eye of their
pastor. It rested in its slow survey of the flock upon Deacon Pratt's
empty pew. And at that moment a strange thing occurred.

Why it should seem strange was, perhaps, not the least strange part of
it. Jack had come in alone before. He knew the trick of the door-latch,
and had often opened it unaided. He was in the habit of attending the
church with the folks; there was no reason why they should not expect
him, unless they knew of one themselves. But somehow the click of the
latch went clear through the congregation as the heavenly message of
good-will had not. All eyes were turned upon the deacon's pew; and they
waited.

Jack came slowly and gravely up the aisle and stopped at his master's
pew. He sniffed of the empty seat disapprovingly once or twice--he had
never seen it in that state before--then he climbed up and sat, serious
and attentive as he was wont, in his old seat, facing the pulpit,
nodding once as who should say, "I'm here; proceed!"

It is recorded that not even a titter was heard from the Sunday-school,
which was out in force. In the silence that reigned in the church was
heard only a smothered sob. The old minister looked with misty eyes
at his friend. He took off his spectacles, wiped them and put them on
again, and tried to speak; but the tears ran down his cheeks and choked
his voice. The congregation wept with him.

"Brethren," he said, when he could speak, "glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace, good-will toward men! Jack has preached a better
sermon than I can to-night. Let us pray together."

It is further recorded that the first and only quarrel in the
Brownville church ended on Christmas Eve and was never heard of again,
and that it was all the work of Jack's sermon.



MERRY CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS


It was just a sprig of holly, with scarlet berries showing against the
green, stuck in, by one of the office boys probably, behind the sign
that pointed the way up to the editorial rooms. There was no reason
why it should have made me start when I came suddenly upon it at the
turn of the stairs; but it did. Perhaps it was because that dingy hall,
given over to dust and draughts all the days of the year, was the last
place in which I expected to meet with any sign of Christmas; perhaps
it was because I myself had nearly forgotten the holiday. Whatever the
cause, it gave me quite a turn.

I stood, and stared at it. It looked dry, almost withered. Probably it
had come a long way. Not much holly grows about Printing-House Square,
except in the colored supplements, and that is scarcely of a kind to
stir tender memories. Withered and dry, this did. I thought, with a
twinge of conscience, of secret little conclaves of my children, of
private views of things hidden from mamma at the bottom of drawers,
of wild flights when papa appeared unbidden in the door, which I had
allowed for once to pass unheeded. Absorbed in the business of the
office, I had hardly thought of Christmas coming on, until now it was
here. And this sprig of holly on the wall that had come to remind
me,--come nobody knew how far,--did it grow yet in the beech-wood
clearings, as it did when I gathered it as a boy, tracking through
the snow? "Christ-thorn" we called it in our Danish tongue. The red
berries, to our simple faith, were the drops of blood that fell from
the Saviour's brow as it drooped under its cruel crown upon the cross.

Back to the long ago wandered my thoughts: to the moss-grown beech
in which I cut my name and that of a little girl with yellow curls,
of blessed memory, with the first jack-knife I ever owned; to the
story-book with the little fir tree that pined because it was small,
and because the hare jumped over it, and would not be content though
the wind and the sun kissed it, and the dews wept over it and told it
to rejoice in its young life; and that was so proud when, in the second
year, the hare had to go round it, because then it knew it was getting
big,--Hans Christian Andersen's story that we loved above all the rest;
for we knew the tree right well, and the hare; even the tracks it left
in the snow we had seen. Ah, those were the Yule-tide seasons, when the
old Domkirke shone with a thousand wax candles on Christmas eve; when
all business was laid aside to let the world make merry one whole week;
when big red apples were roasted on the stove, and bigger doughnuts
were baked within it for the long feast! Never such had been known
since. Christmas to-day is but a name, a memory.

A door slammed below, and let in the noises of the street. The holly
rustled in the draught. Some one going out said, "A Merry Christmas to
you all!" in a big, hearty voice. I awoke from my revery to find myself
back in New York with a glad glow at the heart. It was not true. I had
only forgotten. It was myself that had changed, not Christmas. That was
here, with the old cheer, the old message of good-will, the old royal
road to the heart of mankind. How often had I seen its blessed charity,
that never corrupts, make light in the hovels of darkness and despair!
how often watched its spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion in those
who had, besides themselves, nothing to give! and as often the sight
had made whole my faith in human nature. No! Christmas was not of the
past, its spirit not dead. The lad who fixed the sprig of holly on the
stairs knew it; my reporter's note-book bore witness to it. Witness of
my contrition for the wrong I did the gentle spirit of the holiday,
here let the book tell the story of one Christmas in the tenements of
the poor:--

It is evening in Grand Street. The shops east and west are pouring
forth their swarms of workers. Street and sidewalk are filled with an
eager throng of young men and women, chatting gayly, and elbowing
the jam of holiday shoppers that linger about the big stores. The
street-cars labor along, loaded down to the steps with passengers
carrying bundles of every size and odd shape. Along the curb a string
of pedlers hawk penny toys in push-carts with noisy clamor, fearless
for once of being moved on by the police. Christmas brings a two
weeks' respite from persecution even to the friendless street-fakir.
From the window of one brilliantly lighted store a bevy of mature
dolls in dishabille stretch forth their arms appealingly to a troop of
factory-hands passing by. The young men chaff the girls, who shriek
with laughter and run. The policeman on the corner stops beating his
hands together to keep warm, and makes a mock attempt to catch them,
whereat their shrieks rise shriller than ever. "Them stockin's o' yourn
'll be the death o' Santa Claus!" he shouts after them, as they dodge.
And they, looking back, snap saucily, "Mind yer business, freshy!"
But their laughter belies their words. "They giv' it to ye straight
that time," grins the grocer's clerk, come out to snatch a look at the
crowds; and the two swap holiday greetings.

At the corner, where two opposing tides of travel form an eddy, the
line of push-carts debouches down the darker side street. In its gloom
their torches burn with a fitful glare that wakes black shadows
among the trusses of the railroad structure overhead. A woman, with
worn shawl drawn tightly about head and shoulders, bargains with a
pedler for a monkey on a stick and two cents' worth of flitter-gold.
Five ill-clad youngsters flatten their noses against the frozen pane
of the toy-shop, in ecstasy at something there, which proves to be
a milk wagon, with driver, horses, and cans that can be unloaded.
It is something their minds can grasp. One comes forth with a penny
goldfish of pasteboard clutched tightly in his hand, and, casting
cautious glances right and left, speeds across the way to the door of
a tenement, where a little girl stands waiting. "It's yer Chris'mas,
Kate," he says, and thrusts it into her eager fist. The black doorway
swallows them up.

Across the narrow yard, in the basement of the rear house, the lights
of a Christmas tree show against the grimy window pane. The hare would
never have gone around it, it is so very small. The two children are
busily engaged fixing the goldfish upon one of its branches. Three
little candles that burn there shed light upon a scene of utmost
desolation. The room is black with smoke and dirt. In the middle of the
floor oozes an oil-stove that serves at once to take the raw edge off
the cold and to cook the meals by. Half the window panes are broken,
and the holes stuffed with rags. The sleeve of an old coat hangs out
of one, and beats drearily upon the sash when the wind sweeps over
the fence and rattles the rotten shutters. The family wash, clammy and
gray, hangs on a clothes-line stretched across the room. Under it, at
a table set with cracked and empty plates, a discouraged woman sits
eying the children's show gloomily. It is evident that she has been
drinking. The peaked faces of the little ones wear a famished look.
There are three--the third an infant, put to bed in what was once a
baby carriage. The two from the street are pulling it around to get the
tree in range. The baby sees it, and crows with delight. The boy shakes
a branch, and the goldfish leaps and sparkles in the candle-light.

"See, sister!" he pipes; "see Santa Claus!" And they clap their hands
in glee. The woman at the table wakes out of her stupor, gazes around
her, and bursts into a fit of maudlin weeping.

The door falls to. Five flights up, another opens upon a bare attic
room which a patient little woman is setting to rights. There are only
three chairs, a box, and a bedstead in the room, but they take a deal
of careful arranging. The bed hides the broken plaster in the wall
through which the wind came in; each chair-leg stands over a rat-hole,
at once to hide it and to keep the rats out. One is left; the box
is for that. The plaster of the ceiling is held up with pasteboard
patches. I know the story of that attic. It is one of cruel desertion.
The woman's husband is even now living in plenty with the creature
for whom he forsook her, not a dozen blocks away, while she "keeps the
home together for the childer." She sought justice, but the lawyer
demanded a retainer; so she gave it up, and went back to her little
ones. For this room that barely keeps the winter wind out she pays four
dollars a month, and is behind with the rent. There is scarce bread in
the house; but the spirit of Christmas has found her attic. Against
a broken wall is tacked a hemlock branch, the leavings of the corner
grocer's fitting-block; pink string from the packing-counter hangs on
it in festoons. A tallow dip on the box furnishes the illumination. The
children sit up in bed, and watch it with shining eyes.

"We're having Christmas!" they say.

The lights of the Bowery glow like a myriad twinkling stars upon
the ceaseless flood of humanity that surges ever through the great
highway of the homeless. They shine upon long rows of lodging-houses,
in which hundreds of young men, cast helpless upon the reef of the
strange city, are learning their first lessons of utter loneliness;
for what desolation is there like that of the careless crowd when all
the world rejoices? They shine upon the tempter setting his snares
there, and upon the missionary and the Salvation Army lass, disputing
his catch with him; upon the police detective going his rounds with
coldly observant eye intent upon the outcome of the contest; upon
the wreck that is past hope, and upon the youth pausing on the verge
of the pit in which the other has long ceased to struggle. Sights
and sounds of Christmas there are in plenty in the Bowery. Balsam
and hemlock and fir stand in groves along the busy thoroughfare, and
garlands of green embower mission and dive impartially. Once a year
the old street recalls its youth with an effort. It is true that it
is largely a commercial effort; that the evergreen, with an instinct
that is not of its native hills, haunts saloon-corners by preference;
but the smell of the pine woods is in the air, and--Christmas is not
too critical--one is grateful for the effort. It varies with the
opportunity. At "Beefsteak John's" it is content with artistically
embalming crullers and mince-pies in green cabbage under the window
lamp. Over yonder, where the mile-post of the old lane still
stands,--in its unhonored old age become the vehicle of publishing the
latest "sure cure" to the world,--a florist, whose undenominational
zeal for the holiday and trade outstrips alike distinction of creed and
property, has transformed the sidewalk and the ugly railroad structure
into a veritable bower, spanning it with a canopy of green, under which
dwell with him, in neighborly good-will, the Young Men's Christian
Association and the Jewish tailor next door.

In the next block a "turkey-shoot" is in progress. Crowds are trying
their luck at breaking the glass balls that dance upon tiny jets of
water in front of a marine view with the moon rising, yellow and big,
out of a silver sea. A man-of-war, with lights burning aloft, labors
under a rocky coast. Groggy sailormen, on shore leave, make unsteady
attempts upon the dancing balls. One mistakes the moon for the target,
but is discovered in season. "Don't shoot that," says the man who loads
the guns; "there's a lamp behind it." Three scared birds in the window
recess try vainly to snatch a moment's sleep between shots and the
trains that go roaring overhead on the elevated road. Roused by the
sharp crack of the rifles, they blink at the lights in the street, and
peck moodily at a crust in their bed of shavings.

The dime museum gong clatters out its noisy warning that "the lecture"
is about to begin. From the concert hall, where men sit drinking beer
in clouds of smoke, comes the thin voice of a short-skirted singer,
warbling, "Do they think of me at home?" The young fellow who sits
near the door, abstractedly making figures in the wet track of the
"schooners," buries something there with a sudden restless turn, and
calls for another beer. Out in the street a band strikes up. A host
with banners advances, chanting an unfamiliar hymn. In the ranks
marches a cripple on crutches. Newsboys follow, gaping. Under the
illuminated clock of the Cooper Institute the procession halts, and
the leader, turning his face to the sky, offers a prayer. The passing
crowds stop to listen. A few bare their heads. The devoted group, the
flapping banners, and the changing torch-light on upturned faces, make
a strange, weird picture. Then the drum-beat, and the band files into
its barracks across the street. A few of the listeners follow, among
them the lad from the concert hall, who slinks shamefacedly in when he
thinks no one is looking.

Down at the foot of the Bowery is the "panhandlers' beat," where
the saloons elbow one another at every step, crowding out all other
business than that of keeping lodgers to support them. Within call of
it, across the square, stands a church which, in the memory of men
yet living, was built to shelter the fashionable Baptist audiences
of a day when Madison Square was out in the fields, and Harlem had a
foreign sound. The fashionable audiences are gone long since. To-day
the church, fallen into premature decay, but still handsome in its
strong and noble lines, stands as a missionary outpost in the land of
the enemy, its builders would have said, doing a greater work than they
planned. To-night is the Christmas festival of its English-speaking
Sunday-school, and the pews are filled. The banners of United Italy,
of modern Hellas, of France and Germany and England, hang side by side
with the Chinese dragon and the starry flag--signs of the cosmopolitan
character of the congregation. Greek and Roman Catholics, Jews and
joss-worshippers, go there; few Protestants, and no Baptists. It is
easy to pick out the children in their seats by nationality, and as
easy to read the story of poverty and suffering that stands written in
more than one mother's haggard face, now beaming with pleasure at the
little ones' glee. A gayly decorated Christmas tree has taken the place
of the pulpit. At its foot is stacked a mountain of bundles, Santa
Claus's gifts to the school. A self-conscious young man with soap-locks
has just been allowed to retire, amid tumultuous applause, after
blowing "Nearer, My God, to Thee" on his horn until his cheeks swelled
almost to bursting. A trumpet ever takes the Fourth Ward by storm.
A class of little girls is climbing upon the platform. Each wears a
capital letter on her breast, and has a piece to speak that begins
with the letter; together they spell its lesson. There is momentary
consternation; one is missing. As the discovery is made, a child pushes
past the door-keeper, hot and breathless. "I am in 'Boundless Love,'"
she says, and makes for the platform, where her arrival restores
confidence and the language.

In the audience the befrocked visitor from up-town sits cheek by jowl
with the pigtailed Chinaman and the dark-browed Italian. Up in the
gallery, farthest from the preacher's desk and the tree, sits a Jewish
mother with three boys, almost in rags. A dingy and threadbare shawl
partly hides her poor calico wrap and patched apron. The woman shrinks
in the pew, fearful of being seen; her boys stand upon the benches,
and applaud with the rest. She endeavors vainly to restrain them.
"Tick, tick!" goes the old clock over the door through which wealth and
fashion went out long years ago, and poverty came in.

Tick, tick! the world moves, with us--without; without or with. She is
the yesterday, they the to-morrow. What shall the harvest be?

Loudly ticked the old clock in time with the doxology, the other day,
when they cleared the tenants out of Gotham Court down here in Cherry
Street, and shut the iron doors of Single and Double Alley against
them. Never did the world move faster or surer toward a better day
than when the wretched slum was seized by the health officers as a
nuisance unfit longer to disgrace a Christian city. The snow lies deep
in the deserted passsageways, and the vacant floors are given over to
evil smells, and to the rats that forage in squads, burrowing in the
neglected sewers. The "wall of wrath" still towers above the buildings
in the adjoining Alderman's Court, but its wrath at last is wasted.

It was built by a vengeful Quaker, whom the alderman had knocked down
in a quarrel over the boundary line, and transmitted its legacy of hate
to generations yet unborn; for where it stood it shut out sunlight
and air from the tenements of Alderman's Court. And at last it is
to go, Gotham Court and all; and to the going the wall of wrath has
contributed its share, thus in the end atoning for some of the harm it
wrought. Tick! old clock; the world moves. Never yet did Christmas seem
less dark on Cherry Hill than since the lights were put out in Gotham
Court forever.

In "The Bend" the philanthropist undertaker who "buries for what he
can catch on the plate" hails the Yule-tide season with a pyramid of
green made of two coffins set on end. It has been a good day, he says
cheerfully, putting up the shutters; and his mind is easy. But the
"good days" of The Bend are over, too. The Bend itself is all but gone.
Where the old pig-sty stood, children dance and sing to the strumming
of a cracked piano-organ propelled on wheels by an Italian and his
wife. The park that has come to take the place of the slum will curtail
the undertaker's profits, as it has lessened the work of the police.
Murder was the fashion of the day that is past. Scarce a knife has been
drawn since the sunlight shone into that evil spot, and grass and green
shrubs took the place of the old rookeries. The Christmas gospel of
peace and good-will moves in where the slum moves out. It never had a
chance before.

The children follow the organ, stepping in the slush to the music,
bareheaded and with torn shoes, but happy; across the Five Points and
through "the Bay,"--known to the directory as Baxter Street,--to "the
Divide," still Chatham Street to its denizens, though the aldermen have
rechristened it Park Row. There other delegations of Greek and Italian
children meet and escort the music on its homeward trip. In one of the
crooked streets near the river its journey comes to an end. A battered
door opens to let it in. A tallow dip burns sleepily on the creaking
stairs. The water runs with a loud clatter in the sink: it is to keep
it from freezing. There is not a whole window pane in the hall. Time
was when this was a fine house harboring wealth and refinement. It has
neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of hard-faced men and
women sit on benches about a deal table, playing cards. They have a
jug between them, from which they drink by turns. On the stump of a
mantel-shelf a lamp burns before a rude print of the Mother of God. No
one pays any heed to the hand-organ man and his wife as they climb to
their attic. There is a colony of them up there--three families in four
rooms.

"Come in, Antonio," says the tenant of the double flat,--the one with
two rooms,--"come and keep Christmas." Antonio enters, cap in hand.
In the corner by the dormer-window a "crib" has been fitted up in
commemoration of the Nativity. A soap-box and two hemlock branches
are the elements. Six tallow candles and a night-light illuminate a
singular collection of rarities, set out with much ceremonial show. A
doll tightly wrapped in swaddling-clothes represents "the Child." Over
it stands a ferocious-looking beast, easily recognized as a survival
of the last political campaign,--the Tammany tiger,--threatening to
swallow it at a gulp if one as much as takes one's eyes off it. A
miniature Santa Claus, a pasteboard monkey, and several other articles
of bric-à-brac of the kind the tenement affords, complete the outfit.
The background is a picture of St. Donato, their village saint, with
the Madonna "whom they worship most." But the incongruity harbors no
suggestion of disrespect. The children view the strange show with
genuine reverence, bowing and crossing themselves before it. There are
five, the oldest a girl of seventeen, who works for a sweater, making
three dollars a week. It is all the money that comes in, for the father
has been sick and unable to work eight months and the mother has her
hands full: the youngest is a baby in arms. Three of the children go to
a charity school, where they are fed, a great help, now the holidays
have come to make work slack for sister. The rent is six dollars--two
weeks' pay out of the four. The mention of a possible chance of light
work for the man brings the daughter with her sewing from the adjoining
room, eager to hear. That would be Christmas indeed! "Pietro!" She
runs to the neighbors to communicate the joyful tidings. Pietro comes,
with his new-born baby, which he is tending while his wife lies ill, to
look at the maestro, so powerful and good. He also has been out of work
for months, with a family of mouths to fill, and nothing coming in. His
children are all small yet, but they speak English.

"What," I say, holding a silver dime up before the oldest, a smart
little chap of seven--"what would you do if I gave you this?"

"Get change," he replies promptly. When he is told that it is his own,
to buy toys with, his eyes open wide with wondering incredulity. By
degrees he understands. The father does not. He looks questioningly
from one to the other. When told, his respect increases visibly for
"the rich gentleman."

They were villagers of the same community in southern Italy, these
people and others in the tenements thereabouts, and they moved their
patron saint with them. They cluster about his worship here, but
the worship is more than an empty form. He typifies to them the old
neighborliness of home, the spirit of mutual help, of charity, and of
the common cause against the common enemy. The community life survives
through their saint in the far city to an unsuspected extent. The sick
are cared for; the dreaded hospital is fenced out. There are no Italian
evictions. The saint has paid the rent of this attic through two hard
months; and here at his shrine the Calabrian village gathers, in the
persons of these three, to do him honor on Christmas eve.

Where the old Africa has been made over into a modern Italy, since
King Humbert's cohorts struck the up-town trail, three hundred of the
little foreigners are having an uproarious time over their Christmas
tree in the Children's Aid Society's school. And well they may, for
the like has not been seen in Sullivan Street in this generation.
Christmas trees are rather rarer over here than on the East Side, where
the German leavens the lump with his loyalty to home traditions. This
is loaded with silver and gold and toys without end, until there is
little left of the original green. Santa Claus's sleigh must have been
upset in a snow-drift over here, and righted by throwing the cargo
overboard, for there is at least a wagon-load of things that can find
no room on the tree. The appearance of "teacher" with a double armful
of curly-headed dolls in red, yellow, and green Mother-Hubbards,
doubtful how to dispose of them, provokes a shout of approval, which
is presently quieted by the principal's bell. School is "in" for the
preliminary exercises. Afterward there are to be the tree and ice-cream
for the good children. In their anxiety to prove their title clear,
they sit so straight, with arms folded, that the whole row bends over
backward. The lesson is brief, the answers to the point.

"What do we receive at Christmas?" the teacher wants to know. The
whole school responds with a shout, "Dolls and toys!" To the question,
"Why do we receive them at Christmas?" the answer is not so prompt.
But one youngster from Thompson Street holds up his hand. He knows.
"Because we always get 'em," he says; and the class is convinced: it is
a fact. A baby wails because it cannot get the whole tree at once. The
"little mother"--herself a child of less than a dozen winters--who has
it in charge, cooes over it, and soothes its grief with the aid of a
surreptitious sponge-cake evolved from the depths of teacher's pocket.
Babies are encouraged in these schools, though not originally included
in their plan, as often the one condition upon which the older children
can be reached. Some one has to mind the baby, with all hands out at
work.

The school sings "Santa Lucia" and "Children of the Heavenly King," and
baby is lulled to sleep.

"Who is this King?" asks the teacher, suddenly, at the end of a verse.
Momentary stupefaction. The little minds are on ice-cream just then;
the lad nearest the door has telegraphed that it is being carried up
in pails. A little fellow on the back seat saves the day. Up goes his
brown fist.

"Well, Vito, who is he?"

"McKinley!" pipes the lad, who remembers the election just past; and
the school adjourns for ice-cream.

It is a sight to see them eat it. In a score of such schools, from the
Hook to Harlem, the sight is enjoyed in Christmas week by the men and
women who, out of their own pockets, reimburse Santa Claus for his
outlay, and count it a joy, as well they may; for their beneficence
sometimes makes the one bright spot in lives that have suffered of all
wrongs the most cruel,--that of being despoiled of their childhood.
Sometimes they are little Bohemians; sometimes the children of refugee
Jews; and again, Italians, or the descendants of the Irish stock of
Hell's Kitchen and Poverty Row; always the poorest, the shabbiest, the
hungriest--the children Santa Claus loves best to find, if any one will
show him the way. Having so much on hand, he has no time, you see, to
look them up himself. That must be done for him; and it is done. To the
teacher in the Sullivan Street school came one little girl, this last
Christmas, with anxious inquiry if it was true that he came around with
toys.

"I hanged my stocking last time," she said, "and he didn't come at
all." In the front house indeed, he left a drum and a doll, but no
message from him reached the rear house in the alley. "Maybe he
couldn't find it," she said soberly. Did the teacher think he would
come if she wrote to him? She had learned to write.

Together they composed a note to Santa Claus, speaking for a doll and
a bell--the bell to play "go to school" with when she was kept home
minding the baby. Lest he should by any chance miss the alley in spite
of directions, little Rosa was invited to hang her stocking, and her
sister's, with the janitor's children's in the school. And lo! on
Christmas morning there was a gorgeous doll, and a bell that was a
whole curriculum in itself, as good as a year's schooling any day!
Faith in Santa Claus is established in that Thompson Street alley for
this generation at least; and Santa Claus, got by hook or by crook into
an Eighth Ward alley, is as good as the whole Supreme Court bench, with
the Court of Appeals thrown in, for backing the Board of Health against
the slum.

But the ice-cream! They eat it off the seats, half of them kneeling or
squatting on the floor; they blow on it, and put it in their pockets to
carry home to baby. Two little shavers discovered to be feeding each
other, each watching the smack develop on the other's lips as the acme
of his own bliss, are "cousins"; that is why. Of cake there is a double
supply. It is a dozen years since "Fighting Mary," the wildest child in
the Seventh Avenue school, taught them a lesson there which they have
never forgotten. She was perfectly untamable, fighting everybody in
school, the despair of her teacher, till on Thanksgiving, reluctantly
included in the general amnesty and mince-pie, she was caught cramming
the pie into her pocket, after eyeing it with a look of pure ecstasy,
but refusing to touch it. "For mother" was her explanation, delivered
with a defiant look before which the class quailed. It is recorded, but
not in the minutes, that the board of managers wept over Fighting Mary,
who, all unconscious of having caused such an astonishing "break,"
was at that moment engaged in maintaining her prestige and reputation
by fighting the gang in the next block. The minutes contain merely a
formal resolution to the effect that occasions of mince-pie shall carry
double rations thenceforth. And the rule has been kept--not only in
Seventh Avenue, but in every industrial school--since. Fighting Mary
won the biggest fight of her troubled life that day, without striking a
blow.

It was in the Seventh Avenue school last Christmas that I offered the
truant class a four-bladed penknife as a prize for whittling out the
truest Maltese cross. It was a class of black sheep, and it was the
blackest sheep of the flock that won the prize. "That awful Savarese,"
said the principal in despair. I thought of Fighting Mary, and bade her
take heart. I regret to say that within a week the hapless Savarese was
black-listed for banking up the school door with snow, so that not
even the janitor could get out and at him.

Within hail of the Sullivan Street school camps a scattered little
band, the Christmas customs of which I had been trying for years to
surprise. They are Indians, a handful of Mohawks and Iroquois, whom
some ill wind has blown down from their Canadian reservation, and left
in these West Side tenements to eke out such a living as they can,
weaving mats and baskets, and threading glass pearls on slippers and
pin-cushions, until, one after another, they have died off and gone
to happier hunting-grounds than Thompson Street. There were as many
families as one could count on the fingers of both hands when I first
came upon them, at the death of old Tamenund, the basket maker. Last
Christmas there were seven. I had about made up my mind that the only
real Americans in New York did not keep the holiday at all, when, one
Christmas eve, they showed me how. Just as dark was setting in, old
Mrs. Benoit came from her Hudson Street attic--where she was known
among the neighbors, as old and poor as she, as Mrs. Ben Wah, and was
believed to be the relict of a warrior of the name of Benjamin Wah--to
the office of the Charity Organization Society, with a bundle for a
friend who had helped her over a rough spot--the rent, I suppose. The
bundle was done up elaborately in blue cheese-cloth, and contained
a lot of little garments which she had made out of the remnants of
blankets and cloth of her own from a younger and better day. "For
those," she said, in her French patois, "who are poorer than myself;"
and hobbled away. I found out, a few days later, when I took her
picture weaving mats in her attic room, that she had scarcely food
in the house that Christmas day and not the car fare to take her to
church! Walking was bad, and her old limbs were stiff. She sat by the
window through the winter evening, and watched the sun go down behind
the western hills, comforted by her pipe. Mrs. Ben Wah, to give her
her local name, is not really an Indian; but her husband was one, and
she lived all her life with the tribe till she came here. She is a
philosopher in her own quaint way. "It is no disgrace to be poor," said
she to me, regarding her empty tobacco-pouch; "but it is sometimes a
great inconvenience." Not even the recollection of the vote of censure
that was passed upon me once by the ladies of the Charitable Ten for
surreptitiously supplying an aged couple, the special object of their
charity, with army plug, could have deterred me from taking the hint.

Very likely, my old friend Miss Sherman, in her Broome Street
cellar,--it is always the attic or the cellar,--would object to Mrs.
Ben Wah's claim to being the only real American in my note-book. She
is from Down East, and says "stun" for stone. In her youth she was
lady's-maid to a general's wife, the recollection of which military
career equally condones the cellar and prevents her holding any sort
of communication with her common neighbors, who add to the offence
of being foreigners the unpardonable one of being mostly men. Eight
cats bear her steady company, and keep alive her starved affections. I
found them on last Christmas eve behind barricaded doors; for the cold
that had locked the water-pipes had brought the neighbors down to the
cellar, where Miss Sherman's cunning had kept them from freezing. Their
tin pans and buckets were even then banging against her door. "They're
a miserable lot," said the old maid, fondling her cats defiantly; "but
let 'em. It's Christmas. Ah!" she added, as one of the eight stood up
in her lap and rubbed its cheek against hers, "they're innocent. It
isn't poor little animals that does the harm. It's men and women that
does it to each other." I don't know whether it was just philosophy,
like Mrs. Ben Wah's, or a glimpse of her story. If she had one, she
kept it for her cats.

In a hundred places all over the city, when Christmas comes, as
many open-air fairs spring suddenly into life. A kind of Gentile
Feast of Tabernacles possesses the tenement districts especially.
Green-embowered booths stand in rows at the curb, and the voice of
the tin trumpet is heard in the land. The common source of all the
show is down by the North River, in the district known as "the Farm."
Down there Santa Claus establishes headquarters early in December and
until past New Year. The broad quay looks then more like a clearing
in a pine forest than a busy section of the metropolis. The steamers
discharge their loads of fir trees at the piers until they stand
stacked mountain-high, with foot-hills of holly and ground-ivy trailing
off toward the land side. An army train of wagons is engaged in carting
them away from early morning till late at night; but the green forest
grows, in spite of it all, until in places it shuts the shipping out
of sight altogether. The air is redolent with the smell of balsam
and pine. After nightfall, when the lights are burning in the busy
market, and the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy burdens of
Christmas greens jostle one another with good-natured banter,--nobody
is ever cross down here in the holiday season,--it is good to take a
stroll through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet
to the hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. But it is
when the moonlight is upon the water and upon the dark phantom forest,
when the heavy breathing of some passing steamer is the only sound that
breaks the stillness of the night, and the watchman smokes his only
pipe on the bulwark, that the Farm has a mood and an atmosphere all its
own, full of poetry which some day a painter's brush will catch and
hold.

Into the ugliest tenement street Christmas brings something of
picturesqueness, of cheer. Its message was ever to the poor and the
heavy-laden, and by them it is understood with an instinctive yearning
to do it honor. In the stiff dignity of the brown-stone streets up-town
there may be scarce a hint of it. In the homes of the poor it blossoms
on stoop and fire-escape, looks out of the front window, and makes the
unsightly barber-pole to sprout overnight like an Aaron's-rod. Poor
indeed is the home that has not its sign of peace over the hearth, be
it but a single sprig of green. A little color creeps with it even into
rabbinical Hester Street, and shows in the shop-windows and in the
children's faces. The very feather dusters in the pedler's stock take
on brighter hues for the occasion, and the big knives in the cutler's
shop gleam with a lively anticipation of the impending goose "with
fixin's"--a concession, perhaps, to the commercial rather than the
religious holiday: business comes then, if ever. A crowd of ragamuffins
camp out at a window where Santa Claus and his wife stand in state,
embodiment of the domestic ideal that has not yet gone out of fashion
in these tenements, gazing hungrily at the announcement that "A silver
present will be given to every purchaser by a real Santa Claus.--M.
Levitsky." Across the way, in a hole in the wall, two cobblers are
pegging away under an oozy lamp that makes a yellow splurge on the inky
blackness about them, revealing to the passer-by their bearded faces,
but nothing of the environment save a single sprig of holly suspended
from the lamp. From what forgotten brake it came with a message of
cheer, a thought of wife and children across the sea waiting their
summons, God knows. The shop is their house and home. It was once the
hall of the tenement; but to save space, enough has been walled in to
make room for their bench and bed; the tenants go through the next
house. No matter if they are cramped; by and by they will have room. By
and by comes the spring, and with it the steamer. Does not the green
branch speak of spring and of hope? The policeman on the beat hears
their hammers beat a joyous tattoo past midnight, far into Christmas
morning. Who shall say its message has not reached even them in their
slum?

Where the noisy trains speed over the iron highway past the
second-story windows of Allen Street, a cellar door yawns darkly in the
shadow of one of the pillars that half block the narrow sidewalk. A
dull gleam behind the cobweb-shrouded window pane supplements the sign
over the door, in Yiddish and English: "Old Brasses." Four crooked and
mouldy steps lead to utter darkness, with no friendly voice to guide
the hapless customer. Fumbling along the dank wall, he is left to find
the door of the shop as best he can. Not a likely place to encounter
the fastidious from the Avenue! Yet ladies in furs and silk find this
door and the grim old smith within it. Now and then an artist stumbles
upon them, and exults exceedingly in his find. Two holiday shoppers
are even now haggling with the coppersmith over the price of a pair
of curiously wrought brass candlesticks. The old man has turned from
the forge, at which he was working, unmindful of his callers roving
among the dusty shelves. Standing there, erect and sturdy, in his shiny
leather apron, hammer in hand, with the firelight upon his venerable
head, strong arms bared to the elbow, and the square paper cap pushed
back from a thoughtful, knotty brow, he stirs strange fancies. One half
expects to see him fashioning a gorget or a sword on his anvil. But his
is a more peaceful craft. Nothing more warlike is in sight than a row
of brass shields, destined for ornament, not for battle. Dark shadows
chase one another by the flickering light among copper kettles of ruddy
glow, old-fashioned samovars, and massive andirons of tarnished brass.
The bargaining goes on. Overhead the nineteenth century speeds by with
rattle and roar; in here linger the shadows of the centuries long dead.
The boy at the anvil listens open-mouthed, clutching the bellows-rope.

In Liberty Hall a Jewish wedding is in progress. Liberty! Strange how
the word echoes through these sweaters' tenements, where starvation
is at home half the time. It is an all-consuming passion with these
people, whose spirit a thousand years of bondage have not availed to
daunt. It breaks out in strikes, when to strike is to hunger and die.
Not until I stood by a striking cloak-maker whose last cent was gone,
with not a crust in the house to feed seven hungry mouths, yet who had
voted vehemently in the meeting that day to keep up the strike to the
bitter end,--bitter indeed, nor far distant,--and heard him at sunset
recite the prayer of his fathers: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God,
King of the world, that thou hast redeemed us as thou didst redeem our
fathers, hast delivered us from bondage to liberty, and from servile
dependence to redemption!"--not until then did I know what of sacrifice
the word might mean, and how utterly we of another day had forgotten.
But for once shop and tenement are left behind. Whatever other days may
have in store, this is their day of play, when all may rejoice.

The bridegroom, a cloak-presser in a hired dress suit, sits alone and
ill at ease at one end of the hall, sipping whiskey with a fine air of
indifference, but glancing apprehensively toward the crowd of women in
the opposite corner that surround the bride, a pale little shop-girl
with a pleading, winsome face. From somewhere unexpectedly appears a
big man in an ill-fitting coat and skullcap, flanked on either side
by a fiddler, who scrapes away and away, accompanying the improvisator
in a plaintive minor key as he halts before the bride and intones
his lay. With many a shrug of stooping shoulders and queer excited
gesture, he drones, in the harsh, guttural Yiddish of Hester Street,
his story of life's joys and sorrows, its struggles and victories in
the land of promise. The women listen, nodding and swaying their bodies
sympathetically. He works himself into a frenzy, in which the fiddlers
vainly try to keep up with him. He turns and digs the laggard angrily
in the side without losing the metre. The climax comes. The bride
bursts into hysterical sobs, while the women wipe their eyes. A plate,
heretofore concealed under his coat, is whisked out. He has conquered;
the inevitable collection is taken up.

The tuneful procession moves upon the bridegroom. An Essex Street
girl in the crowd, watching them go, says disdainfully: "None of this
humbug when I get married." It is the straining of young America at the
fetters of tradition. Ten minutes later, when, between double files of
women holding candles, the couple pass to the canopy where the rabbi
waits, she has already forgotten; and when the crunching of a glass
under the bridegroom's heel announces that they are one, and that until
the broken pieces be reunited he is hers and hers alone, she joins with
all the company in the exulting shout of "Mozzel tov!" ("Good luck!").
Then the _dupka_, men and women joining in, forgetting all but the
moment, hands on hips, stepping in time, forward, backward, and across.
And then the feast.

They sit at the long tables by squads and tribes. Those who belong
together sit together. There is no attempt at pairing off for
conversation or mutual entertainment, at speech-making or toasting. The
business in hand is to eat, and it is attended to. The bridegroom, at
the head of the table, with his shiny silk hat on, sets the example;
and the guests emulate it with zeal, the men smoking big, strong cigars
between mouthfuls. "Gosh! ain't it fine?" is the grateful comment
of one curly-headed youngster, bravely attacking his third plate of
chicken-stew. "Fine as silk," nods his neighbor in knickerbockers.
Christmas, for once, means something to them that they can understand.
The crowd of hurrying waiters make room for one bearing aloft a small
turkey adorned with much tinsel and many paper flowers. It is for the
bride, the one thing not to be touched until the next day--one day off
from the drudgery of housekeeping; she, too, can keep Christmas.

A group of bearded, dark-browed men sit apart, the rabbi among them.
They are the orthodox, who cannot break bread with the rest, for
fear, though the food be kosher, the plates have been defiled. They
brought their own to the feast, and sit at their own table, stern and
justified. Did they but know what depravity is harbored in the impish
mind of the girl yonder, who plans to hang her stocking overnight by
the window! There is no fireplace in the tenement. Queer things happen
over here, in the strife between the old and the new. The girls of the
College Settlement, last summer, felt compelled to explain that the
holiday in the country which they offered some of these children was
to be spent in an Episcopal clergyman's house, where they had prayers
every morning. "Oh," was the mother's indulgent answer, "they know it
isn't true, so it won't hurt them."

The bell of a neighboring church tower strikes the vesper hour. A man
in working-clothes uncovers his head reverently, and passes on. Through
the vista of green bowers formed of the grocer's stock of Christmas
trees a passing glimpse of flaring torches in the distant square is
caught. They touch with flame the gilt cross towering high above the
"White Garden," as the German residents call Tompkins Square. On the
sidewalk the holy-eve fair is in its busiest hour. In the pine-board
booths stand rows of staring toy dogs alternately with plaster saints.
Red apples and candy are hawked from carts. Pedlers offer colored
candles with shrill outcry. A huckster feeding his horse by the curb
scatters, unseen, a share for the sparrows. The cross flashes white
against the dark sky.

In one of the side streets near the East River has stood for thirty
years a little mission church, called Hope Chapel by its founders,
in the brave spirit in which they built it. It has had plenty of use
for the spirit since. Of the kind of problems that beset its pastor
I caught a glimpse the other day, when, as I entered his room, a
rough-looking man went out.

"One of my cares," said Mr. Devins, looking after him with contracted
brow. "He has spent two Christmas days of twenty-three out of jail.
He is a burglar, or was. His daughter has brought him round. She is a
seamstress. For three months, now, she has been keeping him and the
home, working nights. If I could only get him a job! He won't stay
honest long without it; but who wants a burglar for a watchman? And how
can I recommend him?"

A few doors from the chapel an alley sets into the block. We halted at
the mouth of it.

"Come in," said Mr. Devins, "and wish Blind Jennie a Merry Christmas."

We went in, in single file; there was not room for two. As we climbed
the creaking stairs of the rear tenement, a chorus of children's shrill
voices burst into song somewhere above.

"It is her class," said the pastor of Hope Chapel, as he stopped on the
landing. "They are all kinds. We never could hope to reach them; Jennie
can. They fetch her the papers given out in the Sunday-school, and
read to her what is printed under the pictures; and she tells them the
story of it. There is nothing Jennie doesn't know about the Bible."

The door opened upon a low-ceiled room, where the evening shades lay
deep. The red glow from the kitchen stove discovered a jam of children,
young girls mostly, perched on the table, the chairs, in one another's
laps, or squatting on the floor; in the midst of them, a little old
woman with heavily veiled face, and wan, wrinkled hands folded in her
lap. The singing ceased as we stepped across the threshold.

"Be welcome," piped a harsh voice with a singular note of cheerfulness
in it. "Whose step is that with you, pastor? I don't know it. He is
welcome in Jennie's house, whoever he be. Girls, make him to home." The
girls moved up to make room.

"Jennie has not seen since she was a child," said the clergyman,
gently; "but she knows a friend without it. Some day she shall see the
great Friend in his glory, and then she shall be Blind Jennie no more."

The little woman raised the veil from a face shockingly disfigured, and
touched the eyeless sockets. "Some day," she repeated, "Jennie shall
see. Not long now--not long!" Her pastor patted her hand. The silence
of the dark room was broken by Blind Jennie's voice, rising cracked and
quavering: "Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?" The shrill chorus burst
in:--

    It was there by faith I received my sight,
        And now I am happy all the day.

The light that falls from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild, in
Delancey Street, makes a white path across the asphalt pavement.
Within, there is mirth and laughter. The Tenth Ward Social Reform
Club is having its Christmas festival. Its members, poor mothers,
scrub-women,--the president is the janitress of a tenement near
by,--have brought their little ones, a few their husbands, to share
in the fun. One little girl has to be dragged up to the grab-bag. She
cries at the sight of Santa Claus. The baby has drawn a woolly horse.
He kisses the toy with a look of ecstatic bliss, and toddles away. At
the far end of the hall a game of blindman's-buff is starting up. The
aged grandmother, who has watched it with growing excitement, bids one
of the settlement workers hold her grandchild, that she may join in;
and she does join in, with all the pent-up hunger of fifty joyless
years. The worker, looking on, smiles; one has been reached. Thus is
the battle against the slum waged and won with the child's play.

Tramp! tramp! comes the to-morrow upon the stage. Two hundred and
fifty pairs of little feet, keeping step, are marching to dinner in
the Newsboys' Lodging-house. Five hundred pairs more are restlessly
awaiting their turn upstairs. In prison, hospital, and almshouse
to-night the city is host, and gives of her plenty. Here an unknown
friend has spread a generous repast for the waifs who all the rest of
the days shift for themselves as best they can. Turkey, coffee, and
pie, with "vegetubles" to fill in. As the file of eagle-eyed youngsters
passes down the long tables, there are swift movements of grimy hands,
and shirt-waists bulge, ragged coats sag at the pockets. Hardly is the
file seated when the plaint rises: "I ain't got no pie! It got swiped
on me." Seven despoiled ones hold up their hands.

The superintendent laughs--it is Christmas eve. He taps one tentatively
on the bulging shirt. "What have you here, my lad?"

"Me pie," responds he, with an innocent look; "I wuz scart it would get
stole."

A little fellow who has been eying one of the visitors attentively
takes his knife out of his mouth, and points it at him with conviction.

"I know you," he pipes. "You're a p'lice commissioner. I seen yer
picter in the papers. You're Teddy Roosevelt!"

The clatter of knives and forks ceases suddenly. Seven pies creep
stealthily over the edge of the table, and are replaced on as many
plates. The visitors laugh. It was a case of mistaken identity.

Farthest down town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and
warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the sombre-hued colony of
Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it that
in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York the
corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it? Even
the floral cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox church
is long withered and dead; it has been there since Easter, and it is
yet twelve days to Christmas by the belated reckoning of the Greek
Church. But if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within there is
nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting. There are enough
of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest follow the custom
of the country. The men go from house to house, shake hands, and kiss
one another on both cheeks, with the salutation, "Kol am va antom
Salimoon." "Every year and you are safe," the Syrian guide renders it
into English; and a non-professional interpreter amends it: "May you
grow happier year by year." Arrack made from grapes and flavored with
aniseseed, and candy baked in little white balls like marbles, are
served with the indispensable cigarette; for long callers, the pipe.

In a top-floor room of one of the darkest of the dilapidated tenements,
the dusty window panes of which the last glow in the winter sky is
tinging faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests, most of
them fresh from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about the room.
A reed-pipe and a tambourine furnish the music. One has the centre of
the floor. With a beer jug filled to the brim on his head, he skips and
sways, bending, twisting, kneeling, gesturing, and keeping time, while
the men clap their hands. He lies down and turns over, but not a drop
is spilled. Another succeeds him, stepping proudly, gracefully, furling
and unfurling a handkerchief like a banner. As he sits down, and the
beer goes around, one in the corner, who looks like a shepherd fresh
from his pasture, strikes up a song--a far-off, lonesome, plaintive
lay. "'Far as the hills,'" says the guide; "a song of the old days and
the old people, now seldom heard." All together croon the refrain.
The host delivers himself of an epic about his love across the seas,
with the most agonizing expression, and in a shockingly bad voice. He
is the worst singer I ever heard; but his companions greet his effort
with approving shouts of "Yi! yi!" They look so fierce, and yet are so
childishly happy, that at the thought of their exile and of the dark
tenement the question arises, "Why all this joy?" The guide answers it
with a look of surprise. "They sing," he says, "because they are glad
they are free. Did you not know?"

The bells in old Trinity chime the midnight hour. From dark hallways
men and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the loft
of the dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of brass.
The priest, in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on the back,
chants the ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in the aisles,
shrouding their heads in their shawls; a surpliced acolyte swings his
censer; the heavy perfume of burning incense fills the hall.

The band at the anarchists' ball is tuning up for the last dance. Young
and old float to the happy strains, forgetting injustice, oppression,
hatred. Children slide upon the waxed floor, weaving fearlessly in and
out between the couples--between fierce, bearded men and short-haired
women with crimson-bordered kerchiefs. A Punch-and-Judy show in the
corner evokes shouts of laughter.

Outside the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and
corner, softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the spotless
mantle of charity over the blemishes, the shortcomings. Christmas
morning will dawn pure and white.



WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW IN THE TENEMENTS


The December sun shone clear and cold upon the city. It shone upon rich
and poor alike. It shone into the homes of the wealthy on the avenues
and in the up-town streets, and into courts and alleys hedged in by
towering tenements down town. It shone upon throngs of busy holiday
shoppers that went out and in at the big stores, carrying bundles big
and small, all alike filled with Christmas cheer and kindly messages
from Santa Claus.

It shone down so gayly and altogether cheerily there, that wraps and
overcoats were unbuttoned for the north wind to toy with. "My, isn't it
a nice day?" said one young lady in a fur shoulder cape to a friend,
pausing to kiss and compare lists of Christmas gifts.

"Most too hot," was the reply, and the friends passed on. There was
warmth within and without. Life was very pleasant under the Christmas
sun up on the avenue.

Down in Cherry Street the rays of the sun climbed over a row of tall
tenements with an effort that seemed to exhaust all the life that was
in them, and fell into a dirty block, half choked with trucks, with
ash barrels and rubbish of all sorts, among which the dust was whirled
in clouds upon fitful, shivering blasts that searched every nook and
cranny of the big barracks. They fell upon a little girl, barefooted
and in rags, who struggled out of an alley with a broken pitcher in her
grimy fist, against the wind that set down the narrow slit like the
draught through a big factory chimney. Just at the mouth of the alley
it took her with a sudden whirl, a cyclone of dust and drifting ashes,
tossed her fairly off her feet, tore from her grip the threadbare
shawl she clutched at her throat, and set her down at the saloon door
breathless and half smothered. She had just time to dodge through the
storm-doors before another whirlwind swept whistling down the street.

"My, but isn't it cold?" she said, as she shook the dust out of her
shawl and set the pitcher down on the bar. "Gimme a pint," laying down
a few pennies that had been wrapped in a corner of the shawl, "and
mamma says make it good and full."

"All'us the way with youse kids--want a barrel when yees pays fer a
pint," growled the bartender. "There, run along, and don't ye hang
around that stove no more. We ain't a steam-heatin' the block fer
nothin'."

The little girl clutched her shawl and the pitcher, and slipped out
into the street where the wind lay in ambush and promptly bore down on
her in pillars of whirling dust as soon as she appeared. But the sun
that pitied her bare feet and little frozen hands played a trick on
old Boreas--it showed her a way between the pillars, and only just her
skirt was caught by one and whirled over her head as she dodged into
her alley. It peeped after her halfway down its dark depths, where it
seemed colder even than in the bleak street, but there it had to leave
her.

It did not see her dive through the doorless opening into a hall
where no sun-ray had ever entered. It could not have found its way
in there had it tried. But up the narrow, squeaking stairs the girl
with the pitcher was climbing. Up one flight of stairs, over a knot of
children, half babies, pitching pennies on the landing, over wash-tubs
and bedsteads that encumbered the next--house-cleaning going on in
that "flat"; that is to say, the surplus of bugs was being turned out
with petroleum and a feather--up still another, past a half-open door
through which came the noise of brawling and curses. She dodged and
quickened her step a little until she stood panting before a door on
the fourth landing that opened readily as she pushed it with her bare
foot.

A room almost devoid of stick or rag one might dignify with the name of
furniture. Two chairs, one with a broken back, the other on three legs,
beside a rickety table that stood upright only by leaning against the
wall. On the unwashed floor a heap of straw covered with dirty bedtick
for a bed; a foul-smelling slop-pail in the middle of the room; a
crazy stove, and back of it a door or gap opening upon darkness. There
was something in there, but what it was could only be surmised from a
heavy snore that rose and fell regularly. It was the bedroom of the
apartment, windowless, airless, and sunless, but rented at a price a
millionaire would denounce as robbery.

"That you, Liza?" said a voice that discovered a woman bending over the
stove. "Run 'n' get the childer. Dinner's ready."

The winter sun glancing down the wall of the opposite tenement, with a
hopeless effort to cheer the back yard, might have peeped through the
one window of the room in Mrs. McGroarty's "flat," had that window not
been coated with the dust of ages, and discovered that dinner party in
action. It might have found a score like it in the alley. Four unkempt
children, copies each in his or her way of Liza and their mother,
Mrs. McGroarty, who "did washing" for a living. A meat bone, a "cut"
from the butcher's at four cents a pound, green pickles, stale bread
and beer. Beer for the four, a sup all round, the baby included. Why
not? It was the one relish the searching ray would have found there.
Potatoes were there, too--potatoes and meat! Say not the poor in the
tenements are starving. In New York only those starve who cannot get
work and have not the courage to beg. Fifty thousand always out of a
job, say those who pretend to know. A round half-million asking and
getting charity in eight years, say the statisticians of the Charity
Organization. Any one can go round and see for himself that no one need
starve in New York.

From across the yard the sunbeam, as it crept up the wall, fell
slantingly through the attic window whence issued the sound of
hammer-blows. A man with a hard face stood in its light, driving nails
into the lid of a soap box that was partly filled with straw. Something
else was there; as he shifted the lid that didn't fit, the glimpse of
sunshine fell across it; it was a dead child, a little baby in a white
slip, bedded in straw in a soap box for a coffin. The man was hammering
down the lid to take it to the Potter's Field. At the bed knelt the
mother, dry-eyed, delirious from starvation that had killed her child.
Five hungry, frightened children cowered in the corner, hardly daring
to whisper as they looked from the father to the mother in terror.

There was a knock on the door that was drowned once, twice, in the
noise of the hammer on the little coffin. Then it was opened gently,
and a young woman came in with a basket. A little silver cross shone
upon her breast. She went to the poor mother, and, putting her hand
soothingly on her head, knelt by her with gentle and loving words. The
half-crazed woman listened with averted face, then suddenly burst into
tears and hid her throbbing head in the other's lap.

The man stopped hammering and stared fixedly upon the two; the children
gathered around with devouring looks as the visitor took from her
basket bread, meat, and tea. Just then, with a parting wistful look
into the bare attic room, the sun-ray slipped away, lingered for a
moment about the coping outside, and fled over the housetops.

As it sped on its winter-day journey, did it shine into any cabin in
an Irish bog more desolate than these Cherry Street "homes"? An army
of thousands, whose one bright and wholesome memory, only tradition of
home, is that poverty-stricken cabin in the desolate bog, are herded
in such barracks to-day in New York. Potatoes they have; yes, and meat
at four cents--even seven. Beer for a relish--never without beer.
But home? The home that was home, even in a bog, with the love of it
that has made Ireland immortal and a tower of strength in the midst
of her suffering--what of that? There are no homes in New York's poor
tenements.

Down the crooked path of the Mulberry Street Bend the sunlight slanted
into the heart of New York's Italy. It shone upon bandannas and
yellow neckerchiefs; upon swarthy faces and corduroy breeches; upon
black-haired girls--mothers at thirteen; upon hosts of bow-legged
children rolling in the dirt; upon pedlers' carts and rag-pickers
staggering under burdens that threatened to crush them at every step.
Shone upon unnumbered Pasquales dwelling, working, idling, and gambling
there. Shone upon the filthiest and foulest of New York's tenements,
upon Bandits' Roost, upon Bottle Alley, upon the hidden byways that
lead to the tramps' burrows. Shone upon the scene of annual infant
slaughter. Shone into the foul core of New York's slums that was at
last to go to the realm of bad memories because civilized man might not
look upon it and live without blushing.

It glanced past the rag-shop in the cellar, whence welled up stenches
to poison the town, into an apartment three flights up that held two
women, one young, the other old and bent. The young one had a baby at
her breast. She was rocking it tenderly in her arms, singing in the
soft Italian tongue a lullaby, while the old granny listened eagerly,
her elbows on her knees, and a stumpy clay pipe, blackened with age,
between her teeth. Her eyes were set on the wall, on which the musty
paper hung in tatters, fit frame for the wretched, poverty-stricken
room, but they saw neither poverty nor want; her aged limbs felt not
the cold draught from without, in which they shivered; she looked far
over the seas to sunny Italy, whose music was in her ears.

"O dolce Napoli," she mumbled between her toothless jaws, "O suol
beato----"

The song ended in a burst of passionate grief. The old granny and the
baby woke up at once. They were not in sunny Italy; not under southern,
cloudless skies. They were in "The Bend," in Mulberry Street, and the
wintry wind rattled the door as if it would say, in the language of
their new home, the land of the free: "Less music! More work! Root,
hog, or die!"

Around the corner the sunbeam danced with the wind into Mott Street,
lifted the blouse of a Chinaman and made it play tag with his pigtail.
It used him so roughly that he was glad to skip from it down a
cellar-way that gave out fumes of opium strong enough to scare even
the north wind from its purpose. The soles of his felt shoes showed
as he disappeared down the ladder that passed for cellar steps. Down
there, where daylight never came, a group of yellow, almond-eyed men
were bending over a table playing fan-tan. Their very souls were in
the game, every faculty of the mind bent on the issue and the stake.
The one blouse that was indifferent to what went on was stretched on a
mat in a corner. One end of a clumsy pipe was in his mouth, the other
held over a little spirit-lamp on the divan on which he lay. Something
fluttered in the flame with a pungent, unpleasant smell. The smoker
took a long draught, inhaling the white smoke, then sank back on his
couch in senseless content.

Upstairs tiptoed the noiseless felt shoes, bent on some house errand,
to the "household" floors above, where young white girls from the
tenements of The Bend and the East Side live in slavery worse, if not
more galling, than any of the galley with ball and chain--the slavery
of the pipe. Four, eight, sixteen, twenty-odd such "homes" in this
tenement, disgracing the very name of home and family, for marriage and
troth are not in the bargain.

In one room, between the half-drawn curtains of which the sunbeam
works its way in, three girls are lying on as many bunks, smoking all.
They are very young, "under age," though each and every one would
glibly swear in court to the satisfaction of the police that she is
sixteen, and therefore free to make her own bad choice. Of these, one
was brought up among the rugged hills of Maine; the other two are from
the tenement crowds, hardly missed there. But their companion? She is
twirling the sticky brown pill over the lamp, preparing to fill the
bowl of her pipe with it. As she does so, the sunbeam dances across
the bed, kisses the red spot on her cheek that betrays the secret her
tyrant long has known,--though to her it is hidden yet,--that the pipe
has claimed its victim and soon will pass it on to the Potter's Field.

"Nell," says one of her chums in the other bunk, something stirred
within her by the flash, "Nell, did you hear from the old farm to home
since you come here?"

Nell turns half around, with the toasting-stick in her hand, an ugly
look on her wasted features, a vile oath on her lips.

"To hell with the old farm," she says, and putting the pipe to her
mouth inhales it all, every bit, in one long breath, then falls back on
her pillow in drunken stupor.

That is what the sun of a winter day saw and heard in Mott Street.

       *       *       *       *       *

It had travelled far toward the west, searching many dark corners and
vainly seeking entry to others; had glided with equal impartiality the
spires of five hundred churches and the tin cornices of thirty thousand
tenements, with their million tenants and more; had smiled courage and
cheer to patient mothers trying to make the most of life in the teeming
crowds, that had too little sunshine by far; hope to toiling fathers
striving early and late for bread to fill the many mouths clamoring to
be fed.

The brief December day was far spent. Now its rays fell across the
North River and lighted up the windows of the tenements in Hell's
Kitchen and Poverty Gap. In the Gap especially they made a brave show;
the windows of the crazy old frame-house under the big tree that
sat back from the street looked as if they were made of beaten gold.
But the glory did not cross the threshold. Within it was dark and
dreary and cold. The room at the foot of the rickety, patched stairs
was empty. The last tenant was beaten to death by her husband in his
drunken fury. The sun's rays shunned the spot ever after, though it was
long since it could have made out the red daub from the mould on the
rotten floor.

Upstairs, in the cold attic, where the wind wailed mournfully through
every open crack, a little girl sat sobbing as if her heart would
break. She hugged an old doll to her breast. The paint was gone from
its face; the yellow hair was in a tangle; its clothes hung in rags.
But she only hugged it closer. It was her doll. They had been friends
so long, shared hunger and hardship together, and now----

Her tears fell faster. One drop trembled upon the wan cheek of the
doll. The last sunbeam shot athwart it and made it glisten like a
priceless jewel. Its glory grew and filled the room. Gone were the
black walls, the darkness, and the cold. There was warmth and light
and joy. Merry voices and glad faces were all about. A flock of
children danced with gleeful shouts about a great Christmas tree in
the middle of the floor. Upon its branches hung drums and trumpets and
toys, and countless candles gleamed like beautiful stars. Farthest
up, at the very top, her doll, her very own, with arms outstretched,
as if appealing to be taken down and hugged. She knew it, knew the
mission-school that had seen her first and only real Christmas, knew
the gentle face of her teacher, and the writing on the wall she had
taught her to spell out: "In His name." His name, who, she had said,
was all little children's friend. Was He also her dolly's friend, and
would He know it among the strange people?

The light went out; the glory faded. The bare room, only colder and
more cheerless than before, was left. The child shivered. Only that
morning the doctor had told her mother that she must have medicine and
food and warmth, or she must go to the great hospital where papa had
gone before, when their money was all spent. Sorrow and want had laid
the mother upon the bed he had barely left. Every stick of furniture,
every stitch of clothing on which money could be borrowed, had gone to
the pawnbroker. Last of all, she had carried mamma's wedding-ring to
pay the druggist. Now there was no more left, and they had nothing to
eat. In a little while mamma would wake up, hungry.

The little girl smothered a last sob and rose quickly. She wrapped
the doll in a threadbare shawl as well as she could, tiptoed to the
door, and listened a moment to the feeble breathing of the sick mother
within. Then she went out, shutting the door softly behind her, lest
she wake her.

Up the street she went, the way she knew so well, one block and a turn
round the saloon corner, the sunset glow kissing the track of her bare
feet in the snow as she went, to a door that rang a noisy bell as she
opened it and went in. A musty smell filled the close room. Packages,
great and small, lay piled high on shelves behind the worn counter. A
slovenly woman was haggling with the pawnbroker about the money for a
skirt she had brought to pledge.

"Not a cent more than a quarter," he said, contemptuously, tossing the
garment aside. "It's half worn out it is, dragging it back and forth
over the counter these six months. Take it or leave it. Hallo! What
have we here? Little Finnegan, eh? Your mother not dead yet? It's in
the poor-house ye will be if she lasts much longer. What the----"

He had taken the package from the trembling child's hand--the precious
doll--and unrolled the shawl. A moment he stood staring in dumb
amazement at its contents. Then he caught it up and flung it with an
angry oath upon the floor, where it was shivered against the coal-box.

"Get out o' here, ye Finnegan brat," he shouted; "I'll tache ye to come
a-guyin' o' me. I'll----"

The door closed with a bang upon the frightened child, alone in the
cold night. The sun saw not its home-coming. It had hidden behind the
night clouds, weary of the sight of man and his cruelty.

Evening had worn into night. The busy city slept. Down by the wharves,
now deserted, a poor boy sat on the bulwark, hungry, foot-sore, and
shivering with cold. He sat thinking of friends and home, thousands of
miles away over the sea, whom he had left six months before to go among
strangers. He had been alone ever since, but never more so than that
night. His money gone, no work to be found, he had slept in the streets
for nights. That day he had eaten nothing; he would rather die than
beg, and one of the two he must do soon.

There was the dark river rushing at his feet; the swirl of the unseen
waters whispered to him of rest and peace he had not known since--it
was so cold--and who was there to care, he thought bitterly. No one
would ever know. He moved a little nearer the edge, and listened more
intently.

A low whine fell on his ear, and a cold, wet face was pressed against
his. A little crippled dog that had been crouching silently beside him
nestled in his lap. He had picked it up in the street, as forlorn and
friendless as himself, and it had stayed by him. Its touch recalled him
to himself. He got up hastily, and, taking the dog in his arms, went
to the police station near by, and asked for shelter. It was the first
time he had accepted even such charity, and as he lay down on his rough
plank he hugged a little gold locket he wore around his neck, the last
link with better days, and thought with a hard sob of home. In the
middle of the night he awoke with a start. The locket was gone. One of
the tramps who slept with him had stolen it. With bitter tears he went
up and complained to the Sergeant at the desk, and the Sergeant ordered
him to be kicked out into the street as a liar, if not a thief. How
should a tramp boy have come honestly by a gold locket? The doorman put
him out as he was bidden, and when the little dog showed its teeth, a
policeman seized it and clubbed it to death on the step.

       *       *       *       *       *

Far from the slumbering city the rising moon shines over a wide expanse
of glistening water. It silvers the snow upon a barren heath between
two shores, and shortens with each passing minute the shadows of
countless headstones that bear no names, only numbers. The breakers
that beat against the bluff wake not those who sleep there. In the deep
trenches they lie, shoulder to shoulder, an army of brothers, homeless
in life, but here at rest and at peace. A great cross stands upon the
lonely shore. The moon sheds its rays upon it in silent benediction
and floods the garden of the unknown, unmourned dead with its soft
light. Out on the Sound the fishermen see it flashing white against the
starlit sky, and bare their heads reverently as their boats speed by,
borne upon the wings of the west wind.



NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS


It was Christmas Eve over on the East Side. Darkness was closing in on
a cold, hard day. The light that struggled through the frozen windows
of the delicatessen store and the saloon on the corner, fell upon
men with empty dinner-pails who were hurrying homeward, their coats
buttoned tightly, and heads bent against the steady blast from the
river, as if they were butting their way down the street.

The wind had forced the door of the saloon ajar, and was whistling
through the crack; but in there it seemed to make no one afraid.
Between roars of laughter, the clink of glasses and the rattle of dice
on the hardwood counter were heard out in the street. More than one of
the passers-by who came within range was taken with an extra shiver in
which the vision of wife and little ones waiting at home for his coming
was snuffed out, as he dropped in to brace up. The lights were long out
when the silent streets reëchoed his unsteady steps toward home, where
the Christmas welcome had turned to dread.

But in this twilight hour they burned brightly yet, trying hard to
pierce the bitter cold outside with a ray of warmth and cheer. Where
the lamps in the delicatessen store made a mottled streak of brightness
across the flags, two little boys stood with their noses flattened
against the window. The warmth inside, and the lights, had made little
islands of clear space on the frosty pane, affording glimpses of the
wealth within, of the piles of smoked herring, of golden cheese, of
sliced bacon and generous, fat-bellied hams; of the rows of odd-shaped
bottles and jars on the shelves that held there was no telling what
good things, only it was certain that they must be good from the looks
of them.

And the heavenly smell of spices and things that reached the boys
through the open door each time the tinkling bell announced the coming
or going of a customer! Better than all, back there on the top shelf
the stacks of square honey-cakes, with their frosty coats of sugar,
tied in bundles with strips of blue paper.

The wind blew straight through the patched and threadbare jackets
of the lads as they crept closer to the window, struggling hard by
breathing on the pane to make their peep-holes bigger, to take in the
whole of the big cake with the almonds set in; but they did not heed it.

"Jim!" piped the smaller of the two, after a longer stare than usual;
"hey, Jim! them's Sante Claus's. See 'em?"

"Sante Claus!" snorted the other, scornfully, applying his eye to the
clear spot on the pane. "There ain't no ole duffer like dat. Them's
honey-cakes. Me 'n' Tom had a bite o' one wunst."

"There ain't no Sante Claus?" retorted the smaller shaver, hotly, at
his peep-hole. "There is, too. I seen him myself when he cum to our
alley last----"

"What's youse kids a-scrappin' fur?" broke in a strange voice.

Another boy, bigger, but dirtier and tougher-looking than either of the
two, had come up behind them unobserved. He carried an armful of unsold
"extras" under one arm. The other was buried to the elbow in the pocket
of his ragged trousers.

The "kids" knew him, evidently, and the smallest eagerly accepted him
as umpire.

"It's Jim w'at says there ain't no Sante Claus, and I seen him----"

"Jim!" demanded the elder ragamuffin, sternly, looking hard at the
culprit; "Jim! yere a chump! No Sante Claus? What're ye givin' us? Now,
watch me!"

With utter amazement the boys saw him disappear through the door under
the tinkling bell into the charmed precincts of smoked herring, jam,
and honey-cakes. Petrified at their peep-holes, they watched him, in
the veritable presence of Santa Claus himself with the fir-branch, fish
out five battered pennies from the depths of his pocket and pass them
over to the woman behind the jars, in exchange for one of the bundles
of honey-cakes tied with blue. As if in a dream they saw him issue
forth with the coveted prize.

"There, kid!" he said, holding out the two fattest and whitest cakes to
Santa Claus's champion; "there's yer Christmas. Run along, now, to yer
barracks; and you, Jim, here's one for you, though yer don't desarve
it. Mind ye let the kid alone."

"This one'll have to do for me grub, I guess. I ain't sold me 'Newses,'
and the ole man'll kick if I bring 'em home."

Before the shuffling feet of the ragamuffins hurrying homeward had
turned the corner, the last mouthful of the newsboy's supper was
smothered in a yell of "Extree!" as he shot across the street to
intercept a passing stranger.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the evening wore on, it grew rawer and more blustering still. Flakes
of dry snow that stayed where they fell, slowly tracing the curb-lines,
the shutters, and the doorsteps of the tenements with gathering white,
were borne up on the storm from the water. To the right and left
stretched endless streets between the towering barracks, as beneath
frowning cliffs pierced with a thousand glowing eyes that revealed
the watch-fires within--a mighty city of cave-dwellers held in the
thraldom of poverty and want.

Outside there was yet hurrying to and fro. Saloon doors were slamming,
and bare-legged urchins, carrying beer-jugs, hugged the walls close for
shelter. From the depths of a blind alley floated out the discordant
strains of a vagabond brass band "blowing in" the yule of the poor.
Banished by police ordinance from the street, it reaped a scant harvest
of pennies for Christmas cheer from the windows opening on the back
yard. Against more than one pane showed the bald outline of a forlorn
little Christmas tree, some stray branch of a hemlock picked up at the
grocer's and set in a pail for "the childer" to dance around, a dime's
worth of candy and tinsel on the boughs.

From the attic over the way came, in spells between, the gentle tones
of a German song about the Christ-child. Christmas in the East Side
tenements begins with the sunset on the "Holy Eve," except where the
name is as a threat or a taunt. In a hundred such homes the whir of
many sewing-machines, worked by the sweater's slaves with weary feet
and aching backs, drowned every feeble note of joy that struggled to
make itself heard above the noise of the great treadmill.

To these what was Christmas but the name for suffering, reminder of
lost kindred and liberty, or the slavery of eighteen hundred years,
freedom from which was purchased only with gold. Ay, gold! The gold
that had power to buy freedom yet, to buy the good-will, ay, and the
good name, of the oppressor, with his houses and land. At the thought
the tired eye glistened, the aching back straightened, and to the weary
foot there came new strength to finish the long task while the city
slept.

Where a narrow passageway put in between two big tenements to a
ramshackle rear barrack, Nibsy, the newsboy, halted in the shadow of
the doorway and stole a long look down the dark alley.

He toyed uncertainly with his still unsold papers--worn dirty and
ragged as his clothes by this time--before he ventured in, picking his
way between barrels and heaps of garbage; past the Italian cobbler's
hovel, where a tallow dip, stuck in a cracked beer-glass, before
a picture of the "Mother of God," showed that even he knew it was
Christmas and liked to show it; past the Sullivan flat, where blows and
drunken curses mingled with the shriek of women, as Nibsy had heard
many nights before this one.

He shuddered as he felt his way past the door, partly with a
premonition of what was in store for himself, if the "old man" was at
home, partly with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that somehow Christmas
Eve should be different from other nights, even in the alley; down
to its farthest end, to the last rickety flight of steps that led
into the filth and darkness of the tenement. Up this he crept, three
flights, to a door at which he stopped and listened, hesitating, as he
had stopped at the entrance to the alley; then, with a sudden, defiant
gesture, he pushed it open and went in.

A bare and cheerless room; a pile of rags for a bed in the corner,
another in the dark alcove, miscalled bedroom; under the window a
broken candle and an iron-bound chest, upon which sat a sad-eyed woman
with hard lines in her face, peeling potatoes in a pan; in the middle
of the room a rusty stove, with a pile of wood, chopped on the floor
alongside. A man on his knees in front fanning the fire with an old
slouch hat. With each breath of draught he stirred; the crazy old pipe
belched forth torrents of smoke at every joint. As Nibsy entered, the
man desisted from his efforts and sat up, glaring at him--a villainous
ruffian's face, scowling with anger.

"Late ag'in!" he growled; "an' yer papers not sold. What did I tell
yer, brat, if ye dared----"

"Tom! Tom!" broke in the wife, in a desperate attempt to soothe the
ruffian's temper. "The boy can't help it, an' it's Christmas Eve. For
the love o'----"

"The devil take yer rot and yer brat!" shouted the man, mad with the
fury of passion. "Let me at him!" and, reaching over, he seized a heavy
knot of wood and flung it at the head of the boy.

Nibsy had remained just inside the door, edging slowly toward his
mother, but with a watchful eye on the man at the stove. At the first
movement of his hand toward the woodpile he sprang for the stairway
with the agility of a cat, and just dodged the missile. It struck the
door, as he slammed it behind him, with force enough to smash the panel.

Down the three flights in as many jumps he went, and through the alley,
over barrels and barriers, never stopping once till he reached the
street, and curses and shouts were left behind.

In his flight he had lost his unsold papers, and he felt ruefully in
his pocket as he went down the street, pulling his rags about him as
much from shame as to keep out the cold.

Four pennies were all he had left after his Christmas treat to the two
little lads from the barracks; not enough for supper or for a bed; and
it was getting colder all the time.

On the sidewalk in front of the notion store a belated Christmas party
was in progress. The children from the tenements in the alley and
across the way were having a game of blind-man's-buff, groping blindly
about in the crowd to catch each other. They hailed Nibsy with shouts
of laughter, calling to him to join in.

"We're having Christmas!" they yelled.

Nibsy did not hear them. He was thinking, thinking, the while turning
over his four pennies at the bottom of his pocket. Thinking if
Christmas was ever to come to him, and the children's Santa Claus to
find his alley where the baby slept within reach of her father's cruel
hand. As for him, he had never known anything but blows and curses. He
could take care of himself. But his mother and the baby--And then it
came to him with shuddering cold that it was getting late, and that he
must find a place to sleep.

He weighed in his mind the merits of two or three places where he was
in the habit of hiding from the "cops" when the alley got to be too hot
for him.

There was the hay barge down by the dock, with the watchman who got
drunk sometimes, and so gave the boys a chance. The chances were at
least even of its being available on Christmas Eve, and of Santa Claus
having thus done him a good turn after all.

Then there was the snug berth in the sand-box you could curl all up in.
Nibsy thought with regret of its being, like the hay barge, so far away
and to windward, too.

Down by the printing-offices there were the steam gratings, and a
chance corner in the cellars, stories and stories underground, where
the big presses keep up such a clatter from midnight till far into the
day.

As he passed them in review, Nibsy made up his mind with sudden
determination, and, setting his face toward the south, made off down
town.

       *       *       *       *       *

The rumble of the last departing news-wagon over the pavement, now
buried deep in snow, had died away in the distance, when, from out of
the bowels of the earth there issued a cry, a cry of mortal terror and
pain that was echoed by a hundred throats.

From one of the deep cellar-ways a man ran out, his clothes and hair
and beard afire; on his heels a breathless throng of men and boys;
following them, close behind, a rush of smoke and fire.

The clatter of the presses ceased suddenly, to be followed quickly by
the clangor of hurrying fire-bells. With hooks and axes the firemen
rushed in; hose was let down through the manholes, and down there in
the depths the battle was fought and won.

The building was saved; but in the midst of the rejoicing over the
victory there fell a sudden silence. From the cellar-way a grimy,
helmeted figure arose, with something black and scorched in his arms.
A tarpaulin was spread upon the snow and upon it he laid his burden,
while the silent crowd made room and word went over to the hospital for
the doctor to come quickly.

Very gently they lifted poor little Nisby--for it was he, caught in
his berth by a worse enemy than the "cop" or the watchman of the hay
barge--into the ambulance that bore him off to the hospital cot, too
late.

Conscious only of a vague discomfort that had succeeded terror and
pain, Nibsy wondered uneasily why they were all so kind. Nobody had
taken the trouble to as much as notice him before. When he had thrust
his papers into their very faces they had pushed him roughly aside.

Nibsy, unhurt and able to fight his way, never had a show. Sick and
maimed and sore, he was being made much of, though he had been caught
where the boys were forbidden to go. Things were queer, anyhow, and----

The room was getting so dark that he could hardly see the doctor's
kindly face, and had to grip his hand tightly to make sure that he was
there; almost as dark as the stairs in the alley he had come down in
such a hurry.

There was the baby now--poor baby--and mother--and then a great blank,
and it was all a mystery to poor Nibsy no longer. For, just as a
wild-eyed woman pushed her way through the crowd of nurses and doctors
to his bedside, crying for her boy, Nibsy gave up his soul to God.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was very quiet in the alley. Christmas had come and gone. Upon the
last door a bow of soiled crape was nailed up with two tacks. It had
done duty there a dozen times before, that year.

Upstairs, Nibsy was at home, and for once the neighbors, one and all,
old and young, came to see him.

Even the father, ruffian that he was, offered no objection. Cowed and
silent, he sat in the corner by the window farthest from where the
plain little coffin stood, with the lid closed down.

A couple of the neighbor-women were talking in low tones by the stove,
when there came a timid knock at the door. Nobody answering, it was
pushed open, first a little, then far enough to admit the shrinking
form of a little ragamuffin, the smaller of the two who had stood
breathing peep-holes on the window pane of the delicatessen store the
night before when Nibsy came along.

He dragged with him a hemlock branch, the leavings from some Christmas
tree at the grocery.

"It's from Sante Claus," he said, laying it on the coffin. "Nibsy
knows." And he went out.

Santa Claus had come to Nibsy, after all, in his alley. And Nibsy knew.



THE LITTLE DOLLAR'S CHRISTMAS JOURNEY


"It is too bad," said Mrs. Lee, and she put down the magazine in which
she had been reading of the poor children in the tenements of the great
city that know little of Christmas joys; "no Christmas tree! One of
them shall have one, at any rate. I think this will buy it, and it
is so handy to send. Nobody would know that there was money in the
letter." And she enclosed a coupon in a letter to a professor, a friend
in the city, who, she knew, would have no trouble in finding the child,
and had it mailed at once. Mrs. Lee was a widow whose not too great
income was derived from the interest on some four per cent government
bonds which represented the savings of her husband's life of toil, that
was none the less hard because it was spent in a counting-room and
not with shovel and spade. The coupon looked for all the world like
a dollar bill, except that it was so small that a baby's hand could
easily cover it. The United States, the printing on it said, would pay
on demand to the bearer one dollar; and there was a number on it, just
as on a full-grown dollar, that was the number of the bond from which
it had been cut.

The letter travelled all night, and was tossed and sorted and bunched
at the end of its journey in the great gray beehive that never sleeps,
day or night, and where half the tears and joys of the land, including
this account of the little dollar, are checked off unceasingly as
first-class matter or second or third, as the case may be. In the
morning it was laid, none the worse for its journey, at the professor's
breakfast plate. The professor was a kindly man, and he smiled as he
read it. "To procure one small Christmas tree for a poor tenement," was
its errand.

"Little dollar," he said, "I think I know where you are needed." And
he made a note in his book. There were other notes there that made
him smile again as he saw them. They had names set opposite them. One
about a Noah's ark was marked "Vivi." That was the baby; and there was
one about a doll's carriage that had the words "Katie, sure," set over
against it. The professor eyed the list in mock dismay.

"How ever will I do it?" he sighed, as he put on his hat.

"Well, you will have to get Santa Claus to help you, John," said his
wife, buttoning his greatcoat about him. "And, mercy! the duckses'
babies! don't forget them, whatever you do. The baby has been talking
about nothing else since he saw them at the store, the old duck and
the two ducklings on wheels. You know them, John?"

But the professor was gone, repeating to himself as he went down the
garden walk, "The duckses' babies, indeed!" He chuckled as he said it,
why I cannot tell. He was very particular about his grammar, was the
professor, ordinarily. Perhaps it was because it was Christmas eve.

Down town went the professor; but instead of going with the crowd that
was setting toward Santa Claus's headquarters, in the big Broadway
store, he turned off into a quieter street, leading west. It took
him to a narrow thoroughfare, with five-story tenements frowning on
their side, where the people he met were not so well dressed as those
he had left behind, and did not seem to be in such a hurry of joyful
anticipation of the holiday. Into one of the tenements he went, and,
groping his way through a pitch-dark hall, came to a door way back, the
last one to the left, at which he knocked. An expectant voice said,
"Come in," and the professor pushed open the door.

The room was very small, very stuffy, and very dark, so dark that a
smoking kerosene lamp that burned on a table next the stove hardly
lighted it at all, though it was broad day. A big, unshaven man, who
sat on the bed, rose when he saw the visitor, and stood uncomfortably
shifting his feet and avoiding the professor's eye. The latter's
glance was serious, though not unkind, as he asked the woman with the
baby if he had found no work yet.

"No," she said, anxiously coming to the rescue, "not yet; he was
waitin' for a recommend." But Johnnie had earned two dollars running
errands, and, now there was a big fall of snow, his father might get
a job of shovelling. The woman's face was worried, yet there was a
cheerful note in her voice that somehow made the place seem less
discouraging than it was. The baby she nursed was not much larger than
a middle-sized doll. Its little face looked thin and wan. It had been
very sick, she explained, but the doctor said it was mending now. That
was good, said the professor, and patted one of the bigger children on
the head.

There were six of them, of all sizes, from Johnnie, who could run
errands, down. They were busy fixing up a Christmas tree that half
filled the room, though it was of the very smallest. Yet, it was a real
Christmas tree, left over from the Sunday-school stock, and it was
dressed up at that. Pictures from the colored supplement of a Sunday
newspaper hung and stood on every branch, and three pieces of colored
glass, suspended on threads that shone in the smoky lamplight, lent
color and real beauty to the show. The children were greatly tickled.

"John put it up," said the mother, by way of explanation, as the
professor eyed it approvingly. "There ain't nothing to eat on it.
If there was, it wouldn't be there a minute. The childer be always
a-searchin' in it."

"But there must be, or else it isn't a real Christmas tree," said
the professor, and brought out the little dollar. "This is a dollar
which a friend gave me for the children's Christmas, and she sends
her love with it. Now, you buy them some things and a few candles,
Mrs. Ferguson, and then a good supper for the rest of the family. Good
night, and a Merry Christmas to you. I think myself the baby is getting
better." It had just opened its eyes and laughed at the tree.

The professor was not very far on his way toward keeping his
appointment with Santa Claus before Mrs. Ferguson was at the grocery
laying in her dinner. A dollar goes a long way when it is the only one
in the house; and when she had everything, including two cents' worth
of flitter-gold, four apples, and five candles for the tree, the grocer
footed up her bill on the bag that held her potatoes--ninety-eight
cents. Mrs. Ferguson gave him the little dollar.

"What's this?" said the grocer, his fat smile turning cold as he laid a
restraining hand on the full basket. "That ain't no good."

"It's a dollar, ain't it?" said the woman, in alarm. "It's all right.
I know the man that give it to me."

"It ain't all right in this store," said the grocer, sternly. "Put them
things back. I want none o' that."

The woman's eyes filled with tears as she slowly took the lid off the
basket and lifted out the precious bag of potatoes. They were waiting
for that dinner at home. The children were even then camping on the
doorstep to take her in to the tree in triumph. And now----

For the second time a restraining hand was laid upon her basket; but
this time it was not the grocer's. A gentleman who had come in to order
a Christmas turkey had overheard the conversation, and had seen the
strange bill.

"It is all right," he said to the grocer. "Give it to me. Here is a
dollar bill for it of the kind you know. If all your groceries were as
honest as this bill, Mr. Schmidt, it would be a pleasure to trade with
you. Don't be afraid to trust Uncle Sam where you see his promise to
pay."

The gentleman held the door open for Mrs. Ferguson, and heard the shout
of the delegation awaiting her on the stoop as he went down the street.

"I wonder where that came from, now," he mused. "Coupons in Bedford
Street! I suppose somebody sent it to the woman for a Christmas gift.
Hello! Here are old Thomas and Snowflake. Now, wouldn't it surprise her
old stomach if I gave her a Christmas gift of oats? If only the shock
doesn't kill her! Thomas! Oh, Thomas!"

The old man thus hailed stopped and awaited the gentleman's coming. He
was a cartman who did odd jobs through the ward, so picking up a living
for himself and the white horse, which the boys had dubbed Snowflake
in a spirit of fun. They were a well-matched old pair, Thomas and his
horse. One was not more decrepit than the other.

There was a tradition along the docks, where Thomas found a job now and
then, and Snowflake an occasional straw to lunch on, that they were of
an age, but this was denied by Thomas.

"See here," said the gentleman, as he caught up with them; "I want
Snowflake to keep Christmas, Thomas. Take this and buy him a bag of
oats. And give it to him carefully, do you hear?--not all at once,
Thomas. He isn't used to it."

"Gee whizz!" said the old man, rubbing his eyes with his cap, as his
friend passed out of sight, "oats fer Christmas! G'lang, Snowflake; yer
in luck."

The feed-man put on his spectacles and looked Thomas over at the
strange order. Then he scanned the little dollar, first on one side,
then on the other.

"Never seed one like him," he said. "'Pears to me he is mighty short.
Wait till I send round to the hockshop. He'll know, if anybody."

The man at the pawnshop did not need a second look. "Why, of course,"
he said, and handed a dollar bill over the counter. "Old Thomas, did
you say? Well, I am blamed if the old man ain't got a stocking after
all. They're a sly pair, he and Snowflake."

Business was brisk that day at the pawnshop. The door-bell tinkled
early and late, and the stock on the shelves grew. Bundle was added
to bundle. It had been a hard winter so far. Among the callers in the
early afternoon was a young girl in a gingham dress and without other
covering, who stood timidly at the counter and asked for three dollars
on a watch, a keepsake evidently, which she was loath to part with.
Perhaps it was the last glimpse of brighter days. The pawnbroker was
doubtful; it was not worth so much. She pleaded hard, while he compared
the number of the movement with a list sent in from Police Headquarters.

"Two," he said decisively at last, snapping the case shut--"two or
nothing." The girl handed over the watch with a troubled sigh. He made
out a ticket and gave it to her with a handful of silver change.

Was it the sigh and her evident distress, or was it the little dollar?
As she turned to go, he called her back.

"Here, it is Christmas!" he said. "I'll run the risk." And he added the
coupon to the little heap.

The girl looked at it and at him questioningly.

"It is all right," he said; "you can take it; I'm running short of
change. Bring it back if they won't take it. I'm good for it." Uncle
Sam had achieved a backer.

In Grand Street the holiday crowds jammed every store in their eager
hunt for bargains. In one of them, at the knit-goods counter, stood the
girl from the pawnshop, picking out a thick, warm shawl. She hesitated
between a gray and a maroon-colored one, and held them up to the light.

"For you?" asked the salesgirl, thinking to aid her. She glanced at her
thin dress and shivering form as she said it.

"No," said the girl; "for mother; she is poorly and needs it." She
chose the gray, and gave the salesgirl her handful of money.

The girl gave back the coupon.

"They don't go," she said; "give me another, please."

"But I haven't got another," said the girl, looking apprehensively at
the shawl. "The--Mr. Feeney said it was all right. Take it to the desk,
please, and ask."

The salesgirl took the bill and the shawl, and went to the desk. She
came back, almost immediately, with the storekeeper, who looked sharply
at the customer and noted the number of the coupon.

"It is all right," he said, satisfied apparently by the inspection; "a
little unusual, only. We don't see many of them. Can I help you, miss?"
And he attended her to the door.

In the street there was even more of a Christmas show going on than in
the stores. Pedlers of toys, of mottoes, of candles, and of knickknacks
of every description stood in rows along the curb, and were driving a
lively trade. Their push-carts were decorated with fir branches--even
whole Christmas trees. One held a whole cargo of Santa Clauses in a
bower of green, each one with a cedar-bush in his folded arms, as a
soldier carries his gun. The lights were blazing out in the stores, and
the hucksters' torches were flaring at the corners. There was Christmas
in the very air and Christmas in the storekeeper's till. It had been
a very busy day. He thought of it with a satisfied nod as he stood a
moment breathing the brisk air of the winter day, absently fingering
the coupon the girl had paid for the shawl. A thin voice at his elbow
said: "Merry Christmas, Mr. Stein! Here's yer paper."

It was the newsboy who left the evening papers at the door every night.
The storekeeper knew him, and something about the struggle they had at
home to keep the roof over their heads. Mike was a kind of protégé of
his. He had helped to get him his route.

"Wait a bit, Mike," he said. "You'll be wanting your Christmas from me.
Here's a dollar. It's just like yourself: it is small, but it is all
right. You take it home and have a good time."

Was it the message with which it had been sent forth from far away in
the country, or what was it? Whatever it was, it was just impossible
for the little dollar to lie still in the pocket while there was want
to be relieved, mouths to be filled, or Christmas lights to be lit. It
just couldn't, and it didn't.

Mike stopped around the corner of Allen Street, and gave three
whoops expressive of his approval of Mr. Stein; having done which,
he sidled up to the first lighted window out of range to examine his
gift. His enthusiasm changed to open-mouthed astonishment as he saw
the little dollar. His jaw fell. Mike was not much of a scholar, and
could not make out the inscription on the coupon; but he had heard of
shinplasters as something they "had in the war," and he took this to be
some sort of a ten-cent piece. The policeman on the block might tell.
Just now he and Mike were hunk. They had made up a little difference
they'd had, and if any one would know, the cop surely would. And off he
went in search of him.

Mr. McCarthy pulled off his gloves, put his club under his arm, and
studied the little dollar with contracted brow. He shook his head as he
handed it back, and rendered the opinion that it was "some dom swindle
that's ag'in the law." He advised Mike to take it back to Mr. Stein,
and added, as he prodded him in an entirely friendly manner in the ribs
with his locust, that if it had been the week before he might have "run
him in" for having the thing in his possession. As it happened, Mr.
Stein was busy and not to be seen, and Mike went home between hope and
fear, with his doubtful prize.

There was a crowd at the door of the tenement, and Mike saw, before he
had reached it, running, that it clustered about an ambulance that was
backed up to the sidewalk. Just as he pushed his way through the throng
it drove off, its clanging gong scattering the people right and left.
A little girl sat weeping on the top step of the stoop. To her Mike
turned for information.

"Susie, what's up?" he asked, confronting her with his armful of
papers. "Who's got hurted?"

"It's papa," sobbed the girl. "He ain't hurted. He's sick, and he was
took that bad he had to go, an' to-morrer is Christmas, an'--oh, Mike!"

It is not the fashion of Essex Street to slop over. Mike didn't. He
just set his mouth to a whistle and took a turn down the hall to think.
Susie was his chum. There were seven in her flat; in his only four,
including two that made wages. He came back from his trip with his mind
made up.

"Suse," he said, "come on in. You take this, Suse, see! an' let the
kids have their Christmas. Mr. Stein give it to me. It's a little one,
but if it ain't all right I'll take it back and get one that is good.
Go on, now, Suse, you hear?" And he was gone.

There was a Christmas tree that night in Susie's flat, with candles
and apples and shining gold, but the little dollar did not pay for it.
That rested securely in the purse of the charity visitor who had come
that afternoon, just at the right time, as it proved. She had heard the
story of Mike and his sacrifice, and had herself given the children a
one-dollar bill for the coupon. They had their Christmas, and a joyful
one, too, for the lady went up to the hospital and brought back word
that Susie's father would be all right with rest and care, which he was
now getting. Mike came in and helped them "sack" the tree when the lady
was gone. He gave three more whoops for Mr. Stein, three for the lady,
and three for the hospital doctor to even things up. Essex Street was
all right that night.

"Do you know, professor," said that learned man's wife, when, after
supper, he had settled down in his easy-chair to admire the Noah's
ark and the duckses' babies and the rest, all of which had arrived
safely by express ahead of him and were waiting to be detailed to their
appropriate stockings while the children slept--"do you know, I heard
such a story of a little newsboy to-day. It was at the meeting of our
district charity committee this evening. Miss Linder, our visitor, came
right from the house." And she told the story of Mike and Susie.

"And I just got the little dollar bill to keep. Here it is." She took
the coupon out of her purse and passed it to her husband.

"Eh! what?" said the professor, adjusting his spectacles and reading
the number. "If here isn't my little dollar come back to me! Why, where
have you been, little one? I left you in Bedford Street this morning,
and here you come by way of Essex. Well, I declare!" And he told his
wife how he had received it in a letter in the morning.

"John," she said, with a sudden impulse,--she didn't know, and neither
did he, that it was the charm of the little dollar that was working
again,--"John, I guess it is a sin to stop it. Jones's children won't
have any Christmas tree, because they can't afford it. He told me so
this morning when he fixed the furnace. And the baby is sick. Let us
give them the little dollar. He is here in the kitchen now."

And they did; and the Joneses, and I don't know how many others, had
a Merry Christmas because of the blessed little dollar that carried
Christmas cheer and good luck wherever it went. For all I know, it may
be going yet. Certainly it is a sin to stop it, and if any one has
locked it up without knowing that he locked up the Christmas dollar,
let him start it right out again. He can tell it easily enough. If he
just looks at the number, that's the one.



LITTLE WILL'S MESSAGE


"It is that or starve, Captain. I can't get a job. God knows I've
tried, but without a recommend, it's no use. I ain't no good at
beggin'. And--and--there's the childer."

There was a desperate note in the man's voice that made the Captain
turn and look sharply at him. A swarthy, strongly built man in a rough
coat, and with that in his dark face which told that he had lived
longer than his years, stood at the door of the Detective Office. His
hand that gripped the door handle shook so that the knob rattled in
his grasp, but not with fear. He was no stranger to that place. Black
Bill's face had looked out from the Rogues' Gallery longer than most of
those now there could remember. The Captain looked him over in silence.

"You had better not, Bill," he said. "You know what will come of it.
When you go up again it will be the last time. And up you go, sure."

The man started to say something, but choked it down and went out
without a word. The Captain got up and rang his bell.

"Bill, who was here just now, is off again," he said to the officer who
came to the door. "He says it is steal or starve, and he can't get a
job. I guess he is right. Who wants a thief in his pay? And how can I
recommend him? And still I think he would keep straight if he had the
chance. Tell Murphy to look after him and see what he is up to."

The Captain went out, tugging viciously at his gloves. He was in very
bad humor. The policeman at the Mulberry Street door got hardly a nod
for his cheery "Merry Christmas" as he passed.

"Wonder what's crossed him," he said, looking down the street after him.

The green lamps were lighted and shone upon the hurrying six o'clock
crowds from the Broadway shops. In the great business buildings the
iron shutters were pulled down and the lights put out, and in a little
while the reporters' boys that carried slips from Headquarters to the
newspaper offices across the street were the only tenants of the block.
A stray policeman stopped now and then on the corner and tapped the
lamp-post reflectively with his club as he looked down the deserted
street and wondered, as his glance rested upon the Chief's darkened
windows, how it felt to have six thousand dollars a year and every
night off. In the Detective Office the Sergeant who had come in at
roll-call stretched himself behind the desk and thought of home. The
lights of a Christmas tree in the abutting Mott Street tenement shone
through his window, and the laughter of children mingled with the tap
of the toy drum. He pulled down the sash in order to hear better. As
he did so, a strong draught swept his desk. The outer door slammed.
Two detectives came in bringing a prisoner between them. A woman
accompanied them.

The Sergeant pulled the blotter toward him mechanically and dipped his
pen.

"What's the charge?" he asked.

"Picking pockets in Fourteenth Street. This lady is the complainant,
Mrs. ----"

The name was that of a well-known police magistrate. The Sergeant
looked up and bowed. His glance took in the prisoner, and a look of
recognition came into his face.

"What, Bill! So soon?" he said.

The prisoner was sullenly silent. He answered the questions put to
him briefly, and was searched. The stolen pocket-book, a small paper
package, and a crumpled letter were laid upon the desk. The Sergeant
saw only the pocket-book.

"Looks bad," he said with wrinkled brow.

"We caught him at it," explained the officer. "Guess Bill has lost
heart. He didn't seem to care. Didn't even try to get away."

The prisoner was taken to a cell. Silence fell once more upon the
office. The Sergeant made a few red lines in the blotter and resumed
his reveries. He was not in a mood for work. He hitched his chair
nearer the window and looked across the yard. But the lights there
were put out, the children's laughter had died away. Out of sorts at he
hardly knew what, he leaned back in his chair, with his hands under the
back of his head. Here it was Christmas Eve, and he at the desk instead
of being out with the old woman buying things for the children. He
thought with a sudden pang of conscience of the sled he had promised to
get for Johnnie and had forgotten. That was hard luck. And what would
Katie say when----

He had got that far when his eye, roaming idly over the desk, rested
upon the little package taken from the thief's pocket. Something about
it seemed to move him with sudden interest. He sat up and reached for
it. He felt it carefully all over. Then he undid the package slowly and
drew forth a woolly sheep. It had a blue ribbon about its neck, with a
tiny bell hung on it.

The Sergeant set the sheep upon the desk and looked at it fixedly for
better than a minute. Having apparently studied out its mechanism, he
pulled its head and it baa-ed. He pulled it once more, and nodded. Then
he took up the crumpled letter and opened it.

This was what he read, scrawled in a child's uncertain hand:--

"Deer Sante Claas--Pease wont yer bring me a sjeep wat bas. Aggie had
won wonst. An Kate wants a dollie offul. In the reere 718 19th Street
by the gas house. Your friend Will."

The Sergeant read it over twice very carefully and glanced over the
page at the sheep, as if taking stock and wondering why Kate's dollie
was not there. Then he took the sheep and the letter and went over to
the Captain's door. A gruff "Come in!" answered his knock. The Captain
was pulling off his overcoat. He had just come in from his dinner.

"Captain," said the Sergeant, "we found this in the pocket of Black
Bill who is locked up for picking Mrs. ----'s pocket an hour ago. It is
a clear case. He didn't even try to give them the slip," and he set the
sheep upon the table and laid the letter beside it.

"Black Bill?" said the Captain, with something of a start; "the dickens
you say!" And he took up the letter and read it. He was not a very good
penman, was little Will. The Captain had even a harder time of it than
the Sergeant had had making out his message. Three times he went over
it, spelling out the words, and each time comparing it with the woolly
exhibit that was part of the evidence, before he seemed to understand.
Then it was in a voice that would have frightened little Will very much
could he have heard it, and with a black look under his bushy eyebrows,
that he bade the Sergeant "Fetch Bill up here!" One might almost
have expected the little white lamb to have taken to its heels with
fright at having raised such a storm, could it have run at all. But it
showed no signs of fear. On the contrary it baa-ed quite lustily when
the Sergeant should have been safely out of earshot. The hand of the
Captain had accidentally rested upon the woolly head in putting down
the letter. But the Sergeant was not out of earshot. He heard it and
grinned.

An iron door in the basement clanged and there were steps in the
passageway. The doorman brought in Bill. He stood by the door, sullenly
submissive. The Captain raised his head. It was in the shade.

"So you are back, are you?" he said.

The thief nodded.

The Captain bent his brows upon him and said with sudden fierceness,
"You couldn't keep honest a month, could you?"

"They wouldn't let me. Who wants a thief in his pay? And the children
were starving."

It was said patiently enough, but it made the Captain wince all the
same. They were his own words. But he did not give in so easily.

"Starving?" he repeated harshly. "And that's why you got this, I
suppose," and he pushed the sheep from under the newspaper that had
fallen upon it by accident and covered it up.

The thief looked at it and flushed to the temples. He tried to speak
but could not. His face worked, and he seemed to be strangling. In
the middle of his fight to master himself he saw the child's crumpled
message on the desk. Taking a quick step across the room he snatched it
up, wildly, fiercely.

"Captain," he gasped, and broke down utterly. The hardened thief wept
like a woman.

The Captain rang his bell. He stood with his back to the prisoner when
the doorman came in. "Take him down," he commanded. And the iron door
clanged once more behind the prisoner.

Ten minutes later the reporters were discussing across the way the
nature of "the case" which the night promised to develop. They had
piped off the Captain and one of his trusted men leaving the building
together, bound east. Could they have followed them all the way, they
would have seen them get off the car at Nineteenth Street, and go
toward the gas house, carefully scanning the numbers of the houses as
they went. They found one at last before which they halted. The Captain
searched in his pocket and drew forth the baby's letter to Santa Claus,
and they examined the number under the gas lamp. Yes, that was right.
The door was open, and they went right through to the rear.

Up in the third story three little noses were flattened against the
window pane, and three childish mouths were breathing peep-holes
through which to keep a lookout for the expected Santa Claus. It
was cold, for there was no fire in the room, but in their fever of
excitement the children didn't mind that. They were bestowing all their
attention upon keeping the peep-holes open.

"Do you think he will come?" asked the oldest boy--there were two boys
and a girl--of Kate.

"Yes, he will. I know he will come. Papa said so," said the child in a
tone of conviction.

"I'se so hungry, and I want my sheep," said Baby Will.

"Wait and I'll tell you of the wolf," said his sister, and she took him
on her lap. She had barely started when there were steps on the stairs
and a tap on the door. Before the half-frightened children could answer
it was pushed open. Two men stood on the threshold. One wore a big fur
overcoat. The baby looked at him in wide-eyed wonder.

"Is you Santa Claus?" he asked.

"Yes, my little man, and are you Baby Will?" said a voice that was
singularly different from the harsh one Baby Will's father had heard so
recently in the Captain's office, and yet very like it.

"See. This is for you, I guess," and out of the big roomy pocket came
the woolly sheep and baa-ed right off as if it were his own pasture in
which he was at home. And well might any sheep be content nestling at a
baby heart so brimful of happiness as little Will's was then, child of
a thief though he was.

"Papa spoke for it, and he spoke for Kate, too, and I guess for
everybody," said the bogus Santa Claus, "and it is all right. My sled
will be here in a minute. Now we will just get to work and make ready
for him. All help!"

The Sergeant behind the desk in the Detective Office might have had a
fit had he been able to witness the goings-on in that rear tenement in
the next hour; and then again he might not. There is no telling about
those Sergeants. The way that poor flat laid itself out of a sudden was
fairly staggering. It was not only that a fire was made and that the
pantry filled up in the most extraordinary manner; but a real Christmas
tree sprang up, out of the floor, as it were, and was found to be all
besprinkled with gold and stars and cornucopias with sugarplums. From
the top of it, which was not higher than Santa Claus could easily
reach, because the ceiling was low, a marvellous doll, with real hair
and with eyes that could open and shut, looked down with arms wide
open to take Kate to its soft wax heart. Under the branches of the
tree browsed every animal that went into and came out of Noah's Ark,
and there were glorious games of Messenger Boy and Three Bad Bears,
and honey-cakes and candy apples, and a little yellow-bird in a cage,
and what not? It was glorious. And when the tea-kettle began to sing,
skilfully manipulated by Santa Claus's assistant, who nominally was
known in Mulberry Street as Detective Sergeant Murphy, it was just too
lovely for anything. The baby's eyes grew wider and wider, and Kate's
were shining with happiness, when in the midst of it all she suddenly
stopped and said:--

"But where is papa? Why don't he come?"

Santa Claus gave a little start at the sudden question, but pulled
himself together right away.

"Why, yes," he said, "he must have got lost. Now you are all right we
will just go and see if we can find him. Mrs. McCarthy here next door
will help you keep the kettle boiling and the lights burning till we
come back. Just let me hear that sheep baa once more. That's right! I
bet we'll find papa." And out they went.

An hour later, while Mr. ----, the Magistrate, and his good wife were
viewing with mock dismay the array of little stockings at their hearth
in their fine up-town house, and talking of the adventure of Mrs. ----
with the pickpocket, there came a ring at the door-bell and the Captain
of the detectives was ushered in. What he told them I do not know, but
this I do know, that when he went away the honorable Magistrate went
with him, and his wife waved good-by to them from the stoop with wet
eyes as they drove away in a carriage hastily ordered up from a livery
stable. While they drove down town, the Magistrate's wife went up to
the nursery and hugged her sleeping little ones, one after the other,
and tear-drops fell upon their warm cheeks that had wiped out the guilt
of more than one sinner before, and the children smiled in their sleep.
They say among the simple-minded folk of far-away Denmark that then
they see angels in their dreams.

The carriage stopped in Mulberry Street, in front of Police
Headquarters, and there was great scurrying among the reporters, for
now they were sure of their "case." But no "prominent citizen" came
out, made free by the Magistrate, who opened court in the Captain's
office. Only a rough-looking man with a flushed face, whom no one
knew, and who stopped on the corner and looked back as one in a dream
and then went east, the way the Captain and his man had gone on their
expedition personating no less exalted a personage than Santa Claus
himself.

That night there was Christmas, indeed, in the rear tenement "near the
gas house," for papa had come home just in time to share in its cheer.
And there was no one who did it with a better will, for the Christmas
evening that began so badly was the luckiest night in his life. He had
the promise of a job on the morrow in his pocket, along with something
to keep the wolf from the door in the holidays. His hard days were
over, and he was at last to have his chance to live an honest life. And
it was the baby's letter to Santa Claus and the baa sheep that did it
all, with the able assistance of the Captain and the Sergeant. Don't
let us forget the Sergeant.



THE BURGOMASTER'S CHRISTMAS


The burgomaster was in a bad humor. The smoke from his long pipe, which
ordinarily rose in leisurely meditative rings signaling official calm
and fair weather, came to-day in short, angry puffs as he tossed his
mail impatiently about on the desk. A reprimand from headquarters,
where they knew about as much of a burgomaster's actual work as he of
the prime minister's! Less. Those bureaucrats never came in touch with
real things. He smiled a little grimly as he thought that that was what
his own people had said of him when twenty years before he had come
from the capital to the little provincial town with his mind firmly
made up to many things which--well, a man grows older and wiser. Life
has its lessons for men, though it pass by the red tape in department
bureaus. That never changes. His people and he, now--The stern wrinkle
in the furrowed forehead relaxed, and he leaned back in his chair,
blowing a long, contented ring, which brought a sigh of relief from the
old clerk in the outer office. The skies were clearing.

In truth, despite his habitual sternness of manner, there was no more
beloved man in the town of Hammel than the burgomaster. His kindness
of heart was proverbial. The law had in him a faithful executor; the
staff of office was no willow wand in his hand to bend to every wind
that blew. To the evil-doer he was a hard master, but many were the
stories that were whispered of how, having sent a thief to jail, he
had taken care of his wife and children, who were not to blame. In
fact, word had come from more than one distant town of how this or
that ne'er-do-well, after squaring himself with the law in Burgomaster
Brent's jurisdiction, had made a new start, helped somehow where
he might have expected frowns and suspicion. But of this, Hammel
tongues were careful not to wag within that official's hearing. Those
things were his secret, if, indeed,--the matrons wagged their heads
knowingly,--they were not his wife's, the burgomasterinde's; and so
they were to stay.

Whether something of all this had come to smooth the burgomaster's
brow or not, it was not for long. There was a tap on the door, and, in
answer to his brisk "Come in," there entered Jens, the forester, with a
swarthy, sullen-looking prisoner. Jens saluted and stood, cap in hand.

"Black Hans," he said briefly. "We took him last night in the meadow
brake with a young roe."

The burgomaster's face grew cold and stern. Black Hans was an old
offender. As a magistrate the burgomaster had given him a chance twice,
but he was a confirmed poacher, who would rather lie out in the
woods through a cold winter's night on the chance of getting a deer,
and of getting into jail, too, than work a day at good wages, clever
blacksmith though he was. Now he had been caught red-handed, and would
be made to suffer for it. The burgomaster bent lowering brows upon the
prisoner.

"You couldn't keep from stealing the count's deer, not even at
Christmas," he said harshly.

The poacher looked up. Rough as he was, he was not a bad-looking
fellow. The free, if lawless, life he led was in his face and bearing.

"The deer is wild. They're for the man as can take 'em, if the count
do claim 'em," he said doggedly, and halted, as with a sudden thought.
Something had entered with him and the forester, and was even then
filling the room with a suggestion of good cheer to come. It was the
smell of the Yule goose roasting in the burgomaster's kitchen. Black
Hans looked straight into the eye of his inquisitor.

"I didn't have none--for me young ones," he added. It was not said
defiantly, but as a mere statement of fact.

An angry reply rose to the official's lip, but he checked himself.

"Take him to the lock-up," he ordered shortly, and the forester went
out with his charge.

The burgomaster heard the outer door close behind them, and turned
wearily to his mail. The count had been greatly wrought up over the
depredations of Black Hans and his kind, and would insist on an example
being made of him. Bad blood always came of these cases, for the game
law was not well thought of in the land in these democratic days. There
lingered yet resentfully the recollection of the days not so long since
when to take "the king's deer" brought a man to the block, or to the
treadmill for life. And the family of this fellow Black Hans, what was
to become of them? The burgomaster's gaze wandered abstractedly over
the envelop he was opening and rested on an unfamiliar stamp. He held
it up and took a closer look. Oh, yes; the new Christmas stamp. He knew
it well enough, with its design of the great sanatorium for tubercular
children that had been built out of the proceeds of other years' sales.
It was a pretty picture, and a worthy cause. In all Denmark there was
none that so laid hold of the popular fancy. It was the word "Yule,"
with its magic, that did it. There was no other inscription on the
stamp, and none was needed.

As his glance dwelt upon it, a curious change came over the picture. It
was no longer the great white house that he saw, with its many bright
lights, but a wretched hut, with a crooked chimney, and rags stopping a
broken pane in its only window. The dull glow of a tallow dip struggled
through the grime that lay thick upon the unbroken panes. Against one
the face of a child was pressed, a poor, pinched face that spoke of
cold and hunger and weary waiting for some one who was always late.
Something that was very much like real pain made the burgomaster wince
as the words of Black Hans came back to him, "I didn't have none--for
me young ones."

He shook his head impatiently. Why, then, did he not work for them,
instead of laying it up against his betters?

The sober little face at the window kept looking out into the night,
straight past the burgomaster, as if he were not there. How many of
them in that hut? Seven, eight, nine, the burgomaster counted mentally;
or was it ten ragged, underfed little ones, with the careworn mother
who slaved from sunrise till night for them and her rascal husband?
That child Annie who limped so pitifully, the district physician had
told him that very morning, had tuberculosis of the hip-joint, and it
was killing her slowly. Poor child! Surely this was she at the window.
Her face looked pinched and small; yet she must be nearly eleven.

Eleven! The letter dropped unopened from the burgomaster's hand. That
would have been the age of their own little girl had she lived. His
pipe went out and grew cold; his thoughts were far away. They were
travelling slowly back over a road he had shunned these many years,
until he had almost lost the trail. His little Gertrude, their only
child, a happy, winsome elf had filled the house with sunshine and
laughter until in one brief month her life had gone out like the flame
of a candle and left them alone! Since then they had been a lonesome
couple. Tenderly attached to each other, but both silent, reserved
people, husband and wife had locked their grief in their own hearts and
tried to live it down.

Had they? He could even then see his wife at her work in the room
across the yard. As she bent over her knitting, he noticed a little
stoop which he had not seen before; and surely her hair was turning
gray at the temples. His had long been so. They were growing old
in their childless home. With a sudden pang there came to him a
realization of the selfishness of his grief, which had shut her out of
it. Christmas eve! What a happy time they used to have together in the
old days around the tree! Even now he could hear the glad voices of
children from the grocer's across the street, where they were making
ready for theirs. In their house there had not been one since--since
their Gertrude left them. There was Jens, the forester, carrying in a
Christmas tree over there even now--Jens who had caught Black Hans.
What sort of Christmas would they keep in his hut, with the father
locked up, sure of a heavy fine, which meant a long time in jail, since
he had no money to settle with?

The childish face with the grave eyes was at the window again, keeping
its dismal watch. Eleven years! His mind went back, swiftly this time,
over the freshly broken road to the days when the tree was lighted in
their home on Christmas eve. Of all the nights in the year, it had been
the loneliest since, with just the two of them alone at the table,
growing old.

A flood of tenderness swept over the burgomaster, and with it came a
sudden resolve. It was not yet too late. He rose and slammed the desk
down hard, leaving the rest of his mail unopened. Three o'clock! Almost
time to light the candles, and this night he would light them himself.
Yes, he would. He tapped on the window and beckoned to Jens, who was
coming out of the grocery store. In the vestibule they held a brief
whispered consultation that concluded with the warning, "and don't you
tell my wife." The old clerk heard it and gave a start. What secret did
the burgomaster have from the burgomasterinde which Jens, the forester,
might share? But he remembered the day, in time, and bestowed upon
himself a knowing wink. He, too, had his secrets.

Jens was less quick-witted. He offered some objection apparently, but
it was promptly overruled by the burgomaster, who pushed him out with a
friendly but decisive nod and bade him be gone.

"Very little ones--two, mind. And don't let her see."

Whereupon the burgomaster put on his overcoat and went out, too.

Before the church bells rang in the holy eve, all the gossips in town
were busy with the report that the burgomaster had been buying enough
Christmas toys and candles to stock an orphan asylum. What had come
over the man? Five dolls, counted the toy-shop woman, with eyes that
grew wide in the telling--five! And they alone, the two of them, in
the big house with never a Christmas tree there that any one could
remember! It must be that they were expecting company.

Nothing was further from the mind of the burgomasterinde as she went
along with her preparations for the holiday. It had been a lonesome
day with her, for all she had tried to fill it with housewifely tasks.
Christmas eve always was. Now, as she sat with her knitting, her
thoughts dwelt upon the days long gone when it had meant something to
them; when a child's laughter had thrilled her mother heart. To her it
was no unfamiliar road she was travelling. The memory of her child,
which her husband had tried to shut out of his life lest it unman him
for his work, she had cherished in her heart, and all life's burdens
had been lightened and sweetened by it. Her one grief was that this of
all things she could not share with him. No one ever heard her speak
Gertrude's name, but there was sometimes a wistful look in her face
which caused the burgomaster vague alarm, and once or twice had led
to grave conferences with the family practitioner about Mrs. Brent's
health. The old doctor, who was also the family friend, shook his
head. The burgomasterinde was a well woman; his pills were not needed.
Once he had hinted that her loss--but the burgomaster had interrupted
him hastily. She would get over that, if indeed she had not quite
forgotten; to stir it up would do no good. And the doctor, who was wise
in other ways than those of his books, dropped the subject.

The burgomasterinde had seen Black Hans brought in in charge of Jens,
and understood what the trouble was. As he was led away to the jail,
her woman's heart yearned for his children. She knew them well. The
town gossips were right: the path to the poacher's hut her familiar
feet had found oftener than her stern husband guessed. The want and
neglect in that wretched home stirred her to pity; but more than that
it was the little crippled girl who drew her with the memory of her
own. She had overheard the doctor telling her husband that there was
no help for her where she was, and all day her mind had been busy with
half-formed plans to get her away to the great seashore hospital where
such cripples were made whole, if there was any help for them. Now,
as she passed them in review, with the picture of Black Hans behind
the bars for their background, a purpose grew up in her mind and took
shape. They should not starve and be cold on Christmas eve, if their
father _was_ in jail. She would make Christmas for them herself. And
hard upon the heels of this resolve trod a thought that made her drop
her knitting and gaze long and musingly across the yard to the window
at which her husband sat buried in his mail.

The burgomaster's face was turned from her. She could not see that he
held in his hand the very letter with the Christmas stamp that had
stirred unwonted thoughts within him; but she knew the furrow that had
grown in the years of lonely longing. She had watched it deepen, and
he had not deceived her, but she had vainly sought a way out. All at
once she knew the way. They would keep Christmas again as of old, the
two--nay, the three of them together. With a quick smile that had yet
in it a shadow of fright, she went about carrying out her purpose.

So it befell that when Jens, the forester, was making off for the woods
where the Christmas trees grew, shaking his head at the burgomaster's
queer commission, the voice of the burgomasterinde called him back to
the kitchen door, and he received the second and the greater shock of
the day.

"Get two wee ones," she wound up her directions, "and bring them here
to the back door. Don't tell my husband, and be sure he does not see."

Jens stared. "But the burgomaster--" he began. She stopped him.

"No matter about the burgomaster," she said briskly. "Only don't let
him know. Bring them here as soon as it is dark."

And Jens departed, shaking his head in hopeless bewilderment.

The early winter twilight had fallen when he returned with two green
bundles, one of which by dint of much strategy he smuggled into the
front office without the burgomasterinde seeing him, while he delivered
the other at the back door without the burgomaster being the wiser,
this being made easier by the fact that the latter had not yet returned
from his visit to the shops. When, a little while later he came home,
tiptoeing in like a guilty Santa Claus on his early evening rounds, he
shut himself in alone.

Profound quiet reigned in the official residence for a full hour after
dark. In both wings of the house the shutters were closed tight. In one
the burgomasterinde was presumably busy with her household duties; in
the other the burgomaster was occupied with a task that would have made
the old clerk doubt the evidence of his eyes had he himself not been at
that moment engaged in the same identical business at his own home. Two
small Christmas trees stood upon the table, from which law books and
legal papers had been cleared with an unceremonious haste that had left
them in an undignified heap on the floor. The burgomaster between them
was fixing colored wax candles, cornucopias, and paper dolls in their
branches. He eyed a bag of oranges ruefully. They were too heavy for
the little trees, but then they would do to bank about the roots. To
be sure, they had left these behind in the woods, but the fact was not
apparent: each little tree was planted in a huge flower-pot, as Jens
had received his orders, just as if it had grown there.

One brief moment the burgomaster paused in his absurd task. It was
when he had put the last candle in place that something occurred to
him which made him stand awhile in deep thought, gazing fixedly at
the trees. Then he went to his desk, and from a back drawer, seldom
used, took out something that shone like silver in the light. Perhaps
it was that which made him screen his eyes with his hand when he saw
it. It was a little silver star, such as many a Christmas tree bore at
its top that night to tell the children of the Star of Bethlehem. The
burgomaster sat and looked at it while the furrow grew deeper in his
forehead; then he put it back gently into its envelop and closed the
desk.

It was nearly time for dinner when he straightened up and heaved a sigh
of contentment. The candles on one of the little trees were lighted,
and all was ready.

"If only," he said uncertainly--"if only she is not in now." Could some
good fairy have given him second sight to pierce the walls between his
office and his wife's room, what he saw there would certainly have made
him believe he had taken leave of his senses. Jens had just gone out
with one Christmas tree, all hung with children's toys. On the table
stood the other in its pot, a vision of beauty. The mistress of the
house sat before it with a little box in her lap from which she took
one cherished trinket after another, last of all a silvery angel with
folded wings. A tear fell upon it as she set it in the tree, but she
wiped this away and stood back, surveying her work with happy eyes. It
_was_ beautiful.

"I wonder where Jonas is. I haven't heard his step for an hour." She
listened at the door. All was quiet. "I will just carry it over and
surprise him when he comes in." And she went out into the hall with her
shining burden.

At that precise moment the door of the office was opened, and the
burgomaster came out, carrying his Christmas tree. They met upon the
landing. For a full minute they stood looking at each other in stunned
silence. It was the burgomaster who broke it.

"You were so lonely," he said huskily, "and I thought of our Gertrude."

She put down her tree, and went to him.

"Look, Jonas," she said, with her head on his shoulder, and pointed
where it stood. He saw through blurring tears the child's precious
belongings from her last Christmas,--their last Christmas,--and he bent
down and kissed her.

"I know," he said simply; "it was Black Hans' little Annie. See!" He
drew her into his office, "I made one for her. Jens shall take it over."

She hid her face on his breast. "He just went with one from me," she
sobbed, struggling between laughter and tears; and as he started, she
hugged him close. "But we need this one. I tell you, Jonas, what we
will do: we will send it to Black Hans in the jail."

And even so it came to pass. To Jens's final and utter stupefaction, he
was bidden to carry the fourth and last of the trees to the lock-up,
where it cheered Black Hans that Christmas eve. It was noticed both by
the turnkey and by the poacher that it bore a bright silver star at the
top, but neither could know that it was to be a star of hope indeed for
little Annie and her dark home. For so it had been settled between the
burgomaster and his wife, as they pinned it on together and wished each
other a right Merry Christmas, with many, many more to come, that happy
night.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Christmas Stories" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.