Christmas Stories
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
Christmas Stories
By
Jacob A. Riis
New York
The Macmillan Company
1923
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1897, 1898 and 1909,
By THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1911,
By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Copyright, 1903, 1904, 1909, 1914 and 1923,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1923.
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE KID HANGS UP HIS STOCKING 1
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? 8
THE CROGANS' CHRISTMAS IN THE SNOWSHED 17
THE OLD TOWN 33
HIS CHRISTMAS GIFT 53
THE SNOW BABIES' CHRISTMAS 59
JACK'S SERMON 75
MERRY CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS 84
WHAT THE CHRISTMAS SUN SAW IN THE TENEMENTS 123
NIBSY'S CHRISTMAS 138
THE LITTLE DOLLAR'S CHRISTMAS JOURNEY 150
LITTLE WILL'S MESSAGE 165
THE BURGOMASTER'S CHRISTMAS 177
Christmas Stories
THE KID HANGS UP HIS STOCKING
The clock in the West Side Boys' Lodging-house ticked out the seconds
of Christmas eve as slowly and methodically as if six fat turkeys were
not sizzling in the basement kitchen against the morrow's spread,
and as if two-score boys were not racking their brains to guess what
kind of pies would go with them. Out on the avenue the shop-keepers
were barring doors and windows, and shouting "Merry Christmas!" to
one another across the street as they hurried to get home. The drays
ran over the pavement with muffled sounds; winter had set in with a
heavy snow-storm. In the big hall the monotonous click of checkers on
the board kept step with the clock. The smothered exclamations of the
boys at some unexpected, bold stroke, and the scratching of a little
fellow's pencil on a slate, trying to figure out how long it was yet
till the big dinner, were the only sounds that broke the quiet of the
room. The superintendent dozed behind his desk.
A door at the end of the hall creaked, and a head with a shock of
weather-beaten hair was stuck cautiously through the opening.
"Tom!" it said in a stage-whisper. "Hi, Tom! Come up an' git on ter de
lay of de Kid."
A bigger boy in a jumper, who had been lounging on two chairs by the
group of checker players, sat up and looked toward the door. Something
in the energetic toss of the head there aroused his instant curiosity,
and he started across the room. After a brief whispered conference the
door closed upon the two, and silence fell once more on the hall.
They had been gone but a little while when they came back in haste. The
big boy shut the door softly behind him and set his back against it.
"Fellers," he said, "what d'ye t'ink? I'm blamed if de Kid ain't gone
an' hung up his sock fer Chris'mas!"
The checkers dropped, and the pencil ceased scratching on the slate, in
breathless suspense.
"Come up an' see," said Tom, briefly, and led the way.
The whole band followed on tiptoe. At the foot of the stairs their
leader halted.
"Yer don't make no noise," he said, with a menacing gesture.
"You, Savoy!"--to one in a patched shirt and with a mischievous
twinkle,--"you don't come none o' yer monkey-shines. If you scare de
Kid you'll get it in de neck, see!"
With this admonition they stole upstairs. In the last cot of the double
tier of bunks a boy much smaller than the rest slept, snugly tucked
in the blankets. A tangled curl of yellow hair strayed over his baby
face. Hitched to the bedpost was a poor, worn little stocking, arranged
with much care so that Santa Claus should have as little trouble in
filling it as possible. The edge of a hole in the knee had been drawn
together and tied with a string to prevent anything falling out. The
boys looked on in amazed silence. Even Savoy was dumb.
Little Willie, or, as he was affectionately dubbed by the boys, "the
Kid," was a waif who had drifted in among them some months before.
Except that his mother was in the hospital, nothing was known about
him, which was regular and according to the rule of the house. Not
as much was known about most of its patrons; few of them knew more
themselves, or cared to remember. Santa Claus had never been anything
to them but a fake to make the colored supplements sell. The revelation
of the Kid's simple faith struck them with a kind of awe. They sneaked
quietly downstairs.
"Fellers," said Tom, when they were all together again in the big
room,--by virtue of his length, which had given him the nickname of
"Stretch," he was the speaker on all important occasions,--"ye seen
it yerself. Santy Claus is a-comin' to this here joint to-night. I
wouldn't 'a' believed it. I ain't never had no dealin's wid de ole guy.
He kinder forgot I was around, I guess. But de Kid says he is a-comin'
to-night, an' what de Kid says goes."
Then he looked round expectantly. Two of the boys, "Gimpy" and Lem,
were conferring aside in an undertone. Presently Gimpy, who limped, as
his name indicated, spoke up.
"Lem says, says he----"
"Gimpy, you chump! you'll address de chairman," interrupted Tom, with
severe dignity, "or you'll get yer jaw broke, if yer leg _is_ short,
see!"
"Cut it out, Stretch," was Gimpy's irreverent answer. "This here ain't
no regular meetin', an' we ain't goin' to have none o' yer rot. Lem,
he says, says he, let's break de bank an' fill de Kid's sock. He won't
know but it wuz ole Santy done it."
A yell of approval greeted the suggestion. The chairman, bound to
exercise the functions of office in season and out of season, while
they lasted, thumped the table.
"It is regular motioned an' carried," he announced, "that we break de
bank fer de Kid's Chris'mas. Come on, boys!"
The bank was run by the house, with the superintendent as paying
teller. He had to be consulted, particularly as it was past banking
hours; but the affair having been succinctly put before him by a
committee, of which Lem and Gimpy and Stretch were the talking members,
he readily consented to a reopening of business for a scrutiny of the
various accounts which represented the boys' earnings at selling
papers and blacking boots, minus the cost of their keep and of sundry
surreptitious flings at "craps" in secret corners. The inquiry
developed an available surplus of three dollars and fifty cents. Savoy
alone had no account; the run of craps had recently gone heavily
against him. But in consideration of the season, the house voted a
credit of twenty-five cents to him. The announcement was received with
cheers. There was an immediate rush for the store, which was delayed
only a few minutes by the necessity of Gimpy and Lem stopping on
the stairs to "thump" one another as the expression of their entire
satisfaction.
The procession that returned to the lodging-house later on, after
wearing out the patience of several belated storekeepers, might have
been the very Santa's supply-train itself. It signalized its advent by
a variety of discordant noises, which were smothered on the stairs by
Stretch, with much personal violence, lest they wake the Kid out of
season. With boots in hand and bated breath, the midnight band stole
up to the dormitory and looked in. All was safe. The Kid was dreaming,
and smiled in his sleep. The report roused a passing suspicion that he
was faking, and Savarese was for pinching his toe to find out. As this
would inevitably result in disclosure, Savarese and his proposal were
scornfully sat upon. Gimpy supplied the popular explanation.
"He's a-dreamin' that Santy Claus has come," he said, carefully working
a base-ball bat past the tender spot in the stocking.
"Hully Gee!" commented Shorty, balancing a drum with care on the end
of it, "I'm thinkin' he ain't far out. Look's ef de hull shop'd come
along."
It did when it was all in place. A trumpet and a gun that had made vain
and perilous efforts to join the bat in the stocking leaned against the
bed in expectant attitudes. A picture-book with a pink Bengal tiger and
a green bear on the cover peeped over the pillow, and the bedposts and
rail were festooned with candy and marbles in bags. An express-wagon
with a high seat was stabled in the gangway. It carried a load of fir
branches that left no doubt from whose livery it hailed. The last touch
was supplied by Savoy in the shape of a monkey on a yellow stick, that
was not in the official bill of lading.
"I swiped it fer de Kid," he said briefly in explanation.
When it was all done the boys turned in, but not to sleep. It was long
past midnight before the deep and regular breathing from the beds
proclaimed that the last had succumbed.
The early dawn was tinging the frosty window panes with red when from
the Kid's cot there came a shriek that roused the house with a start
of very genuine surprise.
"Hello!" shouted Stretch, sitting up with a jerk and rubbing his eyes.
"Yes, sir! in a minute. Hello, Kid, what to----"
The Kid was standing barefooted in the passageway, with a base-ball
bat in one hand and a trumpet and a pair of drumsticks in the other,
viewing with shining eyes the wagon and its cargo, the gun and all
the rest. From every cot necks were stretched, and grinning faces
watched the show. In the excess of his joy the Kid let out a blast on
the trumpet that fairly shook the building. As if it were a signal,
the boys jumped out of bed and danced a breakdown about him in their
shirt-tails, even Gimpy joining in.
"Holy Moses!" said Stretch, looking down, "if Santy Claus ain't been
here an' forgot his hull kit, I'm blamed!"
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
"DEAR MR. RIIS:
"A little chap of six on the Western frontier writes to us:
"'Will you please tell me if there is a Santa Claus? Papa says
not.'
"Won't you answer him?"
That was the message that came to me from an editor last December
just as I was going on a journey. Why he sent it to me I don't know.
Perhaps it was because, when I was a little chap, my home was way up
toward that white north where even the little boys ride in sleds behind
reindeer, as they are the only horses they have. Perhaps it was because
when I was a young lad I knew Hans Christian Andersen, who surely ought
to know, and spoke his tongue. Perhaps it was both. I will ask the
editor when I see him. Meanwhile, here was his letter, with Christmas
right at the door, and, as I said, I was going on a journey.
I buttoned it up in my greatcoat along with a lot of other letters I
didn't have time to read, and I thought as I went to the depot what a
pity it was that my little friend's papa should have forgotten about
Santa Claus. We big people do forget the strangest way, and then we
haven't got a bit of a good time any more.
No Santa Claus! If you had asked that car full of people I would have
liked to hear the answers they would have given you. No Santa Claus!
Why, there was scarce a man in the lot who didn't carry a bundle that
looked as if it had just tumbled out of his sleigh. I felt of one
slyly, and it was a boy's sled--a "flexible flyer," I know, because he
left one at our house the Christmas before; and I distinctly heard the
rattling of a pair of skates in that box in the next seat. They were
all good-natured, every one, though the train was behind time--that is
a sure sign of Christmas. The brakeman wore a piece of mistletoe in his
cap and a broad grin on his face, and he said "Merry Christmas" in a
way to make a man feel good all the rest of the day. No Santa Claus, is
there? You just ask him!
And then the train rolled into the city under the big gray dome to
which George Washington gave his name, and by-and-by I went through a
doorway which all American boys would rather see than go to school a
whole week, though they love their teacher dearly. It is true that last
winter my own little lad told the kind man whose house it is that he
would rather ride up and down in the elevator at the hotel, but that
was because he was so very little at the time and didn't know things
rightly, and, besides, it was his first experience with an elevator.
As I was saying, I went through the door into a beautiful white hall
with lofty pillars, between which there were regular banks of holly
with the red berries shining through, just as if it were out in the
woods! And from behind one of them there came the merriest laugh you
could ever think of. Do you think, now, it was that letter in my pocket
that gave that guilty little throb against my heart when I heard it, or
what could it have been? I hadn't even time to ask myself the question,
for there stood my host all framed in holly, and with the heartiest
handclasp.
"Come in," he said, and drew me after. "The coffee is waiting."
And he beamed upon the table with the veriest Christmas face as he
poured it out himself, one cup for his dear wife and one for me. The
children--ah! you should have asked _them_ if there was a Santa Claus!
And so we sat and talked, and I told my kind friends that my own dear
old mother, whom I have not seen for years, was very, very sick in
far-away Denmark and longing for her boy, and a mist came into my
hostess's gentle eyes and she said, "Let us cable over and tell her how
much we think of her," though she had never seen her. And it was no
sooner said than done. In came a man with a writing-pad, and while we
drank our coffee this message sped under the great stormy sea to the
far-away country where the day was shading into evening already, though
the sun was scarce two hours high in Washington:
THE WHITE HOUSE.
_Mrs. Riis, Ribe, Denmark_:
Your son is breakfasting with us. We send you our love and sympathy.
THEODORE AND EDITH ROOSEVELT.
For, you see, the house with the holly in the hall was the White
House, and my host was the President of the United States. I have to
tell it to you, or you might easily fall into the same error I came
near falling into. I had to pinch myself to make sure the President
was not Santa Claus himself. I felt that he had in that moment given
me the very greatest Christmas gift any man ever received: my little
mother's life. For really what ailed her was that she was very old, and
I know that when she got the President's dispatch she must have become
immediately ten years younger and got right out of bed. Don't you know
mothers are that way when any one makes much of their boys? I think
Santa Claus must have brought them all in the beginning--the mothers, I
mean.
I would just give anything to see what happened in that old town that
is full of blessed memories to me, when the telegraph ticked off that
message. I will warrant the town hurried out, burgomaster, bishop,
beadle and all, to do honor to my gentle old mother. No Santa Claus,
eh? What was that, then, that spanned two oceans with a breath of love
and cheer, I should like to know. Tell me that!
After the coffee we sat together in the President's office for a little
while while he signed commissions, each and every one of which was just
Santa Claus's gift to a grown-up boy who had been good in the year that
was going; and before we parted the President had lifted with so many
strokes of his pen clouds of sorrow and want that weighed heavily on
homes I knew of to which Santa Claus had had hard work finding his way
that Christmas.
It seemed to me as I went out of the door, where the big policeman
touched his hat and wished me a Merry Christmas, that the sun never
shone so brightly in May as it did then. I quite expected to see the
crocuses and the jonquils, that make the White House garden so pretty,
out in full bloom. They were not, I suppose, only because they are
official flowers and have a proper respect for the calendar that runs
Congress and the Executive Departments, too.
I stopped on the way down the avenue at Uncle Sam's paymaster's to see
what he thought of it. And there he was, busy as could be, making ready
for the coming of Santa Claus. No need of my asking any questions here.
Men stood in line with bank-notes in their hands asking for gold, new
gold-pieces, they said, most every one. The paymaster, who had a sprig
of Christmas green fixed in his desk just like any other man, laughed
and shook his head and said "Santa Claus?" and the men in the line
laughed too and nodded and went away with their gold.
One man who went out just ahead of me I saw stoop over a poor woman
on the corner and thrust something into her hand, then walk hastily
away. It was I who caught the light in the woman's eye and the blessing
upon her poor wan lips, and the grass seemed greener in the Treasury
dooryard, and the sky bluer than it had been before, even on that
bright day. Perhaps--well, never mind! if any one says anything to you
about principles and giving alms, you tell him that Santa Claus takes
care of the principles at Christmas, and not to be afraid. As for him,
if you want to know, just ask the old woman on the Treasury corner.
And so, walking down that Avenue of Good-will, I came to my train again
and went home. And when I had time to think it all over I remembered
the letters in my pocket which I had not opened. I took them out and
read them, and among them were two sent to me in trust for Santa Claus
himself which I had to lay away with the editor's message until I got
the dew rubbed off my spectacles. One was from a great banker, and
it contained a check for a thousand dollars to help buy a home for
some poor children of the East Side tenements in New York, where the
chimneys are so small and mean that scarce even a letter will go up
through them, so that ever so many little ones over there never get on
Santa Claus's books at all.
The other letter was from a lonely old widow, almost as old as my dear
mother in Denmark, and it contained a two-dollar bill. For years, she
wrote, she had saved and saved, hoping some time to have five dollars,
and then she would go with me to the homes of the very poor and be
Santa Claus herself. "And wherever you decided it was right to leave
a trifle, that should be the place where it would be left," read the
letter. But now she was so old that she could no longer think of such
a trip and so she sent the money she had saved. And I thought of a
family in one of those tenements where father and mother are both lying
ill, with a boy, who ought to be in school, fighting all alone to keep
the wolf from the door, and winning the fight. I guess he has been too
busy to send any message up the chimney, if indeed there is one in his
house; but you ask him, right now, whether he thinks there is a Santa
Claus or not.
No Santa Claus? Yes, my little man, there is a Santa Claus, thank God!
Your father had just forgotten. The world would indeed be poor without
one. It is true that he does not always wear a white beard and drive
a reindeer team--not always, you know--but what does it matter? He
is Santa Claus with the big, loving, Christmas heart, for all that;
Santa Claus with the kind thoughts for every one that make children and
grown-up people beam with happiness all day long. And shall I tell you
a secret which I did not learn at the post-office, but it is true all
the same--of how you can always be sure your letters go to him straight
by the chimney route? It is this: send along with them a friendly
thought for the boy you don't like: for Jack who punched you, or Jim
who was mean to you. The meaner he was the harder do you resolve to
make it up: not to bear him a grudge. That is the stamp for the letter
to Santa. Nobody can stop it, not even a cross-draught in the chimney,
when it has that on.
Because--don't you know, Santa Claus is the spirit of Christmas: and
ever and ever so many years ago when the dear little Baby was born
after whom we call Christmas, and was cradled in a manger out in the
stable because there was not room in the inn, that Spirit came into
the world to soften the hearts of men and make them love one another.
Therefore, that is the mark of the Spirit to this day. Don't let
anybody or anything rub it out. Then the rest doesn't matter. Let them
tear Santa's white beard off at the Sunday-school festival and growl in
his bearskin coat. These are only his disguises. The steps of the real
Santa Claus you can trace all through the world as you have done here
with me, and when you stand in the last of his tracks you will find the
Blessed Babe of Bethlehem smiling a welcome to you. For then you will
be home.
THE CROGANS' CHRISTMAS IN THE SNOWSHED
A storm was brewing in the mountains. The white glare of the earlier
day had been supplanted by a dull gray, and the peaks that shut the
winter landscape in were "smoking," sure harbinger of a blizzard
already raging in the high Sierras. The pines above the Crogans' cabin
stood like spectral sentinels in the failing light, their drooping
branches heavy with the snow of many storms. Mrs. Tom Crogan sat at the
window looking listlessly into the darkening day.
In the spring she had come with her husband from the little Minnesota
town that was their home, full of hope and the joy of life. The
mountains were beautiful then with wild flowers and the sweet smell
of fragrant firs, and as she rocked her baby to sleep in their deep
shadows she sang to him the songs her mother had crooned over her
cradle in her tuneful Swedish tongue. Life then had seemed very fair,
and the snowshed hardly a shadow across it. For to her life there were
two sides: one that looked out upon the mountains and the trees and
the wild things that stirred in God's beautiful world; the other the
blind side that turned toward the darkness man had made in his fight
to conquer that world. Tom Crogan was a dispatcher at a signal station
in the great snowsheds that stretched forty miles or more up the
slopes of the Sierras, plunging the road to the Land of Sunshine into
hour-long gloom just when the jagged "saw-tooth" peaks, that give the
range its name, came into sight. Travelers knew them to their grief:
a huge crawling thing of timber and stout planks--so it seemed as one
caught fleeting glimpses of it in the brief escapes from its murky
embrace--that followed the mountain up, hugging its side close as it
rose farther and farther toward the summit. Hideous always, in winter
buried often out of sight by the smashing avalanches Old Boreas hurled
at the pigmy folk who dared challenge him in his own realm; but within
the shelter of the snowsheds they laughed at his bluster, secure from
harm, for then it served its appointed purpose.
The Crogans' house fronted or backed--whichever way one chose to look
at it--upon the shed. Tom's office, where the telegraph ticker was
always talking of men and things in the desert sands to the east, or
in the orange groves over the Divide, never saw the sunshine it told
of. It burrowed in perpetual gloom. Nine times a day trains full of
travelers, who peered curiously at the signalmen with their lanterns
and at Tom as so many human moles burrowing in the mountain, came and
went, and took the world of men with them, yawning as they departed
at the prospect of more miles of night. At odd intervals long freight
trains lingered, awaiting orders, and lent a more human touch. For the
engineer had time to swap yarns with Tom, and the brakemen looked in to
chuck the baby under the chin and to predict, when their smudge faces
frightened him, that he would grow up to be as fine a railroader as
his father: his yell was as good as a whistle to "down brakes." Even a
wandering hobo once in a while showed his face from behind the truck on
which he was stealing a ride 'cross country, and grimaced at Mrs. Tom,
safe in the belief that she would not give him away. And she didn't.
But now the winter had come with the heavy snows that seemed never to
end. She could not venture out upon the mountain where the pines stood
buried many feet deep. In truth there was no getting out. Her life
side was banked up, as it were, to stay so till spring came again.
As she sat watching the great white waste that sloped upward toward
the lowering sky she counted the months: two, three, four--five,
probably, or six, to wait. For this was Christmas, and the winter was
but fairly under way. Five months! The winters were hard enough on the
plains, but the loneliness of these mountains! What glad visiting and
holiday-making were going on now in her old home among kindred and
friends! There it was truly a season of kindliness and good cheer;
they had brought their old Norse Yule with them across the seas. She
choked back a sob as she stirred the cradle with her foot. For Tom's
sake she would be brave. But no letter nor word had come from the East,
and this their first Christmas away from home!
There was a man's step on the stairs from the office, and Tom Crogan
put his head through the doorway.
"Got a bite for a hungry man?" he asked, blinking a bit at the white
light from without.
The baby woke up and gurgled. Tom waved the towel at him, drying his
face at the sink, and hugged his wife as she passed.
"Storm coming," he said, glancing out at the weather and listening to
the soughing of the wind in the pines.
"Nothing else here," she replied, setting the table; "nothing this long
while, and, oh, Tom!"--she set down the plate and went over to him--"no
word from home, and this is Christmas Eve. Nothing even for the baby."
He patted her back affectionately, and cheered her after the manner of
a man.
"Trains all late, the snow is that deep, more particular in the East,
they say. Mail might not come through for a week. Baby don't know the
difference so long as he is warm. And coal we've got a-plenty."
"Then it will be New Year's," she pursued her own thoughts drearily.
Tom was not a good comforter just then.
He ate like a tired man, in silence. "Special on the line," he said,
as he stirred the sugar in his coffee. "When the road opens up she'll
follow right on the Overland."
"Some o' your rich folks, most like, going for a holiday on the Coast,"
she commented without interest. Tom nodded. She gave the stove lid an
impatient twist.
"Little they know," she said bitterly, "or care either, how we live
up here in the sheds. They'd oughter take their turn at it a while.
There's the Wrights with Jim laid up since he broke his leg at the time
o' the wreck, and can't seem to get no strength. And the Coulsons with
their old mother in this grippin' cold, an' all the sickness they've
had, an' he laid off, though he wasn't to blame, an' you know it, Tom.
If it hadn't been for you what would 'a' come to the Overland runnin'
straight for that wrecked freight with full head o' steam----"
Tom looked up good-humoredly and pushed back his plate.
"Why, Mary! what's come over you? I only done what I was there to
do--and they took notice all right. Don't you remember the Company
wrote and thanked me for bein' spry?"
"Thanked you!" contemptuously. "What good is that? Here we be, an'
like to stay till----You can come up if you want to."
The invitation was extended, ungraciously enough, to a knot of men
clustered about the steps. They trooped in, a gang of snow-shovelers
fresh from their fight with the big drifts, and stood about the stove,
the cold breath of outdoors in their looks and voices. Their talk was
of their work just finished. The road was clear, but for how long? And
they flapped their frozen mittens toward the window through which the
snow could be seen already beginning to fall in large, ominous flakes.
The Special was discussed with eager interest. No one knew who it
was--an unusual thing. Generally words came along the line giving the
news, but there had been no warning of this one.
"Mebbe it's the President inspectin'," ventured one of the crew.
"I tank it bane some o' dem Wall Street fellers on one big bust," threw
in a husky Swede.
In the laugh that followed this sally the ticker was heard faintly
clicking out a message in the office below.
Tom listened. "Overland three hours late," he said, and added with a
glance outside as he made ready to go: "like as not they'll be later'n
that; they won't keep Christmas on the Coast this while."
The snow-shovelers trailed out after Tom with many a fog-horn salute of
Merry Christmas to his wife and to the baby. The words, well meant,
jarred harshly upon Mrs. Crogan.
Merry Christmas! It sounded in her ear almost like a taunt. When they
were gone she stood at the window, struggling with a sense of such
bitter desolation as she had never known till then. The snow fell
thick now, and was whirled across the hillside in fitful gusts. In
the gathering darkness trees and rocks were losing shape and color;
nothing was left but the white cold, the thought of which chilled her
to the marrow. Through the blast the howl of a lone wolf came over the
ridge, and she remembered the story of Donner Lake, just beyond, and
the party of immigrants who starved to death in the forties, shut in by
such a winter as this. There were ugly tales on the mountain of things
done there, which men told under their breath when the great storms
thundered through the cañons and all were safe within. She had heard
the crew of the rotary say that there was as much as ten feet of snow
on some of the levels already, and the winter only well begun. Without
knowing it she fell to counting the months to spring again: two, three,
four, five! With a convulsive shudder she caught up the child and fled
to the darkest corner of the room. Crouching there by the fire her
grief and bitterness found vent in a flood of rebellious tears.
Down in his dark coop Tom Crogan, listening to a distant roar and the
quickening rhythm of the rails, knew that the Overland was coming.
Presently it shot out from behind the shoulder of the mountain.
Ordinarily it passed swiftly enough, but to-day it slowed up and came
to a stop at the station. The conductor hurried into the office and
held an anxious consultation with Tom, who shook his head decisively.
If the storm kept up there would be no getting out that night. The
cut over at the lake that had just been cleared was filling up again
sure with the wind blowing from the north. There was nothing to do but
wait, anyhow until they knew for certain. The conductor agreed with bad
grace, and the rotary was started up the road to reconnoiter. The train
discharged its weary and worried passengers, who walked up and down the
dark cavern to stretch their legs, glancing indifferently at the little
office where the telegraph kept up its intermittent chatter.
Suddenly it clicked out a loud warning: "Special on way. Clear the
track."
Tom rapped on his window and gave quick orders. The men hurried to
carry them out.
"Not far she'll go," they grinned as they set the switch and made all
safe. At the turn half a mile below the red eye of the locomotive
gleamed already in the dusk. In a few minutes it pulled in with a
shriek of its whistle that woke the echoes of the hills far and near,
and stood panting in a cloud of steam. Trackmen and signalmen craned
their necks to see the mysterious stranger. Even Mrs. Tom had dried
her tears and came out to look at the despised bigbugs from the East,
rebellion yet in her homesick heart.
The news that the "Big Boss" might be on board had spread to the
passenger train, and crowds flocked from the sleepers, curious to get
a glimpse of the railroad magnate who had made such a stir in the
land. His power was so great that common talk credited him with being
stronger than Congress and the courts combined. The newspapers recorded
all his doings as it did the President's, but with this difference,
that while everybody knew all about the Man in the White House, few if
any seemed to know anything real about the railroad man's private life.
In the popular estimation he was a veritable Sphinx. At his country
home in the East he had bought up the land for five miles around--even
the highways--to keep intruders out. Here now was an unexpected chance,
and the travelers crowded up to get a look at him.
But they saw no luxurious private car with frock-coated officials and
liveried servants. An every-day engine with three express cars in
tow stood upon the track, and baggagemen in blue overalls yelled for
hand-trucks, and hustled out boxes and crates consigned to "The agent
at Shawnee." Yet it was not an every-day train nor an ordinary crew;
for all of them, conductor, brakemen, engineer and fireman, wore holly
in their caps and broad grins on their faces. The locomotive flew two
white flags with the words "Merry Christmas" in red letters, and across
the cars a strip of canvas was strung their whole length, with the
legend "The Christmas Train" in capitals a foot long. Even in the gloom
of the snowshed it shone out, plain to read.
Tom in his office rubbed his eyes for another and better look when the
conductor of the Special, pushing his way through the wondering crowds,
flung open the door.
"Here's yer docyments," he said, slapping down a paper, "and the orders
are that ye're to see they gets 'em."
Tom Crogan took up the paper as if dazed, and looked at the entries
without in the least understanding what it all meant. He did not see
the jam of railroad men and passengers who had crowded into the office
on the heels of the conductor until they filled it to the doors.
Neither did he notice that his wife had come with them and was standing
beside him looking as mystified as he. Mechanically he read out the
items in the way-bill, while the conductor checked them off with many
a wink at the crowd. What nightmare was this? Had some delirious Santa
Claus invaded the office of the Union Pacific Railroad, and turned
it into a toy shop and dry-goods bazar combined, with a shake of his
reindeer bells? Or was it a huge, wretched, misbegotten joke? Surely
stranger bill of lading never went over the line, or over any railroad
line before. This was what he read:
"Crate of fat turkeys, one for every family on the station (their
names followed).
"One ditto of red apples.
"One ditto of oranges, to be similarly apportioned.
"For Tom Crogan, one meerschaum pipe.
"For James Wright, lately injured in the service and not yet
recovered, a box of books, and allowance of full pay during
disability. Ordered to report at Sacramento until fully restored.
"For John Coulson, Christmas gifts, including a warm flannel
wrapper for his old mother; also notice of back pay allowed since
suspension, with full restoration to place and pay.
"For Mrs. Thomas Crogan, not on the official payroll, but whom the
Company takes this opportunity to thank for assistance rendered her
husband on a recent occasion, one dress pattern, with the wishes of
the Superintendent's office for a very Merry Christmas.
"For Master Thomas Crogan, not yet on the official payroll, being
under age, a box of toys, including rubber ball and sheep, doll and
Noah's ark, with the compliments of the Company for having chosen
so able a railroad man for his father.
"For Master Thomas Crogan, as a token of regard from passengers on
the Overland of November 18, one rocking-horse, crated."
"Oh, Tom!"--Mrs. Crogan caught her breath with a gasp--"and he not a
year old!"
Tom looked up to find the room full of people laughing at him and at
her, but there was hearty, happy good-will in the laugh, and Mrs. Tom
was laughing back.
The conductor got up to go, but checked himself abruptly. "If I didn't
come near to forget," he said and reached for his pocket. "Here, Tom,
this is for you from the Superintendent. If it ain't a secret read it
aloud."
The message was brief:
_Thomas Crogan, Esq._,
Agent and Dispatcher at Shawnee Station:
The compliments of the season and of the Superintendent's office
to you. Have a Merry Christmas, Tom, up in your shed, for we want
you down on the Coast after New Year's.
FRANK ALDEN,
Superintendent.
Tom looked up with a smile. He had got his bearings at last. There was
no doubt about that signature. His eyes met his wife's, brimming with
sudden joy. The dream of her life was made real.
The railroad men raised a cheer in which there was a note of regret,
for Tom was a prime favorite with them all, and crowded up to shake
hands. The passengers followed suit, ready to join in, yet mystified
still. But now, when they heard from the conductor of the Special how
Tom by quick action had saved the Overland, the very train they were
on, from running into a wrecked freight two months before, many of them
remembered the story of it--how Tom, being left alone when everybody
else lost his head in the smashup, had sprinted down the track with
torpedoes, while his wife set the switch and waved the signal lantern,
and had just caught the Limited around the curve, and how narrow had
been the escape from a great disaster. And their quick sympathy went
out to the young couple up in the lonely heights, who a few moments
before had been less to them than the inert thing of iron and steel
that was panting on the track outside like a huge monster after a hard
run.
When it was learned that both trains were stalled, perhaps for all
night, the recollection that it was Christmas Eve gave sudden direction
to their sympathies. Since friends on the Coast must wait they would
have their Christmas where they were, if it were in a snowshed. In
less time than any one could have made a formal motion the trainful of
excited passengers, just now so disgruntled, resolved itself into a
committee of arrangements to which were added both the train crews.
A young balsam from the mountainside made its appearance, no one knew
exactly how, and in a trice it shone with a wealth of candles and toys
at which the baby, struggling up to a sitting posture in his cradle,
looked with wide-eyed wonder. The Crogans' modest living-room was
made festive with holly and evergreen and transformed into a joyous
dining-room before Mrs. Tom could edge in a word of protest. All the
memories of her cherished Yule surged in upon her as the room filled
with the smell of roast turkey and mince pie and what not of good
cheer, borne in by a procession of white-clad waiters who formed a
living chain between the dining-car and the station. When in the wake
of them the veritable rocking-horse, hastily unpacked, was led in by a
hysterical darky, and pranced and pawed its way across the floor, its
reins jingling with silver bells, Thomas Crogan, Junior, considered it,
sitting bolt upright, one long minute, sighed and, overwhelmed by such
magnificence, went calmly to sleep. It was too much for one Christmas
Eve, and he not a year old.
When as many as could crowd in were seated with Tom Crogan and his
wife--the conductors and engineers of the two trains representing the
road--the clergyman in the party arose to remind them all that they
were far from home and friends, keeping Christmas in the mountain
wilderness.
"But," he said, "though a continent separates us we meet with them all
here to-night before the face of Him who came as a helpless Babe to the
world of sin and selfishness, and brought peace and good-will to men."
And he read to them how "It came to pass in those days, that there went
out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,"
and the story of the Child that is old, yet will be ever new while the
world stands.
In the reverent hush that had fallen upon the company a tenor voice
rose clear and sweet in the old hymn:
"It came upon the midnight clear
That glorious song of old."
When the lines were reached:
"Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurl'd,"
many of the passengers joined in and sang the verse to the end. The
familiar words seemed to come with a comforting message to every one in
the little cabin.
In the excitement they had all forgotten the weather. Unseen by every
one the moon had come out and shone clear in an almost cloudless sky.
The storm was over. A joyful toot of the rotary's whistle, as dinner
neared its end, announced its return with the welcome news that the
road was open once more.
With many hearty handshakes, and wishes for happy years to come,
the unexpected Christmas party broke up. But there was yet a small
ceremony left. It was performed by a committee of three of the Overland
passengers who had friends or kin on board the train Tom Crogan had
saved. They had quietly circulated among the rest, and now, with the
conductor shouting "All aboard!" they put an envelope into Tom's hand,
with the brief directions "for moving expenses," and jumped on their
car as the engine blew its last warning whistle and the airbrakes
wheezed their farewell.
Tom opened it and saw five crisp twenty-dollar bills tucked neatly
inside.
The Limited pulled out on the stroke of midnight, with cheering
passengers on every step and in every window. Tom and his wife stood
upon the step of the little station and waved their handkerchiefs as
long as the bull's-eye on the last car was in sight. When it was gone
and they were left with the snowshed and the Special breathing sleepily
on its siding she laid her head on his shoulder. A rush of repentant
tears welled up and mingled with the happiness in her voice.
"Oh, Tom!" she said. "Did ye ever know the like of it? I am fair sorry
to leave the old shed."
THE OLD TOWN
I do not know how the forty years I have been away have dealt with
"Jule-nissen," the Christmas elf of my childhood. He was pretty old
then, gray and bent, and there were signs that his time was nearly
over. So it may be that they have laid him away. I shall find out when
I go over there next time. When I was a boy we never sat down to our
Christmas Eve dinner until a bowl of rice and milk had been taken up to
the attic, where he lived with the marten and its young, and kept an
eye upon the house--saw that everything ran smoothly. I never met him
myself, but I know the house-cat must have done so. No doubt they were
well acquainted; for when in the morning I went in for the bowl, there
it was, quite dry and licked clean, and the cat purring in the corner.
So, being there all night, he must have seen and likely talked with him.
I suspect, as I said, that they have not treated my Nisse fairly in
these matter-of-fact days that have come upon us, not altogether for
our own good, I fear. I am not even certain that they were quite
serious about him then, though to my mind that was very unreasonable.
But then there is nothing so unreasonable to a child as the cold
reason of the grown-ups. However, if they have gone back on him, I know
where to find him yet. Only last Christmas when I talked of him to the
tenement-house mothers in my Henry Street Neighborhood House,[1]--all
of them from the ever faithful isle,--I saw their eyes light up with
the glad smile of recognition, and half a dozen called out excitedly,
"The Little People! the Leprecawn ye mean, we know him well," and they
were not more pleased than I to find that we had an old friend in
common. For the Nisse, or the Leprecawn, call him whichever you like,
was a friend indeed to those who loved kindness and peace. If there
was a house in which contention ruled, either he would have nothing
to do with it, like the stork that built its nest on the roof, or
else he paid the tenants back in their own coin, playing all kinds of
tricks upon them and making it very uncomfortable. I suppose it was
this trait that gave people, when they began to reason so much about
things, the notion that he was really the wraith, as it were, of their
own disposition, which was not so at all. I remember the story told of
one man who quarrelled with everybody, and in consequence had a very
troublesome Nisse in the house that provoked him to the point of moving
away; which he did. But as the load of furniture was going down the
street, with its owner hugging himself in glee at the thought that
he had stolen a march on the Nisse, the little fellow poked his head
out of the load and nodded to him, "We are moving to-day." At which
naturally he flew into a great rage. But then, that was just a story.
[1] The Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement, New York.
The Nisse was of the family, as you see, very much of it, and certainly
not to be classed with the cattle. Yet they were his special concern;
he kept them quiet, and saw to it, when the stableman forgot, that they
were properly bedded and cleaned and fed. He was very well known to the
hands about the farm, and they said that he looked just like a little
old man, all in gray and with a pointed red nightcap and long gray
beard. He was always civilly treated, as he surely deserved to be, but
Christmas was his great holiday, when he became part of it, indeed, and
was made much of. So, for that matter, was everything that lived under
the husbandman's roof, or within reach of it. The farmer always set a
lighted candle in his window on Christmas Eve, to guide the lonesome
wanderer to a hospitable hearth. The very sparrows that burrowed in the
straw thatch, and did it no good, were not forgotten. A sheaf of rye
was set out in the snow for them, so that on that night at least they
should have shelter and warmth unchallenged, and plenty to eat. At all
other times we were permitted to raid their nests and help ourselves
to a sparrow roast, which was by long odds the greatest treat we had.
Thirty or forty of them, dug out of any old thatch roof by the light of
the stable lantern and stuffed into Ane's long stocking, which we had
borrowed for a game-bag, made a meal for the whole family, each sparrow
a fat mouthful. Ane was the cook, and I am very certain that her
pot-roast of sparrow would pass muster at any Fifth Avenue restaurant
as the finest dish of reed-birds that ever was. However, at Christmas
their sheaf was their sanctuary, and no one as much as squinted at
them. Only last winter when Christmas found me stranded in a little
Michigan town, wandering disconsolate about the streets, I came across
such a sheaf raised on a pole in a dooryard, and I knew at once that
one of my people lived in that house and kept Yule in the old way. So I
felt as if I were not quite a stranger.
All the animals knew perfectly well that the holiday had come, and kept
it in their way. The watch-dog was unchained. In the midnight hour
on the Holy Eve the cattle stood up in their stalls and bowed out of
respect and reverence for Him who was laid in a manger when there was
no room in the inn, and in that hour speech was given them, and they
talked together. Claus, our neighbor's man, had seen and heard it, and
every Christmas Eve I meant fully to go and be there when it happened;
but always long before that I had been led away to bed, a very sleepy
boy, with all my toys hugged tight, and when I woke up the daylight
shone through the frosted window-panes, and they were blowing good
morning from the church tower; it would be a whole year before another
Christmas. So I vowed, with a sigh at having neglected a really sacred
observance, that I would be there sure on the next Christmas Eve. But
it was always so, every year, and perhaps it was just as well, for
Claus said that it might go ill with the one who listened, if the cows
found him out.
Blowing in the Yule from the grim old tower that had stood eight
hundred years against the blasts of the North Sea was one of the
customs of the Old Town that abide, however it fares with the Nisse;
that I know. At sun-up, while yet the people were at breakfast, the
town band climbed the many steep ladders to the top of the tower, and
up there, in fair weather or foul,--and sometimes it blew great guns
from the wintry sea,--they played four old hymns, one to each corner
of the compass, so that no one was forgotten. They always began with
Luther's sturdy challenge, "A Mighty Fortress is our God," while
down below we listened devoutly. There was something both weird and
beautiful about those far-away strains in the early morning light of
the northern winter, something that was not of earth and that suggested
to my child's imagination the angels' song on far Judean hills. Even
now, after all these years, the memory of it does that. It could not
have been because the music was so rare, for the band was made up of
small storekeepers and artisans who thus turned an honest penny on
festive occasions. Incongruously enough, I think, the official town
mourner who bade people to funerals was one of them. It was like the
burghers' guard, the colonel of which--we thought him at least a
general, because of the huge brass sword he trailed when he marched at
the head of his men--was the town tailor, a very small but very martial
man. But whether or no, it was beautiful. I have never heard music
since that so moved me. When the last strain died away came the big
bells with their deep voices that sang far out over field and heath,
and our Yule was fairly under way.