Christmas Eve in Bumsteadville. Christmas Eve all over the world, but
especially where the English language is spoken. No sooner does the
first facetious star wink upon this Eve, than all the English-speaking
millions of this Boston-crowned earth begin casting off their hatreds,
meannesses, uncharities, and Carlyleisms, as a garment, and, in a
beautiful spirit of no objections to anybody, proceed to think what can
be done for the poor in the way of sincerely wishing them well. The
princely merchant, in his counting-room, involuntarily experiences the
softening, humanizing influence of the hour, and, in tones tremulous
with unwonted emotion, privately directs his Chief-Clerk to tell all the
other clerks, that, on this night of all the round year, they may,
before leaving the store at 10 o'clock, take almost any article from
that slightly damaged auction-stock down in the front cellar, at actual
cost-price. This, they are to understand, implies their Employer's
hearty wish of a Merry Christmas to them; and is a sign that, in the
grand spirit of the festal season, he can even forget and forgive those
unnatural leaner entry-clerks who are always whining for more than their
allotted $7 a week. The President of the great railroad corporation, in
the very middle of a growling fit over the extra cost involved in
purchasing his last Legislature, (owing to the fact that some of its
Members had been elected upon a fusion of Radical-Reform and
Honest-Workingman's Tickets,) is suddenly and mysteriously impressed
with the recollection that this is Christmas Eve. "Why, bless my soul,
so it is!" he cries, springing up from his littered rosewood desk like a
boy. "Here, you General Superintendent out there in the office!" sings
he, cheerily, "send some one down to Washington Market this instant, to
find out whether or not any of those luscious anatomical western turkies
that I saw in the barrels this morning are left yet. If the commercial
hotels down-town haven't taken them all, buy every remaining barrel at
once! Not a man nor boy in this Company's service shall go home to-night
without his Christmas dinner in his hand! Lively, now, Mr. JONES! and
just oblige me by picking out one of the birds for yourself, if you can
find one at all less blue than the rest. It's Christmas Eve, sir; and
upon my word I'm really sorry our boys have to work to-morrow as usual.
Ah! it's hard to be poor, JONES! A merry Christmas to us all. Here's my
carriage come for me." And even in returning to their homes from their
daily avocations, on Christmas Eve, how the most grasping, penurious
souls of men will soften to the world's unfortunate! Who is this poor
old lady, looking as though she might be somebody's grandmother, sitting
here by the wayside, shivering, on such an Eve as this? No home to
go?--Relations all dead?--Eaten nothing in two days?--Walked all the way
from the Woman's Rights Bureau in Boston?--Dear me! _can_ there be so
much suffering on Christmas Eve? I must do something for her, or my own
good dinner to-morrow will be a reproach to me. "Here! Policeman! just
take this poor old lady to the Station-House, and give her a good warm
home there until morning. There! cheer-up, Aunty; you're all right
_now._ This gentleman in the uniform has promised to take care of you.
Merry Christmas!"--Or, when at home, and that extremely bony lad, in the
thin summer coat, chatters to you, from the snow on the front-stoop,
about the courage he has taken from Christmas Eve to ask you for enough
to get a meal and a night's-lodging--how differently from your ordinary
style does a something soft in your breast impel you to treat him. "No
work to be obtained?" you say, in a light tone, to cheer him up. "Of
course there's none _here,_ my young friend. All the work here at the
East is for foreigners, in order that they may be used at election-time.
As for you, an American boy, why don't you go to h-- I mean to the West.
_Go West_, young man! Buy a good, stout farming outfit, two or three
serviceable horses, or mules, a portable house made in sections, a few
cattle, a case of fever medicine--and then go out to the far West upon
Government-land. You'd better go to one of the hotels for to-night, and
then purchase Mr. GREELEY'S 'What I Know About Farming,' and start as
soon as the snow permits in the morning. Here are ten cents for you.
Merry Christmas!"--Thus to honor the natal Festival of Him--the
Unselfish incarnate, the Divinely insighted--Who said unto the
lip-server: Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the Poor, and follow
Me; and from Whom the lip-server, having great possessions, went away
exceeding sorrowful!
Three men are to meet at dinner in the Bumsteadian apartments on this
Christmas Eve. How has each one passed the day?
MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, in his room in Gospeler's Gulch, reads Southern
tragedies in an old copy of the _New Orleans Picayune,_ until two
o'clock, when he hastily tears up all his soiled paper collars, packs a
few things into a travelling satchel, and, with the latter slung over
his shoulder, and a Kehoe's Indian club in his right hand, is met in the
hall by his tutor, the Gospeler.
"What are you doing with that club, Mr. MONTGOMERY?" asks the Reverend
OCTAVIUS, hastily stepping back into a corner.
"I've bought it to exercise with in the open air," answers the young
Southerner, playfully denting the wall just over his tutor's head with
it "After this dinner with Mr. DROOD, at BUMSTEAD'S, I reckon I shall
start on a walking match, and I've procured the club for exercise as I
go. Thus:" He twirls it high in the air, grazes Mr. SIMPSON'S nearer
ear, hits his own head accidentally, and breaks the glass in the
hat-stand.
"I see! I see!" says the Gospeler, rather hurriedly. "Perhaps you _had_
better be entirely alone, and in the open country, when you take that
exercise."
Rubbing his skull quite dismally, the prospective pedestrian goes
straightway to the porch of the Alms-House, and there waits until his
sister comes down in her bonnet and joins him.
"MAGNOLIA," he remarks, hastening to be the first to speak, in order to
have any conversational chance at all with her, "it is not the least
mysterious part of this Mystery of ours, that keeps us all out of doors
so much in the unseasonable winter month of December,[1] and now I am
peculiarly a meteorological martyr in feeling obliged to go walking for
two whole freezing weeks, or until the Holidays and this--this
marriage-business, are over. I didn't tell Mr. SIMPSON, but my real
purpose, I reckon, in having this club, is to save myself, by violent
exercise with it, from perishing of cold."
"Must you do this, MONTGOMERY?" asks his colloquial sister,
thoughtfully. "Perhaps if I were to talk long enough with you--"
"--You'd literally exhaust me into not going? Certainly you would," he
returns, confidently. "First, my head would ache from the constant
noise; then it would spin; then I should grow faint and hear you less
distinctly; then your voice, although you were talking-on the same as
ever, would sound like a mere steady hum to me; then I should become
unconscious, and be carried home, with you still whispering in my ear.
But do _not_ talk, MAGNOLIA; for I must do the walking-match. The
prejudice here against my Southern birth makes me a damper upon the
festivities of others at this general season of forgiveness to all
mankind, and I can't stand the sight of that DROOD and Miss POTTS
together. I'd better stay away until they have gone."
He pauses a moment, and adds: "I wish I were not going to this dinner,
or that I were not carrying this club there."
He shakes her hand and his own head, glances up at the storm-clouds now
gathering in the sky, goes onward to Mr. BUMSTEAD'S boarding-house,
halts at the door a moment to moisten his right hand and balance the
Indian club in it, and then enters.
EDWIN DROOD'S day before merry Christmas is equally hilarious. Now that
the Flowerpot is no longer on his mind, the proneness of the masculine
nature to court misfortune causes him to think seriously of Miss
PENDRAGON, and wonder whether _she_ would make a wife to ruin a man? It
will be rather awkward, he thinks, to be in Bumsteadville for a week or
two after the Macassar young ladies shall have heard of his matrimonial
disengagement, as they will all be sure to sit symmetrically at every
front window in the Alms-House whenever he tries to go by; and he
resolves to escape the danger by starting for Egypt, Illinois,
immediately after he has seen Mr. DIBBLE and explained the situation to
him. Finding that his watch has run down, he steps into a jeweler's to
have it wound, and is at once subjected to insinuating overtures by the
man of genius. What does he think of this ring, which is exactly the
thing for some particular Occasions in Life? It is made of the metal for
which nearly all young couples marry now-a-days, is as endless as their
disagreements, and, by the new process, can be stretched to fit the
Second wife's hand, also. Or look at this pearl set. Very chaste, really
soothing; intended as a present from a Husband after First Quarrel.
These cameo ear-rings were never known to fail. Judiciously presented,
in a velvet case, they may be depended upon to at once divert a young
Wife from Returning to her Mother, as she has threatened. Ah! Mr. DROOD
cares for no more jewelry than his watch, chain and seal-ring? To be
sure! when Mr. BUMSTEAD was in yesterday for the regular daily new
crystal in his own watch--how _does_ he break so many!--_he_ said that
his beloved nephews wore only watches and rings, or he would buy paste
breastpins for them. Your oroide is now wound up, Mr. DROOD, and set at
twenty minutes past Two.
"Dear old JACK!" thinks EDWIN to himself, pocketing his watch as he
walks away; "he thinks just twice as much of me as any one else in the
world, and I should feel doubly grateful."
As dusk draws on, the young fellow, returning from a long walk, espies
an aged Irish lady leaning against a tree on the edge of the turnpike,
with a pipe upside-down in her mouth, and her bonnet on
wrong-side-afore.
"Are you sick?" he asks kindly.
"Divil a sick, gintlemen," is the answer, with a slight catch of the
voice,--"bless the two of yez!"
EDWIN DROOD can scarcely avoid a start, as he thinks to himself, "Good
Heaven! how much like JACK!"
"Do you eat cloves, madame?" he asks, respectfully.
"Cloves is it, honey? ah, thin, I do that, whin I'm expectin' company.
Odether-nodether, but I've come here the day from New York for nothing.
Sure phat's the names of you two darlints?"
"EDWIN," he answers, in some wonder, as he hands her a currency stamp,
which, on account of the large hole worn in it, he has been repeatedly
unable to pass himself.
"EDDY is it? Och hone, och hone, machree!" exclaims the venerable woman,
hanging desolately around the tree by her arms while her bonnet falls
over her left ear: "I've heard that name threatened. Och, acushla
wirasthu!"
Believing that the matron will be less agitated if left alone, and,
probably, able to get a little roadside sleep, EDWIN DROOD passes onward
in deep thought. The boarding-house is reached, and _he_ enters.
J. BUMSTEAD'S day of the dinner is also marked by exhilarating
experiences. With one coat-tail unwittingly tucked far up his back, so
that it seems to be amputated, and his alpaca umbrella under his arm, he
enters a grocery-store of the village, and abstractedly asks how
strawberries are selling to-day? Upon being reminded that fresh fruit is
very scarce in late December, he changes his purpose, and orders two
bottles of Bourbon flavoring-extract sent to his address. And now he
wishes to know what they are charging for sponges? They tell him that he
must seek those articles at the druggist's, and he compromises by
requesting that four lemons be forwarded to his residence. Have they any
good Canton-flannel, suitable for a person of medium complexion?--
No?--Very well, then: send half a pound of cloves to his house before
night.
There are Ritualistic services at Saint Cow's, and he renders the
organ-accompaniments with such unusual freedom from reminiscences of the
bacchanalian repertory, that the Gospeler is impelled to compliment him
as they leave the cathedral.
"You're in fine tone to-day, BUMSTEAD. Not quite so much volume to your
playing as sometimes, but still the tune could be recognized."
"That, sir," answers the organist, explainingly, "was because I held my
right wrist firmly with my left hand, and played mostly with only one
finger. The method, I find, secures steadiness of touch and precision in
hitting the right key."
"I should think it would, Mr. BUMSTEAD. You seem to be more free than
ordinarily from your occasional indisposition."
"I am less nervous, Mr. SIMPSON," is the reply. "I've made up my mind to
swear off, sir.--I'll tell you what I'll do, SIMPSON," continues the
Ritualistic organist, with sudden confidential affability. "I'll make an
agreement with you, that whichever of us catches the other slipping-up
first in the New Year, shall be entitled to call for whatever he wants."
"Bless me! I don't understand," ejaculates the Gospeler.
"No matter, sir. No matter!" retorts the mystic of the organ-loft,
abruptly returning to his original gloom. "My company awaits me, and I
must go."
"Excuse me," cries the Gospeler, turning back a moment; "but what's the
matter with your coat?"
The other discovers the condition of his tucked-up coat-tail with some
fierceness of aspect, but immediately explains that it must have been
caused by his sitting upon a folding-chair just before leaving home.
So, humming a savage tune in make-belief of no embarrassment at all in
regard to his recently disordered garment, Mr. BUMSTEAD reaches his
boarding-house. At the door he waits long enough to examine his
umbrella, with scowling scrutiny, in every rib; and then _he_ enters.
Behind the red window-curtain of the room of the dinner-party shines the
light all night, while before it a wailing December gale rises higher
and higher. Through leafless branches, under eaves and against chimneys,
the savage wings of the storm are beaten, its long fingers caught, and
its giant shoulder heaved. Still, while nothing else seems steady, that
light behind the red curtain burns unextinguished; the reason being that
the window is closed and the wind cannot get at it.
At morning comes a hush on nature; the sun arises with that innocent
expression of countenance which causes some persons to fancy that it
resembles Mr. GREELEY after shaving; and there is an evident desire on
the part of the wind to pretend that it has not been up all night.
Fallen chimnies, however, expose the airy fraud, and the clock blown
completely out of Saint Cow's steeple reveals what a high time there has
been.
Christmas morning though it is, Mr. MCLAUGHLIN is summoned from his
family-circle of pigs, to mount the Ritualistic church and see what can
be done; and while a small throng of early idlers are staring up at him
from Gospeler's Gulch, Mr. BUMSTEAD, with his coat on in the wrong way,
and a wet towel on his head, comes tearing in amongst them like a
congreve rocket.
"Where's them nephews?--where's MONTGOMERIES?--where's that umbrella?"
howls Mr. BUMSTEAD, catching the first man he sees by the throat, and
driving his hat over his eyes.
"What's the matter, for goodness sake?" calls the Gospeler from the
window of his house. "Mr. PENDRAGON has gone away on a walking-match. Is
not Mr. DROOD at home with you?"
"Norrabit'v it," pants the organist, releasing his man's throat, but
still leaning with heavy affection upon him: "m'nephews wen 'out with 'm
--f'r li'lle walk--er mir'night; an' 've norseen'm--since."
There is no more looking up at Saint Cow's steeple with a MCLAUGHLIN on
it now. All eyes fix upon the agitated Mr. BUMSTEAD, as he wildly
attempts to step over the tall paling of the Gospeler's fence at a
stride, and goes crashing headlong through it instead.
(_To be Continued_.)
[Footnote 1: In the original English story there is, considering the
bitter time of year given, a truly extraordinary amount of solitary
sauntering, social strolling, confidential confabulating,
evening-rambling, and general lingering, in the open air. To "adapt"
this novel peculiarity to American practice, without some little
violation of probability, is what the present conscientious Adapter
finds almost the artistic requirement of his task.]
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