ISN'T the Christmas festival just simply WONDERFUL?
For days beforehand I feel so uplifted -- so
well, OTHER-WORLDLY -- if you know what I mean.
Isn't it just dreadful that any MATERIAL
considerations have to spoil such a sacred time?
It does seem to me that somehow we might free
ourselves of WORLDLINESS and GREEDINESS and just
rise to the spiritual significance of the day. If only
we could!
And what a blessing it would be to the poor, tired
shop girls if we could!
Though, of course, they, the shop girls, I mean,
must be upheld even in their weariest moments by
the thought that they are helping on the beautiful
impulse of giving!
When they reflect that every article they sell is
to be a gift from one thoughtful and loving heart
to another they must forget the mere fatigue of the
flesh and just feel the stimulus, the inspiration, the
vibration!
There are gifts, I admit, that haven't the divine
spark of love to hallow them, but after all there
aren't so many of that sort. Love one another is
the spirit of Christmas -- and it prevails, whatever
the skeptics say to the contrary. And though
it's a pity there has to be a MATERIAL side to
Christmas at all, it's so comforting, so ennobling
to realize that back of the material gifts is Brotherly
Love.
It quite reassures one about the state of the world;
it certainly isn't getting worse with Brotherly Love
and the Spirit of Giving animating everybody.
Of course, Christmas giving IS a problem sometimes.
It is SO embarrassing when somebody you'd
forgotten entirely sends you a present.
I always buy several extra things just for that
emergency. Then, when an unexpected gift arrives,
I can rush off a return gift so promptly that
nobody'd ever DREAM I hadn't meant to send it all
along.
And I always buy things I'd like to have myself,
so that if they aren't needed for unexpected people
they're still not wasted.
With all my spirituality, I have a practical side,
you see.
All well BALANCED natures have both the spiritual
and the practical side. It's so essential, nowadays,
to be well balanced, and it's a great relief to me to
find I CAN be practical. It saves me a lot of trouble,
too, especially about this problem of Christmas giving.
I know the value of material things, for instance.
And I never waste money giving more expensive
presents to my friends than I receive from them.
That's one of the advantages of having a well
balanced nature, a PRACTICAL side.
And, anyway, the value of a gift is not in the
COST of it. Quite cheap things, when they represent
true thought and affection, are above rubies.
Mamma and Papa are going to get me a pearl
necklace, just to circle the throat, but beautifully
matched pearl. I wouldn't care for an
ostentatiously long string of pearls anyway.
Poor, dear Papa says he really can't afford it --
with times so hard, and those dear, pathetic
Europeans on everybody's hands, you know -- but
Mamma made him understand how necessary BEAUTY is
to me, and he finally gave in.
Isn't it just WONDERFUL how love rules us all at
Christmas time?
POOR DEAR MAMA AND FOTHERGIL FINCH
(Hermione's Boswell Loquitur)
HERMIONE'S mother, who has figured so
often as "Poor dear Mama" in these
pages, has come out definitely for Suffrage.
Someone told her that there was an alliance between
the liquor interests and the anti-Suffagists and she
believed it, and it shocked her.
Since the activities of her daughter have brought
her into contact with Modern Though her life has
been chiefly passed in one or another of three
phases: She has been shocked, she is being
shocked, or she fears that she is about to be shocked.
She is nearing fifty and rather stout, though her
figure is still not bad. She has an abundance of
chestnut hair, all her own, and naturally wave; her
hands are pretty, her feet are pretty, her face is pretty.
Her mouth is very small, almost disproportionately so,
and her eyes are very large and blue and very wide
open. She was intended for a placed
woman, but Hermione and Modern Thought
have made complete placidity impossible. She has
a fondness for rich brocades and pretty fans are
chocolate candy and big bowls of roses and comfortable
chairs. When she was Hermione's age
she used to do water color sketches; the outlines
were penciled in by her drawing teacher, and she
washed on the color very smoothly and neatly; but
she heard a great many stories concerning the
dissolute lives that artists lead and she gave it up.
Nevertheless, she sometimes says: "Hermione
comes by her interest in Art quite naturally."
Fothergil Finch and I called recently. Hermione
was not in, and her mother suggested that we wait
for her. Hermione's mother looks upon all of
Hermione's friends with more or less suspicion,
and she would not permit Fothergil in particular to
be about the place for a moment if she were not
obliged to; but she does not have the requisite stern-
ness of character to resist her daughter. Fothergil,
knowing that he is not approved of, scarcely does
himself justice when Hermione's mother is present;
although he endeavors to avoid offending her.
"Have you seen the play, 'Young America'?"
asked Fothergil, searching for a safe topic of
conversation.
A little ripple of alarm immediately ruffled the
lakeblue innocence of her eyes.
"If it is a Problem Play, I have not," she said,
"I consider such things dangerous."
"But it isn't, you know," said Fothergil eagerly.
It's a -- a -- it's a perfectly NICE play.
It's about a dog!"
"About a dog!" Her eyebrows went up, and her
mouth rounded itself with the conviction that no
perfectly nice play could possibly be about a dog.
"I think that is dreadfully Coarse!" she said.
"But it isn't," protested Fothergil. "It's just the
SORT of thing you'd like."
"Indeed!" She felt slightly insulted at his assumption
of what she would like, and dismissed
the subject with a wave of her pretty hand. Fothergil
tried again.
"I hope," he said ingratiatingly, "that you haven't
been bothered by mosquitoes." She looked
a bit frightened, but said nothing, and he dashed on
determinedly. "You know, this is a new variety
of mosquitoes we've been having this year. Most
of them have stripes on their legs, you know, but
these have black legs this year. But maybe you
haven't noticed -- -- "
He stopped in midcareer. The preposterous idea
that she could be interested in examining the legs
of mosquitoes had too evidently outraged Hermione's
mother. Fothergil, flushed and embarrassed, tried
to make it better and made it worse.
"Maybe you haven't noticed their -- er -- limbs,"
said Fothergil.
"I have not," she murmured.
Fothergil desperately persevered.
"We don't see so much as we used to of --
of -- -- " (I am sure he didn't know he was
going to finish the sentence when he began it, but
he plunged ahead) -- "of the Queen Anne style of
architecture."
With visible relief, and yet with a lurking suspicion,
she assented. And Fothergil, feeling himself
on safe ground at last, went on:
"Don't you think she was one of the most interesting
queens in English history -- Queen Anne?
Do you remember the anecdote -- -- ?
But she checked him, frightened again:
"I do not wish to hear it, Mr. Finch," she said.
"But," said Fothergil, "She was a most unexceptional
Queen -- not like, er -- not like -- well,
Cleopatra, you know, or any of those bad ones."
Hermione's mother was silent, but it was apparent
that she feared the talk was about to veer toward
Cleopatra.
"When I was a girl," she said, "the lives of
queens were considered rather dangerous reading
for young women. You need not go into details,
please."
I couldn't stand it any more myself. "If you'll
just tell Hermione I called," I said, edging toward
the door. Fothergil, however, stuck it out. In the
frenzy of embarrassment he must have lost his
head completely. For as I left I heard him be-
ginning:
"Did you read the story in the papers today of
the man who killed his wife? Crimes of passion are
becoming more and more frequent. . . ."