Will the hand-organ man please call? Our wife has dug up our old
overcoat and insists on giving it to him. We intended to give it to the
Honolulu Girls around at the Walnut Theatre, they looked a bit
goose-fleshed last week, but we always have hay fever when we get near
those grass skirts. Grass widows is what the profession calls the
Hawaiian ladies. Hope the temperature isn't going up again. We love the
old-fashioned Christmas and all that sort of thing. Nipping air makes
cheeks pink; we love to see them nestled in fur coats on Chestnut
Street. This is the time of year to do unexpected kindnesses. We know
one man who stands in line for hours in front of movie theatres just in
order to shout _Merry Christmas_ through the little hole in the glass.
Shaving seems less of a bore. Newspapers are supposed to be heartless,
but they all take a hand in trying to help poor children. Find ourselves
humming hymn tunes. Very odd, haven't been to a church for years. Great
fun surprising people. We've been reading the new phone book; noticed
several ways in which people might surprise each other by calling up and
wishing many happy returns of the day. Why doesn't Beulah R. Wine ring
up Mrs. Louis F. Beer, for instance? Or, A. D. Smoker and Burton J.
Puffer might go around to W. C. Matchett, tobacconist, at 1635 South
Second Street, and buy their Christmas cigars. George Wharton Pepper
might give Mayme Salt a ring (on the phone, that is). What a pleasant
voice that telephone operatrix has. Here's to you, child, and many of
them. Grand time, Christmas.
* * * * *
Fine old Anglo-Saxon festival, Christmas. A time of jovial cheer and
bracing mirth. Must be so, because Doctor Frank Crane and Ralph Waldo
Trine have often said so. Christmas hard on people like that, however:
they are bursting with the Christmas spirit all the year round; very
trying when the real occasion comes. That's the beauty of having a
peevish and surly disposition: when one softens up at Christmas
everybody notices it and is pleased. Chaucer, fine old English poet,
first English humorist, gave good picture of Christmas cheer more than
five hundred years ago. Never quoted on Christmas cards, why not copy it
here? Chaucer's spelling very like Ring Lardner's, but good sort just
the same. Says he:
And this was, as thise bookes me remembre,
The colde, frosty sesoun of Decembre....
The bittre frostes with the sleet and reyn
Destroyed hath the grene in every yard;
Janus sit by the fyre with double beard,
And drynketh of his bugle horn the wyn;
Biforn hym stant brawn of the tusked swyn,
And "_Nowel_" crieth every lusty man.
Janus, god of doors, what we call nowadays a janitor. Had two faces so
he could watch the front and back door at once and get a double tip at
Christmas time. Also, that was why he wore a beard; too much trouble to
shave. We don't cry _Nowel_ any more; instead we petition the janitor to
send up a little more steam. But what a jolly picture Chaucer gives of
Christmas! Wine to drink (fine ruddy wine, as red as the holly berries),
crackling flitch of pig to eat, and a merry cry of welcome sounding at
the threshold as your friends come stamping in through the snow.
Grand time, Christmas! No one is really a Philadelphian until he has
waited for a Pine Street car on a snowy night. Please have my seat,
madam, there's plenty of room on the strap. Wonder why the pavement on
Chestnut Street is the slipperiest in the world? Always fall down just
in front of our bank; most embarrassing; hope the paying teller doesn't
see us. Very annoying to lose our balance just there. Awfully nice
little girl in there who balances the books. Has a kind heart. The
countless gold of a merry heart, as William Blake said. She looks
awfully downcast when our balance gets the way it is now. Hate to
disappoint her. Won't have our book balanced again for a devil of a
while. Even the most surly is full of smiles nowadays. Most of us when
we fall on the pavement (did you ever try it on Chestnut between Sixth
and Seventh on a slippery day?) curse the granolithic trust and wamble
there groaning. But not nowadays. Make the best of things. Fine panorama
of spats.
* * * * *
Association of ideas. Everybody wears silk stockings at Christmas time.
Excessive geniality of the ad-writers. Uproarious good cheer. Makes one
almost ashamed to notice the high price of everything. Radicals being
deported. Why not deport Santa Claus, too? Very radical notion that,
love your neighbour better than yourself. Easy to do; very few of us
such dam fools as to love ourselves, but so often when you love your
neighbour she doesn't return it. Nice little boxes they have at the
ten-cent stores, all covered with poinsettia flowers, to put presents
in. Wonder when poinsettia began to be used as a Christmas decoration
and why? Everyone in ten-cent store calls them "poinsettias," but named
after J. R. Poinsett. Encyclopedia very handy at times; makes a good
Christmas present, one dollar down and a dollar a month for life. Nobody
can tell the difference between real pearls and imitation; somebody
ought to put the oysters wise. Save them a lot of trouble and anxiety.
Don't know just what duvetyne is, but there seems to be a lot of it
drunk nowadays. Hope that clockwork train for the Urchin will arrive
soon; we were hoping to have three happy evenings playing with it before
he sees it. Fine to have children; lots of fun playing with their
presents. We are sure that life after death is really so, because
children always kick the blankets off at night. Fine bit of symbolism
that; put it in a sermon, unless Doctor Conwell gets there first.
Grand time, Christmas! We vowed to try to take down our weight this
winter, and then they put sugar back on the menu, and doughnut shops
spring up on every street, and Charles F. Jenkins sent us a big sack of
Pocono buckwheat flour and we're eating a basketful of griddle cakes
every morning for breakfast. Terrible to be a coward; we always turn on
the hot water first in the shower bath, except the first morning we used
it. The plumber got the indicator on the wrong way round, and when you
turn to the place marked HOT it comes down like ice. Our idea of a
really happy man is the fellow driving a wagonload of truck just in
front of a trolley car, holding it back all the way downtown; when he
hears the motorman clanging away he pretends he thinks it's the
Christmas chimes and sings "Hark the Herald Angels."
Speaking of Herald Angels reminds us of a good story about James Gordon
Bennett; we'll spring it one of these days when we're hard up for copy.
Jack Frost must be a married man, did you see him try to cover up the
show windows with his little traceries the other day when the shopping
was at its height? There was a pert little hat in a window on Walnut
Street we were very much afraid someone might see; the frost saved us.
Don't forget to put Red Cross seals on your letters. Delightful to watch
the faces on the streets at Christmas time. Everybody trying hard to be
pleasant; sometimes rather a strain. Curious things faces--some of them
seem almost human; queer to think that each belongs to someone and no
chance to get rid of it; sorry we're not in the mirror industry; never
thought of it before, but it ought to be profitable. Happier most of us,
if mirrors never had been invented. Hope all our nice-natured clients
will have the best kind of a time; forgive us for not answering letters;
we are too disillusioned about ourself to make any resolutions to do
better. We're going home now; on the way we'll think of a lot of nice
things we might have said, write them down and use them to-morrow. Hope
Dorothy Gish will get something nice in her stocking. Don't make the
obvious retort. Grand time, Christmas!