[Illustration: Decorative I]
called the other night at the home of my friend Jack Chetwood, and found
him, as usual, engaged in writing. Chetwood's name is sufficiently well
known to all who read books and periodicals these days to spare me the
necessity of adverting to his work, or of attempting to describe his
personality. It is said that Chetwood writes too much. Indeed, I am one
of those who have said so, and I have told _him_ so. His response has
always been that I--and others who have ventured to remonstrate--did not
understand. He had to keep at it, he said. Couldn't help himself. Didn't
write for fun, but because he had to. Always did his best, anyhow, and
what more can be asked of any man? Surely a defence of this nature
takes the wind out of a critic's sails.
"Busy, Jack?" said I, as I entered his sanctum.
"Yes," said he. "Very."
"Very well," said I. "Don't let me disturb you. I only happened in,
anyhow. Nothing in particular to say; but, Jacky, why don't you quit for
a little? You're worn and pale and thin. What's the use of breaking
down? Don't pose with me. You don't have to write all the time."
He smiled wanly at me.
"I--I'm only writing a letter this time," he said.
"Oh, in that case--" I began.
"You can't guess whom to?" he interrupted.
"Me," said I.
"No," he retorted. "Me."
"I don't understand," said I, somewhat perplexed.
"Myself," laughed Chetwood.
"You are writing a letter to--to--"
"Myself," said he. "Truly so. Odd, isn't it? Wait a few minutes, old
man, and I'll read it to you. Light a cigar and sit down just a minute
and I'll be through."
I lit one of Chetwood's cigars. They are excellent. I have heard one
expert pronounce them "bully." They are, and of course while I smoked I
was happy.
At the end of a half-hour's waiting, the silence broken only by the
scratching of Chetwood's pen and by my own puffings upon the weed, he
wheeled about in his chair.
"Well, that's finished," he said, and he glanced affectionately and, I
thought, wistfully about his charming workshop.
"Good," said I. "You promised to read it to me."
"All right," said he. "Here goes."
And he kept his word. I reproduce the letter from memory. Like all
copy-mongers, he began it with a title double underscored, and I
reproduce it as I heard it:
"LETTER TO MYSELF
"ON CHRISTMAS GIVING: A HINT
"MY DEAR JOHN,--As the Christmas holidays approach it has
seemed to me to be somewhat in the line of my duty to write
to you not only to wish you all the good things of the
season, but to give you a little fatherly advice which may
stand you in good stead when the first of January comes
about. I have observed you and your ways with some
particularity for some time; in fact, since that very happy
day, nearly twenty years ago, when you entered upon the
duties of citizenship, with twenty-one years and a birthday
gift of $500 from your father to your credit. The twenty-one
years had come easily and had gone easily. All you had had
to do to acquire and to retain them was to breathe and to
keep your feet dry. The $500, which represented so much toil
on your father's part, came to you quite as easily. You saw
the check, and you realized the possibilities of the sum for
which it called, but I do not think you ever realized the
effort that produced that $500. I judge from the way you let
it filter through your fingers that you thought your
generous father picked the money up from a pile of gold
lying somewhere in the back yard of his home. I do not know
if you recall what it went for, but I do. Some of it went
for a half-dozen sporting pictures of some rarity that you
had long wished to hang on the walls of your den. More of it
went for rare first editions of books whose possession you
had envied others for no little time. A portion of it was
spent on sundry trinkets which should adorn your person,
such as studs, scarf-pins, a snake ring, with ruby eyes--a
disgusting-looking thing, by the way--to encircle your
little finger. There were also certain small things in the
line of bronzes, silver writing implements, a jug or two of
some value that you had cast your eyes upon, and which you
were quick to acquire. Do you remember, my dear Jack, how
delighted you were with all that you were able to buy with
that $500, until the bills came in and you found that the
consciousness of a $500 backing had led you into an
expenditure of a trifle over $900? You were painfully
surprised that day, Jacky, my boy, but, as I have watched
you since you let it go at that, you never learned anything
from those bills. Indeed, what you call your cheerful
philosophy, which led you to console yourself then with the
thought that the stuff you had bought on credit if sold at
auction would bring in enough to pay the deficit, has clung
to you ever since, and has served you ill--very ill--unless
I am wholly mistaken. You would strike any other man than
myself were he to venture to call you a second Mr. Micawber,
but Johnnie, dear, that is what you are--and you are even
worse than that, John. Let me assure you of the fact. _You
are something worse._ You are a modern Dick Turpin! Don't be
angry at my saying so. Merely understand that I am telling
you the truth, and for your own good, and I'll explain the
analogy. I cannot call a man a modern Dick Turpin without
explaining why I do so.
"Turpin was a highwayman, as you know. He mounted his horse
and went out upon the highway, and whatever he wanted he
took. He had no greater powers of resistance in the face of
temptation than others had in the face of him. You, John,
are much the same, even if you do not realize the fact. You
mount the steed called Credit, and you go out upon the
highways, and whatever you see that you happen to want you
take--don't you, Jack? It is true that, sooner or later,
you pay, but so did Turpin. Turpin paid with his life. You
will pay with yours, and that is why I write you, for the
constant anxiety to meet the obligations of your thefts--for
that is what they are, John; we cannot blink the fact--this
constant anxiety, I say, is sapping your strength,
undermining your constitution, destroying slowly but surely
your nerves, and sooner or later you will succumb to the
strain. Is it worth the price, my boy?
"I can imagine you asking what all this has to do with
Christmas and the season of Peace on Earth and Good Will to
Man. You think I am merely cavilling, but I am not. It has
this to do with it: It involves my Christmas present to you,
which is important to me and I trust will be so to you. I am
not going to give you a gold watch, or a complete edition of
Thackeray, or a set of golf clubs this year, and, being a
man, I cannot knit you a worsted vest as your sister
might--or as some other fellow's sister might. All I can
afford to give you this year is a hint, and I shall not wait
until Christmas morn to hand it over to you, because it
would then lack value. I send it to you now, when you need
it most, and, if you accept it, when the Christmas chimes
begin to sound their music on the frosty air you will thank
me for it perhaps more than you do now.
"Don't be a highwayman this year, John. Never mind what
Solomon said; think of what I say. Solomon was a wise man,
but he lived in a bygone age. Take thought of the morrow, my
boy. Don't consider the lilies of the field, but come down
to real business. Don't mount your prancing horse Credit
and hold up some poor jeweller for a silver water-pitcher
for your brother George when you know that on January 1st
the jeweller will probably ask you for a _quid pro quo_, and
for which _quid_ you will be compelled to compel him to wait
until April or May. And remember that, if your dear wife
could have her choice, she would infinitely prefer your
peace of mind to the sables which you propose to give her at
Christmas, bought on a credit which, however pleasing
to-day, is sure to become a very pressing annoyance
to-morrow.
"Then, my dear man, there are your children. What a joy they
are! What a source of affectionate pride; what a source of
satisfaction, and how they trust you, Jack. You remember the
trust you placed in your father. You have never slept since
you had to do for yourself as you slept when he did for you.
You didn't know a care then; you had no worries in those old
days; you knew your home was yours and that every reasonable
thing you could wish for he would give you to the full
extent of his means. That confidence was not misplaced, and
all that you have to-day you'd willingly give up for that
sweet peace of mind that was yours while he was with you.
God bless him and his memory. Do you realize, Jack, that you
occupy that same relation to your children? They believe in
you as you believed in him. And are you meeting your
responsibilities as he met his? Think it over. Of course,
for instance, Tommie wants a complete railway system, with
tracks and signals and switches and nickel-plated rolling
stock, and all that--but can you afford to give it to him?
And Pollie--dear little Pollie--what right-minded little
Pollie does not want a doll; a great yellow-haired,
blue-eyed, pink-cheeked doll, with automatic insides and an
expensive trousseau? But can you really afford to give it to
her? Do you remember when you were a baby how you wanted the
moon, and yelled for it lustily? And do you remember how you
didn't get it, and how you sobbed yourself to sleep, and
how, in spite of it all, you waked up the next morning all
smiles and sunshine, with no recollection of ever having
wanted the moon? And do you realize that if your daddy
_could_ have given it to you he _would_ have done so? Do you
recollect how, ever since that happy time, you have wanted
the earth, and how you haven't got it, and how fortunate you
are, and how happy you are without it? So it is, and so it
will be with your children. These things do not change. My
beloved boy, a serene, unworried father, next to a serene
and happy mother, is God's most gracious gift to childhood,
at Christmas or at any other time. If January finds you
petulant and nervous over a bill you cannot pay for Tommie's
Christmas railway and for Pollie's Yuletide doll, then has
the 25th of December brought woe instead of joy into your
home; strife instead of peace, and good will to man is not
to be found there. In January the pure, sweet, simple little
minds will wonder at you, Jack. The little hearts will love
you just the same, but the little minds will wonder at your
irritability, and they will still hold to that beautiful
trust. And you? Well, you'll toss about at night, sleepless
and worried, and if you are of the right sort, as I hope and
believe you are, you will ask yourself if you are worthy of
the confidence the little ones place in you. Your mistaken
notions of generosity may have imperilled your household.
Given health and strength and ideas, you may be able to keep
on and make all right, but who knows at what moment you will
have to give up the fight? Why should you invite care and
worry? Why not come down to the serious facts and insure the
happiness of all who depend upon you by following out a sane
and sensible plan of living and of giving? My dear boy,
don't you know you are doing wrong in being unjustifiably
ostentatious in your giving? I have likened you to Turpin.
You will laugh this off. You aren't a thief--at least you
cannot believe that you are one; but there is something
worse even than being a thief, and I fear you are verging
upon it.
"Frankly, Jack, I am afraid you are a snob. Yes, sir, a
plain snob; and if snobbery is not worse than thievery, I
know nothing of life. I'd rather be a straight-out, sincere,
honest, unpretending thief than a snob, my dear boy.
Wouldn't you? Let us look into this. The thief is the
creature of circumstances. He is what he is because his
environment and his moral sense, plus his necessities,
require that he shall do what he does. But the snob--what
compelling circumstances make a snob of a man? Why should he
make a pretence of being what he is not? Why should he give
things he cannot afford to give unless it be that he desires
to make an impression that he has no right to? The thief
banks on nothing. The snob takes advantage of his supposed
respectability. Bless us, Jacky, aren't we worse than they
are?
"Read your Thackeray, old chap. See what he said about
snobs. _He_ never inveighed against the submerged soul that
never had a chance. He never, with all his imputed cynicism,
made a slimy thing of those who fell, as Dickens did. He
struck high. He exploited the vices of those who might do
him real harm. He took the high man, not the low man, for
his target, and he struck home when he struck at snobbery.
And he struck a blow for purer, sweeter living, and men may
call him cynic for all time, but I shall never cease to call
him brave and true for what he did for you and for me, as
well as for all other men.
"Put yourself in the crucible, Jack. Find out what you are
and what you may be, and don't try to make yourself appear
to be generous when you are simply financially reckless.
Don't rob your creditors in the vain hope that you are
living up to the spirit of the hour, and don't rob yourself.
You are not living up to that spirit. You are degrading it.
God knows I love you more than I love any living thing
except my wife and children, but let me tell you this: the
man who gives more than he has a right to give is a thief in
the eyes of conscience, and, worse than that, he is a snob,
and a mean one at that. Adapt your giving to your
circumstances. Do what you can to make others happy, but at
this season do not, I beg of you, try to do what you can't
in an effort to appear for what you are not.
"The happiness of your children, of your wife, of yourself,
is involved, and when that happiness is attacked or
weakened, then is the whole spirit of Christmas season set
aside, and the selfishness of the posing impostor put in
its place. Always your affectionate self,
"JOHN HENRY CHETWOOD."
When Chetwood had finished I puffed away fiercely upon my cigar.
"Good letter, Jack," said I.
"Yes," said he, tearing it up.
"Don't do that," I cried, trying to restrain him.
He smiled again and sighed. "It's--gone," said he. "Gone. Forever. I
shall never write it again."
"You should have sent it to--to yourself," said I. "I have thought
sometimes that such a letter should be written to you."
"Possibly," said he. "But--it's gone." And he tossed it into the
waste-basket.
"It's a pity," said I. "You--you might have sold that."
"I know I might," said he. "But if it had ever appeared in print I
should have been immortally mad. It's a libel on myself. Truth--is
libellous, you know."
"It might have been rejected," I said, sarcastically.
"That would have made me madder yet," said Chetwood.
"Still--you realize the--ah--situation, Jack," I put in.
"Well," said he, with a laugh, "Christmas is coming, and when the fever
is on--I--well, I catch it. I want to give, give, give, and give I
shall."
"But you are imperilling--" I cried.
"I know, I know," he interrupted, gently. "God knows I know, but it is
the fever of the hour. You can't stave off an epidemic. It's not my
fault; it's the fault of the times."
"Nonsense," I retorted. "Can't you stand up against the times?"
"I can," said he, complacently lighting a cigar. "But I sha'n't. We'll
all go to ruin together. The man who tries to stand up against the
spirit of the times is an ass. I lack the requisite number of legs for
that."
"Well," I put in, "I wish you a merry Christmas--"
"I shall have it," said he, cheerily. "The children--"
"And the New Year?" I interrupted.
"It isn't here yet," said Chetwood. "And I never cross a bridge until I
come to it. Take another cigar."
Nevertheless, I went from Chetwood that night rather happier than I
ought to have been, perhaps. His letter, even though he did not choose
to mail it to himself, showed that he was thinking--thinking about it;
and I was glad.
What if all men were to consider the questions that Chetwood raised?
Might not the meaning of Christmas, with all its joy and all its beauty,
and all its inspiration-giving qualities, once more be made clear to
man? I for one believe it would, and I venture to hope that the old-time
simplicity of the observance of the day may again be restored unto us.
"God bless us all!" said Tiny Tim.
When the simpler, happier Christmas time, which is a joy, and not a
burden, comes back to us, then will Tiny Tim's prayer have been
answered.