It was that Christmas-day that did it; I'm quite convinced of that; and
the way it was is what I am going to tell you.
You see, among the various family customs of us Crowfields, the
observance of all sorts of _fêtes_ and festivals has always been a
matter of prime regard; and among all the festivals of the round ripe
year, none is so joyous and honored among us as Christmas.
Let no one upon this, prick up the ears of Archaeology, and tell us that
by the latest calculations of chronologists our ivy-grown and
holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum,--that it has been demonstrated, by
all sorts of signs and tables, that the august event it celebrates did
not take place on the 25th of December. Supposing it be so, what have we
to do with that? If so awful, so joyous an event ever took place on our
earth, it is surely worth commemoration. It is the _event_ we celebrate,
not the _time_. And if all Christians for eighteen hundred years, while
warring and wrangling on a thousand other points, have agreed to give
this one 25th of December to peace and good-will, who is he that shall
gainsay them, and for an historic scruple turn his back on the friendly
greetings of all Christendom? Such a man is capable of rewriting
Milton's Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and Hopkins.
In our house, however, Christmas has always been a high day, a day whose
expectation has held waking all the little eyes in our bird's nest, when
as yet there were only little ones there, each sleeping with one eye
open, hoping to be the happy first to wish the merry Christmas and grasp
the wonderful stocking.
This year our whole family train of married girls and boys, with the
various toddling tribes thereto belonging, held high festival around a
wonderful Christmas-tree, the getting-up and adorning of which had kept
my wife and Jennie and myself busy for a week beforehand. If the little
folks think these trees grow up in a night, without labor, they know as
little about them as they do about most of the other blessings which
rain down on their dear little thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and
clambering and fussing and tying and untying, such alterations and
rearrangements, such agilities in getting up and down and everywhere to
tie on tapers and gold balls and glittering things innumerable, to hang
airy dolls in graceful positions, to make branches bear stiffly up under
loads of pretty things which threaten to make the tapers turn bottom
upward! Part and parcel of all this was I, Christopher, most reckless of
rheumatism, most careless of dignity, the round, bald top of my head to
be seen emerging everywhere from the thick boughs of the spruce, now
devising an airy settlement for some gossamer-robed doll, now adjusting
far back on a stiff branch Tom's new little skates, now balancing bags
of sugar-plums and candy, and now combating desperately with some
contumacious taper that would turn slantwise or crosswise, or anywise
but upward as a Christian taper should,--regardless of Mrs. Crowfield's
gentle admonitions and suggestions, sitting up to most dissipated hours,
springing out of bed suddenly to change some arrangement in the middle
of the night, and up long before the lazy sun at dawn to execute still
other arrangements. If that Christmas-tree had been a fort to be taken,
or a campaign to be planned, I could not have spent more time and
strength on it. My zeal so far outran even that of sprightly Miss
Jennie, that she could account for it only by saucily suggesting that
papa must be fast getting into second childhood.
But didn't we have a splendid lighting-up? Didn't I and my youngest
grandson, little Tom, head the procession magnificent in paper
soldier-caps, blowing tin trumpets and beating drums, as we marched
round the twinkling glories of our Christmas-tree, all glittering with
red and blue and green tapers, and with a splendid angel on top with
great gold wings, the cutting-out and adjusting of which had held my
eyes waking for nights before? I had had oceans of trouble with that
angel, owing to an unlucky sprain in his left wing, which had required
constant surgical attention through the week, and which I feared might
fall loose again at the important and blissful moment of exhibition: but
no, the Fates were in our favor; the angel behaved beautifully, and kept
his wings as crisp as possible, and the tapers all burned splendidly,
and the little folks were as crazy with delight as my most ardent hopes
could have desired; and then we romped and played and frolicked as long
as little eyes could keep open, and long after; and so passed away our
Christmas.
I had forgotten to speak of the Christmas-dinner, that solid feast of
fat things, on which we also luxuriated. Mrs. Crowfield outdid all
household traditions in that feast: the turkey and the chickens, the
jellies and the sauces, the pies and the pudding, behold, are they not
written in the tablets of Memory which remain to this day?
The holidays passed away hilariously, and at New-Year's I, according to
time-honored custom, went forth to make my calls and see my fair
friends, while my wife and daughters stayed at home to dispense the
hospitalities of the day to their gentlemen friends. All was merry,
cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a more joyous holiday
season had never flown over us.
But, somehow, the week after, I began to be sensible of a running-down
in the wheels. I had an article to write for the "Atlantic," but felt
mopish and could not write. My dinner had not its usual relish, and I
had an indefinite sense everywhere of something going wrong. My coal
bill came in, and I felt sure we were being extravagant, and that our
John Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and granddaughters came to
see us, and I discovered that they had high-pitched voices, and burst in
without wiping their shoes, and it suddenly occurred powerfully to my
mind that they were not being well brought up,--evidently, they were
growing up rude and noisy. I discovered several tumblers and plates with
the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections on the carelessness of
Irish servants; our crockery was going to destruction, along with the
rest. Then, on opening one of my paper-drawers, I found that Jennie's
one drawer of worsted had overflowed into two or three; Jennie was
growing careless; besides, worsted is dear, and girls knit away small
fortunes, without knowing it, on little duds that do nobody any good.
Moreover, Maggie had three times put my slippers into the hall-closet,
instead of leaving them where I wanted, under my study-table. Mrs.
Crowfield ought to look after things more; every servant, from end to
end of the house, was getting out of the traces; it was strange she did
not see it.
All this I vented, from time to time, in short, crusty sayings and
doings, as freely as if I hadn't just written an article on "Little
Foxes" in the last "Atlantic," till at length my eyes were opened on my
own state and condition.
It was evening, and I had just laid up the fire in the most approved
style of architecture, and, projecting my feet into my slippers, sat
spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review.
Mrs. Crowfield took the tongs and altered the disposition of a stick.
"My dear," I said, "I do wish you'd let the fire alone,--you always put
it out."
"I was merely admitting a little air between the sticks," said my wife.
"You always make matters worse, when you touch the fire."
As if in contradiction, a bright tongue of flame darted up between the
sticks, and the fire began chattering and snapping defiance at me. Now,
if there's anything which would provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and
snapped at in that way by a man's own fire. It's an unbearable
impertinence. I threw out my leg impatiently, and hit Rover, who yelped
a yelp that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave him a hearty kick,
that he might have something to yelp for, and in the movement upset
Jennie's embroidery-basket.
"Oh, papa!"
"Confound your baskets and balls! they are everywhere, so that a man
can't move; useless, wasteful things, too."
"Wasteful?" said Jennie, coloring indignantly; for if there's anything
Jennie piques herself upon, it's economy.
"Yes, wasteful,--wasting time and money both. Here are hundreds of
shivering poor to be clothed, and Christian females sit and do nothing
but crochet worsted into useless knicknacks. If they would be working
for the poor, there would be some sense in it. But it's all just alike,
no real Christianity in the world,--nothing but organized selfishness
and self-indulgence."
"My dear," said Mrs. Crowfield, "you are not well to-night. Things are
not quite so desperate as they appear. You haven't got over
Christmas-week."
"I am well. Never was better. But I can see, I hope, what's before my
eyes; and the fact is, Mrs. Crowfield, things must not go on as they are
going. There must be more care, more attention to details. There's
Maggie,--that girl never does what she is told. You are too slack with
her, Ma'am. She will light the fire with the last paper, and she won't
put my slippers in the right place; and I can't have my study made the
general catch-all and menagerie for Rover and Jennie, and her baskets
and balls, and for all the family litter."
Just at this moment I overheard a sort of aside from Jennie, who was
swelling with repressed indignation at my attack on her worsted. She sat
with her back to me, knitting energetically, and said, in a low, but
very decisive tone, as she twitched her yarn,--
"Now if _I_ should talk in that way, people would call me _cross_,--and
that's the whole of it."
I pretended to be looking into the fire in an absent-minded state; but
Jennie's words had started a new idea. Was _that_ it? Was that the whole
matter? Was it, then, a fact, that the house, the servants, Jennie and
her worsteds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as
usual, and that the only difficulty was that I was _cross_? How many
times had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he was lying when I
kicked him! How many times, in better moods, had I complimented Jennie
on her neat little fancy-works, and declared that I liked the social
companionship of ladies' work-baskets among my papers! Yes, it was
clear. After all, things were much as they had been; only I was cross.
_Cross._ I put it to myself in that simple, old-fashioned word, instead
of saying that I was out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the
other smooth phrases with which we good Christians cover up our little
sins of temper. "Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, "a
literary man, with a somewhat delicate nervous organization and a
sensitive stomach, and you have been eating like a sailor or a
ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the
boy for two weeks; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all
sorts of boyish performances; and the consequence is, that, like a
thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital
of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can't eat
your cake and have it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid source of
cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations and pleasant views, is all
spent, you can't feel cheerful; things cannot look as they did when you
were full of life and vigor. When the tide is out, there is nothing but
unsightly, ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it; but you can
keep your senses,--you can know what is the matter with you,--you can
keep from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince-pies and candies and
jocularities on the heads of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and Jennie, whether
in the form of virulent morality, pungent criticisms, or a free kick,
such as you just gave the poor brute."
"Come here, Rover, poor dog!" said I, extending my hand to Rover, who
cowered at the farther corner of the room, eying me wistfully,--"come
here, you poor doggie, and make up with your master. There, there! Was
his master cross? Well, he knows it. We must forgive and forget, old
boy, mustn't we?" And Rover nearly broke his own back and tore me to
pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings.
"As for you, puss," I said to Jennie, "I am much obliged to you for your
free suggestion. You must take my cynical moralities for what they are
worth, and put your little traps into as many of my drawers as you
like."
In short, I made it up handsomely all around,--even apologizing to Mrs.
Crowfield, who, by the bye, has summered and wintered me so many years,
and knows all my airs and cuts and crinkles so well, that she took my
irritable unreasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been a baby
cutting a new tooth.
"Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter was; don't disturb yourself,"
she said, as I began my apology; "we understand each other. But there is
one thing I have to say; and that is, that your article ought to be
ready."
"Ah, well, then," said I, "like other great writers, I shall make
capital of my own sins, and treat of the second little family fox; and
his name is--"