afternoon, when he appeared on the scene rather dusty of aspect.
"There's a whole lot of useful stuff up there going to waste. I found
four old beaver hats, any one of which would make a very good
waste-basket for the spare bedroom if it was suitably trimmed; and I
don't see why you don't take these straw hats of mine and make
work-baskets of them." Here he held out two relics of bygone fashions
to his wife. Mrs. Carraway took them silently. She was so filled with
suppressed laughter over her husband's suggestions that she hardly dared
to speak lest she should give way to her mirth, and a man does not
generally appreciate mirth at his own expense after he has been
rummaging in an attic for an hour or more, filling his lungs and
covering his clothes and hands with dust.
However, after a moment she managed to blurt out, "Perhaps I can make
one of them dainty enough to send to your mother for her Christmas
present."
"I was about to suggest that very same thing," said Carraway, brushing
the dust from his sleeve. "Either you could send it or Mollie"--Mollie
was Mr. Carraway's small daughter. "I think Mollie's grandmother would
be more pleased with a gift of that kind than with one of the useless
little fallals that children give their grandparents on Christmas Day.
What did she give her last year?"
The question was opportune, for it gave Mrs. Carraway a chance to laugh
outright with some other ostensible object than her husband. She availed
herself of the chance, threw her head back, and shook convulsively.
"She sent her a ball of shaving-paper," Mrs. Carraway said.
A faint smile flitted over Carraway's face. "Well, it might have been
worse," he said. "She can use it for curling-paper." He paused a moment.
Then he said: "I want to say to you, my dear, that--ah--I want Christmas
celebrated this year after my plan of selection. Instead of squandering
our hard-earned dollars on things no sensible person wants and none can
use, we will consider, first of all, practical utility."
"Very well," sighed Mrs. Carraway. "I quite agree as far as you and I
are concerned--but how about the children? I don't think Tommie would
feel very happy to wake up on Christmas morning and find a pair of
suspenders and a new suit of clothes under the tree. He needs both, but
he wants tin soldiers. And as for Mollie, she expects a doll."
"Well, I don't wish to be hard on the children," said Mr. Carraway, "but
now is the time to begin training them. There may be a temporary
disappointment, but in the end they will be happier for it. Of course I
don't say to give them necessities of life for Christmas, but in
selecting what we do give them, get something useful. Dolls and tin
soldiers and toy balloons are well enough in their way, but they are
absolutely useless. Therefore, I say, don't give them such things.
Surely Mollie would be pleased to receive a nice little fur tippet or a
muff, and I'll get Tommie a handsome snow-shovel, that he can use when
he cleans off the paths. He won't mind; it will be a gift worth having,
and by degrees he'll come to see that the plan of utility is a good
one."
Mrs. Carraway discreetly held her tongue, although she was far from
approving Carraway's course in so far as it affected the children. She
tacitly agreed to the proposition, but there was the light of an idea in
her eye.
The days intervening before Christmas passed rapidly away, and Christmas
eve finally came. Tommie and Mollie were bubbling over with suppressed
excitement, and frequently went off into spasms of giggles. There was
something very funny in the wind evidently. After dinner the small
family repaired to the library, where the children were in the habit of
distributing their gifts for their parents on the night before
Christmas. Mrs. Carraway was beaming, and so was Mr. Carraway. The
children had been informed of what they were to expect, and after an
hour or two of regret, they had put their little heads together, giggled
a half-dozen times, and accepted the situation.
"Your mother has presented me with a ton of coal, children," said
Carraway, smiling happily. "Now you may think that a funny sort of
gift--"
"Yeth, papa," said Mollie.
"Awful funny," said Tommie, wiggling with glee.
"Well, it does seem so at first, but, now, how much better to give me
that than to present me with something that I could look at for a few
days and then would have no further use for!"
"That's so, pa," said Mollie.
"I guess you're right," said Tommie. "Wat cher got for ma?"
"I have given her a brand-new set of china for the dining-room," said
Mr. Carraway.
"And it was just what I needed," said Mrs. Carraway, happily. "And now,
children, go up-stairs, and bring down your presents for your father."
The children sped noisily out of the room and up the stairs.
"I hope you impressed it on their minds that I wanted nothing useless?"
said Carraway.
"I did," said Mrs. Carraway. "I explained the whole thing to them, and
told them what they might expect to receive. Then I gave them each ten
dollars of the money they'd saved, and let them go shopping on their own
account. I don't know what they bought you, but it's something huge."
Mrs. Carraway had hardly finished when the two giggling tots came into
the room, carrying with difficulty a parcel, which, as Mrs. Carraway had
said, was indeed huge. Mr. Carraway eyed it with curiosity as the string
was unfastened and the package burst open.
"There," cried Tommie, breathlessly.
"It's all for you, pa, from Mollie and me." The two children stood to
one side. Mrs. Carraway appeared surprised in an amused fashion, while
Carraway stood appalled at what lay before him, as well he might; for
the package contained a great wax doll with deep staring blue eyes, a
small doll's house with two floors in it and a front door that opened,
china and chairs and table and bureaus in miniature to furnish the
house--indeed, all the paraphernalia of a well-ordered residence for a
French doll. Besides these were two boxes of tin soldiers, cannon,
tents, swords, a fully equipped lead army, a mechanical fish, and a
small zinc steamboat, suitable for a cruise in a bath-tub.
Carraway looked at the children, and the children looked at Carraway.
"Why," said he, as soon as he could recover his equanimity, "there must
be some mistake."
"No," said Mollie. "We picked 'em out for you ourselves. We thought
you'd need 'em."
Mrs. Carraway turned away to cough slightly.
"Need them?" demanded Carraway with a perplexed frown. "When?"
"Oh--to-morrow," said Tommie.
"What for?" demanded Carraway.
"_Why, to give to us, of course_" said the children in chorus.
* * * * *
"My dear," said Carraway, two hours later, after the children had
retired, "I've been thinking this thing over."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Carraway.
"Yes," said Carraway; "and I've made up my mind that those children of
ours are born geniuses. I don't believe, after all, they could have
selected anything which would be more satisfactorily useful in the
present emergency."
"Well," observed Mrs. Carraway, quietly, "I don't either. I thought so
at the time when they asked my permission to do their shopping at the
International Toy Bazar."
"It's a solar-plexus retort, just the same," said Carraway, as he shook
his head and went to bed. "I think on the 1st of January, if you have no
objections, Mrs. Carraway, I will forswear utilitarianism--and you may
remove the golf-balls from the cloisonné vase as soon as you choose."
THE BOOK SALES OF MR. PETERS
Like many another town which frankly confesses itself to be a "city of
the third class," Dumfries Corners is not only well provided but
somewhat overburdened with impecunious institutions of a public and
semi-public nature. The large generosity of persons who never give to,
but are often identified with, churches, hospitals, associations of
philanthropic intent of one kind and another, in Dumfries Corners as
elsewhere, is frequently the cause of embarrassment to persons who do
give without being lavish of the so-called influence of their names.
There are quite a dozen individuals out of the forty thousand souls who
live in that favored town who find it convenient to give away as much as
five hundred dollars annually for the maintenance of milk dispensaries,
hospitals, and other deserving enterprises of similar nature for the
needy. Yet at the close of each fiscal year those who have given to this
extent are invariably confronted by "reports," issued by officials of
the various institutions, frankly confessing failure to make both ends
meet, and everybody wonders why more interest has not been taken.
"Surely, we have loaned our names!" they say. It never occurs to anybody
that one successful charity is better than six failures. It has never
entered into the minds of the managers of these enterprises that a man
disposed to give away five hundred dollars could make his contributions
to the public welfare more efficacious by giving the whole to one
institution instead of dividing it among twenty.
However, human nature is the same everywhere, and until the crack of
doom sounds mankind will be found undertaking more charity than it can
carry through successfully, not only in Dumfries Corners, but everywhere
else. It would be difficult to fix the responsibility for this state of
affairs, although the large generosity of those who lend their names and
blockade their pockets may consider itself a candidate for chief honors
in this somewhat vital matter. It may be, too, that the large generosity
of people who really are largely generous with their thousands has
something to do with it. There is more than one ten-thousand-dollar town
in existence which has accepted a hundred-thousand-dollar hospital from
generously disposed citizens, and the other citizens thereof have
properly hailed their benefactor's name with loud acclaim, but the
hundred-thousand-dollar hospital, which might have been a
fifty-thousand-dollar hospital, with an endowment of fifty thousand more
to make it self-supporting, has a tendency to ruin other charities quite
as worthy, because its maintenance pumps dry the pockets of those who
have to give. It will require a drastic course of training, I fear, to
open the eyes of the public to the fact that even generosity can be
overdone, and I must disclaim any desire to superintend the process of
securing their awakening, for it is an ungrateful task to criticise even
a mistakenly generous person; and man being by nature prone to
thoughtless judgments, the critic of a philanthropist who spends a
million of dollars to provide tortoise-shell combs for bald beggars
would shortly find himself in hot water. Therefore let us discuss not
the causes, but some of the results of the system which has placed upon
suburban shoulders such seemingly hopeless philanthropic burdens. At
Dumfries Corners the book sales of Mr. Peters, one of the vestrymen,
were one of these results.
There were two of these sales. The first, like all book sales for
charity, consisted largely of the vending of ice-cream and cake. The
second was different; but I shall not deal with that until I have
described the first.
This had been given at Mr. Peters's house, with the cheerful consent of
Mrs. Peters. The object was to raise seventy-five dollars, the sum
needed to repair the roof of Mr. Peters's church. In ordinary times the
congregation could have advanced the seventy-five dollars necessary to
keep the rain from trickling through the roof and leaking in a steady
stream upon the pew of Mrs. Bumpkin, a lady too useful in knitting
sweaters for the heathen in South Africa to be ignored. But in that year
of grace, 1897, there had been so many demands made upon everybody, from
the Saint William's Hospital for Trolley Victims, from the Mistletoe
Inn, a club for workingmen which was in its initial stages and most
worthily appealed to the public purse, and for the University Extension
Society, whose ten-cent lectures were attended by the swellest people in
Dumfries Corners and their daughters--and so on--that the collections of
Saint George's had necessarily fallen off to such an extent that
plumbers' bills were almost as much of a burden to the rector as the
needs of missionaries in Borneo for dress-suits and golf-clubs. In this
emergency, Mr. Peters, whose account at his bank had been overdrawn by
his check which had paid for painting the Sunday-school room pink in
order that the young religious idea might be taught to shoot under more
roseate circumstances than the blue walls would permit, and so could not
well offer to have the roof repaired at his own expense, suggested a
book sale.
"We can get a lot of books on sale from publishers," he said, "and I
haven't any doubt that Mrs. Peters will be glad to have the affair at
our house. We can surely raise seventy-five dollars in this way.
Besides, it will draw the ladies in the congregation together."
The offer was accepted. Mrs. Peters acquiesced. Peters and his
co-workers asked favors and got them from friends in the publishing
world. The day came. The books arrived, and the net results to the
Roofing Fund of Saint George's were gratifying. The vestry had asked for
seventy-five dollars, and the sale actually cleared eighty-three! To be
sure, Mr. Wiggins spent fifty dollars at the sale. And Mrs. Thompson
spent forty-nine. And the cake-table took in thirty-eight. And the
ice-cream was sold, thanks to the voracity of the children, for nineteen
dollars. And some pictures which had been donated by Mrs. Bumpkin sold
for thirty-one dollars, and the gambling cakes, with rings and gold
dollars in them, cleared fifteen. Still, when it was all reckoned up,
eighty-three dollars stood to the credit of the roof! In affairs of this
kind, results, not expenses, are considered.
Surely the venture was a success. Although from the point of view of
bringing the ladies of the congregation together--well, the less said
about that the better. In any event, parts of Dumfries Corners were
cooler the following summer than they had ever been before.
And then, in the natural sequence of events, the next year came. The
hospital, and the inn, and the various other institutions of the city
indorsed by prominent names, but void of resources, as usual, left the
church so poor that something had to be done to repair the cellar of
Saint George's by outside effort, water leaking in from the street. The
matter was discussed, and the amount needed was settled upon. This time
Saint George's needed ninety dollars. It didn't really need so much, but
it was thought well to ask for more than was needed, "because then, you
know, you're more likely to get it."
The book-cake-and-cream sale of the year before had been so successful
that everybody said: "By all means let us have another literary
afternoon at Mr. Peters's."
"All right!" said Peters, calmly, when the project was suggested.
"Certainly! Of course! Have anything you please at my house. Not that I
am running a casino, but that I really enjoy turning my house inside out
in a good cause once in a while," he added, with a smile which those
about him believed to be sincere. "Only," said he, "kindly make me
master of ceremonies on this occasion."
"Certainly!" replied the vestry. "If this thing is to be in your house
you ought to have everything to say about it."
"I ask for control," said Peters, "not because I am fond of power, but
because experience has taught me that somebody should control affairs of
this sort."
"Certainly," was the reply again, and Peters was made a committee of
one, with power to run the sale in his own way, and the vestry settled
down in that calm and contented frame of mind which goes with the
consciousness of solvency.
Three months elapsed, and nothing was done. No cards were issued from
the home of Peters announcing a sale of any kind, cake, cream, or books,
and the literary afternoon seemed to have sunk into oblivion. The
chairman of the Committee on Supplies, however, having gone into the
cellar one morning to inspect the coal reserve, found himself obliged
either to wade knee deep in water or to neglect his duty--and, of
course, being a sensible man, he chose the latter course. He knew that
in impecunious churches willing candidates for vestry honors were rare,
and he, therefore, properly saved himself for future use. Wading in
water might have brought on pneumonia, and he was aware that there
really isn't any reason why a man should die for a cause if there is a
reasonable excuse for his living in the same behalf. But he went home
angry.
"That cellar isn't repaired yet," he said to his wife. "You'd think from
the quantity of water there that ours was a Baptist church instead of
the Church of England."
"It's a shame!" ejaculated his wife, who, having that morning finished
embroidering a centre-piece for the dinner-table of the missionaries in
Madagascar, was full of conscious rectitude. "A perfect shame; who's to
blame, dear?"
"Peters," replied the chairman. "Same old story. He makes all sorts of
promises, and never carries 'em out. He thinks that just because he
pays a few bills we haven't anything to say. But he'll find out his
mistake. I'll call him down. I'll write him a letter he won't forget in
a hurry. If he wasn't willing to attend to the matter he had no business
to accept the responsibility. I'll write and tell him so."
And then, the righteous wrath of the chairman of the Committee on
Supplies having expended itself in this explosion at his own
dinner-table, that good gentleman forgot all about it, did not write the
letter, and in fact never thought of the matter again until the next
meeting of the vestry, when he suavely and jokingly inquired if the
Committee on Leaks and Book Sales had any report to make. To his
surprise Mr. Peters responded at once.
"Yes, gentlemen," he said, taking a check out of his pocket and handing
it to the treasurer. "The Committee on Leaks, Literature, and Lemonade
reports that the leak is still in excellent condition and is progressing
daily, while the Literature and Lemonade have produced the very
gratifying sum of one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three
cents, a check for which I have just handed the treasurer."
Even the rector looked surprised.
"Pretty good result, eh?" said Peters. "You ask for ninety dollars and
get one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents. You can
spend a hundred dollars now on the leak and make a perfect leak of it,
and have a balance of thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents to buy
books for the Hottentots or to invest in picture-books for the Blind
Asylum library."
"Ah--Mr. Peters," said the chairman of the Committee on Supplies,
"I--ah--I was not aware that you'd had the sale. I--ah--I didn't receive
any notice."
"Oh yes--we had it," said Peters, rubbing his hands together buoyantly.
"We had it last night, and it went off superbly."
"I am sorry," said the chairman of the Committee on Supplies. "I should
like to have been there."
"I didn't know of it myself, Mr. Peters," said the rector, "but I am
glad it was so successful. Were there many present?"
"Well--no," said Peters. "Not many. Fact is, Mrs. Peters and the
treasurer here and I were the only persons present, gentlemen. But the
results sought were more than accomplished."
"I don't see exactly how, unless we are to regard this check as a gift,"
observed the chairman of the Committee on Supplies, coldly.
"Well, I'll tell you how," said Peters. "The check isn't a gift at all.
Last year you had a book sale at my house, and this year you voted to
have another. I couldn't very well object--didn't want to, in fact. Very
glad to have it as long as I was allowed to control it. But last year we
cleared up a bare eighty dollars. This year we have cleared up one
hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents. Last year's book
sale cost me one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The children who
attended, aided and abetted by my own, spilled so much ice cream on my
dining-room rug that Mrs. Peters was forced to send it to the cleaners.
A very charming young woman whose name I shall not mention placed a
chocolate eclair upon my library sofa while she inspected a volume of
Gibson's drawings. Another equally charming young woman sat down upon
it, and, whatever it did to her dress, that eclair effectually ruined
the covering of my sofa. Then, as you may remember, the sale of books
took place in my library, and I had the pleasure of seeing, too late,
one of our sweetest little saleswomen replenishing her stock from my
shelves. She had sold out all the books that had been provided, and in a
mad moment of enthusiasm for the cause parted with a volume I had
secured after much difficulty in London to complete a set of some rarity
for about seven dollars less than the book had cost."
"Why did you not object?" demanded the chairman of the Committee on
Supplies.
"My dear sir," said Mr. Peters, "I never object to anything my guests
may do, particularly if they are charming and enthusiastic young women
engaged in church work. But I learned a lesson, and last night's book
sale was the result. If the chairman of the Committee on Supplies
demands it, here is a full account of receipts."
Mr. Peters handed over a memorandum
which read as follows:
Saving on Floors by not having Book Sale, $18.00
Saving on Carpets by not having Book Sale, 6.50
Saving on Library by not having Book Sale, 29.00
Saving on Time by not having Book Sale, 50.00
Saving on Furniture by not having Book Sale 28.27
Saving on Incidentals by not having Book Sale 5.86
Total $137.63
"With this statement, gentlemen," said Mr. Peters, suavely, "should the
Finance Committee require it, I am prepared to submit the vouchers which
show how much wear and tear on a house is required to raise eighty
dollars for the heathen."
"That," said the chairman of the Finance Committee, "will not be
necessary--though--" and he added this wholly jocularly, "though I don't
think Mr. Peters should have charged for his time; fifty dollars is a
good deal of money."
"He didn't charge for his time," murmured the treasurer. "In this
statement he has paid for it!"
"Still," said he of Supplies, "the social end of it has been wiped out."
"Of course it has," retorted Mr. Peters. "And a very good thing it has
been, too. Did you ever know of a church function that did not arouse
animosities among the women, Mr. Squills?"
The gentleman, in the presence of men of truth, had to admit that he
never knew of such a thing.
"Then what's the matter with my book sale?" demanded Peters. "It has
raised more money than last year; has cost me no more--and there won't
be any social volcanoes for the vestry to sit over during the coming
year."
A dead silence came over all.
"I move," said Mr. Jones, at whose house the meeting was held, "that we
go into executive session. Mrs. Jones has provided some cold birds, and
a--ah--salad."
Mr. Jones's motion was carried, and before the meeting finally adjourned
under the genial influence of good-fellowship and pleasant converse Mr.
Peters's second book sale was voted to have been of the best quality.
THE VALOR OF BRINLEY