every one must go to the church for the midnight mass, and of course
no one goes to bed before that. Early in the dusk the toy dealers
bring their booths and flaming naphtha torches to the village plaza,
and the children swarm around them like flies to sweets. All the week
before groups of these children have been going from door to door at
night singing to familiar tunes ballads which tell the story of the
Nativity, and he is a poor Spaniard who cannot find some small coins
for the band of singers. On Holy Night, too, after they have made
the small round of the toy-dealers’ stands, they go to each other’s
houses to look at the different nativities and sing one carol after
another in which a single voice carries a verse, remembered or made
up at the time, and the others join in the refrain while two of them
dance. At the end of each verse the two whose turn it has been to
dance go up to the nativity with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, open
wide their little arms and fall on their knees, with the exclamation
“For Thee.” In some places the children will instead carry a nativity
into the plaza, singing carols in which every one joins.
[Illustration: Woman with baby]
One such carol is this lullaby:—
“The Baby Child of Mary,
Now cradle He has none;
His father is a carpenter
And he shall make Him one.
_His father is a carpenter
And he shall make Him one._
“The Lady, good St. Anna,
The Lord, St. Joachim,
They rock the Baby’s cradle
That sleep may come to Him.
_They rock the Baby’s cradle
That sleep may come to Him._
“Then sleep thou, too, my baby,
My little heart so dear;
The Virgin is beside thee,
The Son of God is near.
_The Virgin is beside thee,
The Son of God is near._”
[Illustration: Decoration]
A Christmas Tree in Japan
It was a huge Christmas tree, the first that had ever grown in
our compound,[1] for the children of our servants and writers and
employees, who make up the number of our Legation population to close
on two hundred. I could not have the tree on Christmas Day, owing to
various engagements; so it was fixed for January 3, and was quite the
most successful entertainment I ever gave!
When I undertook it, I confess that I had no idea how many little
ones belonged to the compound. I sent our good Ogita round to invite
them all solemnly to come to Ichiban (Number One) on the 3d at
five o’clock. Ogita threw himself into the business with delighted
good-will, having five little people of his own to include in the
invitation; but all the servants were eager to help as soon as they
knew we were preparing a treat for the children. That is work which
would always appeal to Japanese of any age or class. No trouble is
too great, if it brings pleasure to the “treasure flowers,” as the
babies are called. Some of them were not little, and these were more
difficult to buy presents for; but after many cold hours passed in
the different bazaars, it seemed to me that there must be something
for everybody, although we had really spent very little money.
The wares were so quaint and pretty that it was a pleasure to sort
and handle them. There were work-boxes in beautiful polished woods,
with drawers fitting so perfectly that when you closed one the
compressed air at once shot out another. There were mirrors enclosed
in charming embroidered cases; for where mirrors are mostly made of
metal, people learn not to let them get scratched. There were dollies
of every size, and dolls’ houses and furniture, kitchens, farmyards,
rice-pounding machines—all made in the tiniest proportions, such
as it seemed no human fingers could really have handled. For the
elder boys we bought books, school-boxes with every school requisite
contained in a square the size of one’s hand, and penknives and
scissors, which are greatly prized as being of foreign manufacture.
For decorations we had an abundant choice of materials. I got forests
of willow branches decorated with artificial fruits; pink and white
balls made of rice paste, which are threaded on the twigs; surprise
shells of the same paste, two lightly stuck together in the form of
a double scallop shell, and full of miniature toys; _kanzashi_, or
ornamental hairpins for the girls, made flowers of gold and silver
among my dark pine branches; and I wasted precious minutes in opening
and shutting these dainty roses—buds until you press a spring, when
they open suddenly into a full-blown rose. But the most beautiful
things on my tree were the icicles, which hung in scores from its
sombre foliage, catching rosy gleams of light from our lamps as
we worked late into the night. These were—chopsticks, long glass
chopsticks, which I discovered in the bazaar; and I am sure Santa
Klaus himself could not have told them from icicles. Of course every
present must be labelled with a child’s name, and here my troubles
began. Ogita was told to make out a correct list of names and ages,
with some reference to the calling of the parents; for even here
rank and precedence must be observed, or terrible heart-burnings
might follow. The list came at last, and if it were not so long,
I would send it to you complete, for it is a curiosity. Imagine
such complicated titles as these: “Minister’s second cook’s girl,
Ume, age 2;” “Minister’s servant’s cousin’s boy, age 11;” “Student’s
interpreter’s teacher’s girl;” “Vice-Consul’s jinrikisha-man’s boy.”
And so it went on, till there were fifty-eight of them of all ages,
from one up to nineteen. Some of them, indeed, were less than a year
old; and I was amused on the evening of the 2d at having the list
brought back to me with this note (Ogita’s English is still highly
individual!) “Marked X is declined to the invitation.” On looking
down the column, I found that ominous looking cross only against
one name, that of Yasu, daughter of Ito Kanejiro, Mr. G——’s cook.
This recalcitrant little person turned out to be six weeks old—an
early age for parties even nowadays. Miss Yasu, having been born in
November, was put down in the following January as two years old,
after the puzzling Japanese fashion. Then I found that they would
write boys as girls, girls as boys, grown-ups as babies, and so
on. Even at the last moment a doll had to be turned into a sword,
a toy tea-set into a work-box, a history of Europe into a rattle;
but people who grow Christmas trees are prepared for such small
contingencies, and no one knew anything about it when on Friday
afternoon the great tree slowly glowed into a pyramid of light,
and a long procession of little Japs was marshalled in, with great
solemnity and many bows, till they stood, a delighted, wide-eyed
crowd, round the beautiful shining thing, the first Christmas
tree any of them had ever seen. It was worth all the trouble to see
the gasp of surprise and delight, the evident fear that the whole
thing might be unreal and suddenly fade away. One little man of two
fell flat on his back with amazement, tried to rise and have another
look, and in so doing rolled over on his nose, where he lay quite
silent till his relatives rescued him. Behind the children stood the
mothers, quite as pleased as they, and with them one very old lady
with a little child on her back.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood, New York_
MAKING GLASS AND TINSEL ORNAMENTS FOR CHRISTMAS TREES]
The children stood, the little ones in front and the taller ones
behind, in a semicircle, and the many lights showed their bright
faces and gorgeous costumes, for no one would be outdone by another
in smartness—I fancy the poorer women had borrowed from richer
neighbors—and the result was picturesque in the extreme. The older
girls had their heads beautifully dressed, with flowers and pins and
rolls of scarlet crape knotted in between the coils; their dresses
were pale green or blue, with bright linings and stiff silk obis; but
the little ones were a blaze of scarlet, green, geranium pink, and
orange, their long sleeves sweeping the ground, and the huge flower
patterns on their garments making them look like live flowers as they
moved about on the dark velvet carpet. When they had gazed their
fill, they were called up to me one by one, Ogita addressing them all
as “San” (Miss or Mr.), even if they could only toddle, and I gave
them their serious presents with their names, written in Japanese
and English, tied on with red ribbon—an attention which, as I was
afterwards told, they appreciated greatly. It seemed to me that
they never would end; their size varied from a wee mite who could
not carry its own toys to a tall, handsome student of sixteen, or a
gorgeous young lady in green and mauve crape, and a head that must
have taken the best part of the day to dress.
In one thing they were all alike; their manners were perfect. There
was no pushing or grasping, no glances of envy at what other children
received, no false shyness in their sweet, happy way of expressing
their thanks. I was puzzled by one thing about the children: although
we kept giving them sweets and oranges off the tree, every time I
looked around the big circle all were empty-handed again, and it
really seemed as if they must have swallowed the gifts, gold paper
and ribbon and all. But at last I noticed that their square, hanging
sleeves began to have a strange, lumpy appearance, like a conjurers
waistcoat just before he produces twenty-four bowls of live goldfish
from his internal economy; and then I understood that the plunder was
at once dropped into these great sleeves, so as to leave hands free
for anything else that Okusama might think good to bestow. One little
lady, O’Haru San, aged three, got so overloaded with goodies and
toys that they kept rolling out of her sleeves, to the great delight
of the Brown Ambassador dachshund, Tip, who pounced on them like
lightning, and was also convicted of nibbling at cakes on the lower
branches of the tree.
The bigger children would not take second editions of presents, and
answered, “Honorable thanks, I have!” if offered more than they
thought their share; but babies are babies all the world over! When
the distribution was finished at last, I got a Japanese gentleman
to tell them the story of Christmas, the children’s feast; and then
they came up one by one to say “_Sayonara_” (“Since it must be,”
the Japanese farewell), and “_Arigato gozaimasu_” (“The honorable
thanks”).
“Come back next year,” I said; and then the last presents were given
out—beautiful lanterns, red, lighted, and hung on what Ogita calls
bumboos, to light the guests home with. One tiny maiden refused to
go, and flung herself on the floor in a passion of weeping, saying
that Okusama’s house was too beautiful to leave, and she would stay
with me always—yes, she would! Only the sight of the lighted lantern,
bobbing on a stick twice as long as herself, persuaded her to return
to her own home in the servants’ quarters. I stood on the step, the
same step where I had set the fireflies free one warm night last
summer, and watched the little people scatter over the lawns, and
disappear into the dark shrubberies, their round, red lights dancing
and shifting as they went, just as if my fireflies had come back, on
red wings this time, to light my little friends to bed.
[Illustration: Decoration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The British Legation compound is the enclosure in which the
official representatives of the English government in any Japanese
city live with their assistants, families, and servants.
From Far Away
From far away we come to you.
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
To tell of great tidings, strange and true.
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
From far away we come to you,
To tell of great tidings, strange and true._
For as we wandered far and wide,
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
What hap do you deem there should us betide?
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._
Under a bent when the night was deep,
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
There lay three shepherds, tending their sheep.
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._
“O ye shepherds, what have ye seen,
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
To stay your sorrow and heal your teen?”
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._
“In an ox stall this night we saw,
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
A Babe and a maid without a flaw.
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._
“There was an old man there beside;
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
[Illustration: village and river]
His hair was white, and his hood was wide.
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._
“And as we gazed this thing upon,
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
Those twain knelt down to the little one.
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._
“And a marvellous song we straight did hear,
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
That slew our sorrow and healed our care.”
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor._
News of a fair and a marvellous thing,
_The snow in the street, and the wind on the door_,
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, we sing.
_Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
From far away we come to you,
To tell of great tidings, strange and true._
Lordings, listen to our Lay
Lordings, listen to our lay—
We have come from far away
To seek Christmas;
In this mansion we are told
He his yearly feast doth hold:
’Tis to-day!
May joy come from God above,
To all those who Christmas love.
Where the Christmas Toys Come From
Almost all the wooden toys come from Germany, where peasants in
the mountains of the Tyrol and Bavaria still make them by hand. A
herd-boy on the hillside will see that his cattle are safely feeding
in a narrow valley which they cannot leave without passing him, and
then he will sit on the grass or on a rock and whittle and whistle
or jodel as the soft wood shapes itself in his fingers, through a
long summer day. And during the winter, while the snow lies deep on
the mountain paths, entire families give their time to making Noah’s
arks, toy villages with stiff little green trees, toy furniture,
carved figures of all kinds. Anything which a man’s knife can make
from poplar or plane wood is carved during the long weeks when
outdoor work is impossible. At one time whole German villages used to
work in their own homes on cheap wooden toys of all kinds. Nowadays,
since the invention of the machines by which the simpler forms are
made, most of the toy trades have been swept into the factories of
German cities.
Toy reins, such as you see with tinkling sleigh-bells on them, may
be woven elsewhere in New England, but it is fairly certain that the
bells at least were made in Connecticut, where the industry is a very
old one, and where most of the sleigh-bells in the country have been
made, as well as cow-bells and the tiny tinkler on the tea-table.
And, naturally, the state in which are so many clock factories
produces those toys which are made to go by a winding key.
Hundreds of thousands of tin trumpets, and other toy musical
instruments which used to be made in France and Germany, are now
made in this country, mainly in Pennsylvania and New York. It is
fascinating to watch the making of them by machinery. Pull a handle
here! Click! down comes a frame and a long sheet of metal is cut
into pieces of the exact shape wanted. See! the frame on which the
metal rested is a moving belt bringing a fresh sheet of metal under
the stamps and at the same time carrying the cut pieces forward over
a row of steel cones where a set of clamps like steel jaws catches
each separate bit. The clamps close once, nip! open, and each cone
pushes forward with a jerk into another which with one motion adds
a mouthpiece. What passes on now is a bent tube which needs only
a touch of solder to keep it closed, a few rings of paint to make
it gay, and perhaps a curved handle, to be a very presentable toy
trumpet.
Drums are almost all made in Massachusetts; marbles, the best of
them, come from Saxony; the old-fashioned kinds of music-boxes, some
of them very elaborate and beautiful, still come from Switzerland.
Glass ornaments for Christmas trees are made in Germany; many of the
tinsel and cut-paper ornaments also come from Nüremburg and other
German cities which are the great toy markets of the world. In one
French village near Paris almost all the bone dominoes have been made
for years; another section of France turns out nearly all the bone
chessmen—such figures as Alice found in the Looking-Glass country;
and a quantity of the furry rabbits, silky-haired dogs, and woolly
lambs on green-painted bellows which bleat _ba-a-a_, have been made
by one Parisian family for many years. The old proprietor, his sons
and daughters and even grandchildren, have lived and worked together
at the very top of an old house in one of the side streets of the
city, from a time beyond the memory of all but few.
As for dolls—the making of a Christmas doll—that is another story.
The Making of a Christmas Doll
Does it seem to you that it would be a delightful business to make
hundreds of thousands of dolls every year? H’m! Does this huge kettle
of bad-smelling mush make you think of the dainty, smiling dolls in
the toy-shop window? Dolly is made, though you would never guess it,
of chopped up bits of old kid gloves and pieces of cardboard boiled
to a pulp in a gum made from the horns of goats. And here is a man
shovelling sawdust into a kettle half full of boiling water. Now he
is turning the mass into a big mixing trough, adding one shovelful
after another of the gluey mush. The machinery creaks and turns and
cuts and slaps as this mixture is kneaded into a composition pulp.
Now he is carrying some of it in a hod, for all the world like sticky
mortar, to a weighing table! Sweep! it is spread out in an even
thickness. Clip! down come the knives which part it into the right
quantities, and it is swiftly pressed and moulded to the shape
of a body, an arm, or a leg. In one factory alone the parts of as
many as forty thousand dolls are thus made in one day, and the ugly,
greenish shapes set aside to harden. Another day they pass quickly
under the brushes in the painters’ hands after which they have the
more familiar rosy pink color, and dolly can now be put together
except for the head.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1908, by Underwood & Underwood, New York_
DOLL-MAKING]
Of these dolls the heads are to be of porcelain. Once for all, long
ago, some artist made the model of which many duplicate moulds stand
ready. Into these moulds liquid porcelain clay is poured; before it
hardens the openings for the eyes are cut and tiny holes made by
which it can be joined to a body. After the moulds are opened, as the
rows and rows of little heads stand in metal trays, a painter comes
by, covers them with a glaze-wash, tints the cheeks and outlines the
brows and lashes. Now into the oven goes the tray for hours of slow
baking. But even with the head sewed on we have but a sad-looking
dolly, both blind and bald.
If all goes well, the eyes and the wig come next. The eyes are not
made in this factory at all. They come from Germany, and it would
probably give you a queer, scared feeling to see the making of them.
Look into this long, dark room, and when your eyes are a little
used to the strange shadowiness, you will see that down its sides
there are rows of tables, before each of which sits a woman with a
blue-flame gas lamp in front of her. At little distances are retorts
of glowing molten glass, and each woman dips her short glass tube
into the melted glass, and, keeping it soft by the help of that
weird blue flame of the blowpipe jet, blows a little oblong globe
which she colors white for the eyeball, and then upon it paints a
pupil of blue, brown, or black, as the doll-makers may have ordered.
The musical click which you hear all the time is the sharp stroke
which breaks the finished and cooled eye from the glass rod, letting
it drop into a box lined with cotton by her side. This boy coming
out has been collecting them, and it makes us shiver to see those
hundreds of eyes rolling uncannily at us from the bottom of his
basket. Come away!
A wig for an inexpensive doll is an easy matter; the chosen strands
of hair are laid along a double thread, which passes below one
strand and above the next. This thread makes the “part,” and under
it is stuck a bit of pasteboard by which the wig is fastened on. A
quick-fingered French woman can turn out over a hundred dozen such
wigs in a day. And with the wig dolly is made at last.
Her clothes, of course, are a separate matter, just as yours are;
there are dolls’ shoemakers, and dolls’ dressmakers, and the
elaborate completeness of dolly’s outfit depends only upon the price
one is willing to pay.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York_
WIG-MAKING]
Irina’s Day on the Estates
Irina is a Russian who answers promptly if you ask her what Christmas
she remembers best, “The one we spent on the estates.” But that
may be because it was so unusual to be there at all in the winter.
Christmas Eve is the great time in Russia, but Santa Claus does not
come until evening and the day before Christmas being a fast-day is
usually somewhat depressing.
Old Mashinka, who comes in to open the heavy, outer shutters, usually
has some lively gossip to tell while she lets in the light. Perhaps
wolves slipped into the courtyard in the night and were fighting with
the watch-dogs; perhaps the snow has fallen again and is so deep that
Ivan and the stablemen have been out since daybreak cutting new paths
to the kitchens, stables, and farm buildings, and breaking out the
roads. Or perhaps Dmitri, who moved yesterday into a new house, took
with him a cock and hen, and this morning the cock refused to crow at
dawn so that all the family are sure that evil fortune will enter the
house with the new year. But on this morning she has no news to tell;
she moves silently and slowly, for it is a fast-day.
Even Irina, who is always ready to run and jump, feels oppressed
by the still, silent house. The dining room is desolate with its
breakfastless table, usually so cosy with its steaming samovar. As
a rule they are at this time in St. Petersburg where, though Irina
stays quietly all day in an upper room, except when attending church
services, she can at least look out upon all the coming and going on
the river and the Nevski Prospect. But this year Andrei the steward
is raising questions about the plans and locations for new stables
and barns, so they are here where everything is depressingly still
and silent, and upstairs her father and mother are praying in their
rooms. So she puts on fur-lined boots, a long fur coat with deep
collar, and a fur cap which comes well down over the forehead, and
once outside the house finds herself in the thick forest. Further on
she comes to a frozen river, and fast-days and solemn services are
all forgotten, for there are her two fur-wrapped brothers busy with
a little sledge. The red scarves of the boys are taken for guiding
reins, and far along the ice for two hours or more she drives her
team. They have passed beyond the forest and out upon the steppes,
where for miles ahead no trees are to be seen except where willows
mark the curve of the river, or a few stunted saplings show black
against the snow. On one side is a long, low sheepfold belonging to
Irina’s father, and out comes the shepherd with a clamor of dogs.
He has no chairs, so he throws down three heaps of clean straw for
the children to sit on; and he, too, forgets that it is a fast-day
as he reaches cakes of dark brown bread from a shelf below the tiny
square window, and pours for them cups of goats’ milk. Black crust
and all—it goes quickly, and then they rest and stroke the half-tamed
sheep that come to nibble the straw while the shepherd tells the
children stories. He cannot read, to be sure, but when he was a
boy his old grandmother told them to him. Perhaps, because it is the
Christmas season, he tells them of the old woman whom the Russians
call Babouscka and the Italians Befana. Irina’s favorite is one that
would remind you of Cinderella, although the fairy godmother is much
more like an old witch; and as the children start off for home they
wonder a little fearfully if this forest is not very like the one in
the shepherd’s story.
[Illustration: three boys]