saloons elbow one another at every step, crowding out all other
business than that of keeping lodgers to support them. Within call of
it, across the square, stands a church which, in the memory of men
yet living, was built to shelter the fashionable Baptist audiences
of a day when Madison Square was out in the fields, and Harlem had a
foreign sound. The fashionable audiences are gone long since. To-day
the church, fallen into premature decay, but still handsome in its
strong and noble lines, stands as a missionary outpost in the land of
the enemy, its builders would have said, doing a greater work than they
planned. To-night is the Christmas festival of its English-speaking
Sunday-school, and the pews are filled. The banners of United Italy,
of modern Hellas, of France and Germany and England, hang side by side
with the Chinese dragon and the starry flag-signs of the cosmopolitan
character of the congregation. Greek and Roman Catholics, Jews and
joss-worshippers, go there; few Protestants, and no Baptists. It is
easy to pick out the children in their seats by nationality, and as
easy to read the story of poverty and suffering that stands written in
more than one mother's haggard face, now beaming with pleasure at the
little ones' glee. A gayly decorated Christmas tree has taken the place
of the pulpit. At its foot is stacked a mountain of bundles, Santa
Claus's gifts to the school. A self-conscious young man with soap-locks
had just been allowed to retire, amid tumultuous applause, after
blowing "Nearer, my God, to Thee" on his horn until his cheeks swelled
almost to bursting. A trumpet ever takes the Fourth Ward by storm.
A class of little girls is climbing upon the platform. Each wears a
capital letter on her breast, and together they spell its lesson.
There is momentary consternation: one is missing. As the discovery is
made, a child pushes past the doorkeeper, hot and breathless. "I am
in 'Boundless Love,'" she says, and makes for the platform, where her
arrival restores confidence and the language.
In the audience the befrocked visitor from up-town sits cheek by jowl
with the pigtailed Chinaman and the dark-browed Italian. Up in the
gallery, farthest from the preacher's desk and the tree, sits a Jewish
mother with three boys, almost in rags. A dingy and threadbare shawl
partly hides her poor calico wrap and patched apron. The woman shrinks
in the pew, fearful of being seen; her boys stand upon the benches,
and applaud with the rest. She endeavors vainly to restrain them.
"Tick, tick!" goes the old clock over the door through which wealth and
fashion went out long years ago, and poverty came in....
Within hail of the Sullivan Street school camps a scattered little
band, the Christmas customs of which I had been trying for years to
surprise. They are Indians, a handful of Mohawks and Iroquois, whom
some ill wind has blown down from their Canadian reservation, and
left in these West Side tenements to eke out such a living as they
can, weaving mats and baskets, and threading glass pearls on slippers
and pin-cushions, until one after another they have died off and gone
to happier hunting-grounds than Thompson Street. There were as many
families as one could count on the fingers of both hands when I first
came upon them, at the death of old Tamenund, the basket maker. Last
Christmas there were seven. I had about made up my mind that the only
real Americans in New York did not keep the holiday at all, when one
Christmas eve they showed me how. Just as dark was setting in, old Mrs.
Benoit came from her Hudson Street attic--where she was known among the
neighbors, as old and poor as she, as Mrs. Ben Wah, and was believed
to be the relict of a warrior of the name of Benjamin Wah--to the
office of the Charity Organization Society, with a bundle for a friend
who had helped her over a rough spot--the rent, I suppose. The bundle
was done up elaborately in blue cheese-cloth, and contained a lot of
little garments which she had made out of the remnants of blankets and
cloth of her own from a younger and better day. "For those," she said,
in her French patois, "who are poorer than myself;" and hobbled away.
I found out, a few days later, when I took her picture weaving mats in
the attic room, that she had scarcely food in the house that Christmas
day and not the car fare to take her to church! Walking was bad, and
her old limbs were stiff. She sat by the window through the winter
evening and watched the sun go down behind the western hills, comforted
by her pipe. Mrs. Ben Wah, to give her her local name, is not really an
Indian; but her husband was one, and she lived all her life with the
tribe till she came here. She is a philosopher in her own quaint way.
"It is no disgrace to be poor," said she to me, regarding her empty
tobacco-pouch; "but it is sometimes a great inconvenience." Not even
the recollection of the vote of censure that was passed upon me once by
the ladies of the Charitable Ten for surreptitiously supplying an aged
couple, the special object of their charity, with army plug, could have
deterred me from taking the hint....
In a hundred places all over the city, when Christmas comes, as
many open-air fairs spring suddenly into life. A kind of Gentile
Feast of Tabernacles possesses the tenement districts especially.
Green-embowered booths stand in rows at the curb, and the voice of the
tin trumpet is heard in the land. The common source of all the show is
down by the North River, in the district known as "the Farm." Down
there Santa Claus establishes headquarters early in December and until
past New Year. The broad quay looks then more like a clearing in a pine
forest than a busy section of the metropolis. The steamers discharge
their loads of fir trees at the piers until they stand stacked mountain
high, with foot-hills of holly and ground-ivy trailing off toward the
land side. An army train of wagons is engaged in carting them away
from early morning till late at night; but the green forest grows, in
spite of it all, until in places it shuts the shipping out of sight
altogether. The air is redolent with the smell of balsam and pine.
After nightfall, when the lights are burning in the busy market, and
the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy burdens of Christmas
greens jostle one another with good-natured banter,--nobody is ever
cross down here in the holiday season,--it is good to take a stroll
through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet to the
hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. But it is when the
moonlight is upon the water and upon the dark phantom forest, when the
heavy breathing of some passing steamer is the only sound that breaks
the stillness of the night, and the watchman smokes his only pipe on
the bulwark, that the Farm has a mood and an atmosphere all its own,
full of poetry which some day a painter's brush will catch and hold....
Farthest down town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and
warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the sombre-hued colony of
Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it that
in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York the
corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it? Even
the floral cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox church
is long withered and dead; it has been there since Easter, and it is
yet twelve days to Christmas by the belated reckoning of the Greek
Church. But if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within there is
nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting. There are enough
of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest follow the custom of
the country. The men go from house to house, laugh, shake hands, and
kiss one another on both cheeks, with the salutation, "Kol am va antom
Salimoon." "Every year and you are safe," the Syrian guide renders it
into English; and a non-professional interpreter amends it: "May you
grow happier year by year." Arrack made from grapes and flavored with
aniseseed, and candy baked in little white balls like marbles, are
served with the indispensable cigarette; for long callers, the pipe....
The bells in old Trinity chime the midnight hour. From dark hallways
men and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the loft
of the dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of brass.
The priest, in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on the back,
chants the ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in the aisles,
shrouding their heads in their shawls; a surpliced acolyte swings his
censer; the heavy perfume of burning incense fills the hall.
The band at the anarchists' ball is tuning up for the last dance. Young
and old float to the happy strains, forgetting injustice, oppression,
hatred. Children slide upon the waxed floor, weaving fearlessly in and
out between couples--between fierce, bearded men and short-haired women
with crimson-bordered kerchiefs. A Punch-and-Judy show in the corner
evokes shouts of laughter.
Outside the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and
corner, softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the spotless
mantle of charity over the blemishes, the shortcomings. Christmas
morning will dawn pure and white.
JACOB RIIS in _Children of the Tenements_ (abridged)
Christmas at Sea
The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea,
And the cliffs and spouting breakers were the only thing a-lee.
We heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day,
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck, instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.
We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coast-guard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.
The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out,
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.
The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer,
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coast-guard's was the house where I was born.
O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.
And well I know the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O a wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas day!
They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose top-gallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate, Jackson, cried.
"It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.
She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland and passed below the light.
And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
_By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons_
The First Christmas Tree in the Legation Compound at Tokyo, Japan
A huge Christmas tree, the first that had ever grown in our compound,
for the children of our servants and writers and employés, who make
up the number of our Legation population to close on two hundred,
beginning with H----, and ending with the last jinriksha coolie's
youngest baby. I could not have the tree on Christmas Day, owing to
various engagements; so it was fixed for January 3d, 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 goodwill, 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. I am
still too ignorant of their special tastes to trust my own judgment
in the matter of presents; so Mr. G---- left the dictionary and the
Chancery for two or three afternoons, and helped me to collect an
appropriate harvest for the little hands to glean. Some of them were
not little, and these were more difficult to buy 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 workboxes 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 was a curiosity.
Imagine such complicated titles as these: "Minister's second cook's
girl. Umé, age 2; Minister's servant's cousin's boy. Age 11"; "Student
interpreter's teacher's girl"; "Vice-Consul's jinriksha-man's boy."
And so it went on, till there were fifty-eight of them of all ages,
from one year 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 workbox, 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 one 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. She turned out to be the Vice-Consul's
jinriksha-man's grandmother; the wife of that functionary was dead, and
the old lady had to take her place in carrying about the poor little V.
C. J. R. S. M.'s boy baby.
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
neighbours--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 of
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 a 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 had for my helpers two somewhat antagonistic
volunteers--Sir Edwin Arnold, basking in Buddhistic calms, and Bishop
Bickersteth, intensely Anglican, severe-looking, ascetic. There had
already been some polite theological encounters at our table, and I
did not feel sure that the combination would prove a happy one. But
each man is a wonder of kind-heartedness in his own way; and my doubts
were replaced by sunshiny certainties, when I saw how they both began
by beaming at the children, and ended by beaming on one another. I
was puzzled by one thing about the children: although we kept giving
them sweets and oranges off the tree, every time I looked round 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 conjurer's 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, "Honourable 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 honourable 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.
MARY CRAWFORD FRASER
Christmas in India
Dim dawn behind the tamarisks--the sky is saffron-yellow--
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers over earth!
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry--
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?
Full day behind the tamarisks--the sky is blue and staring--
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly--
Call on Rama--he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our Psalters we appeal to other altars
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"
High noon behind the tamarisks--the sun is hot above us--
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner--those who tell us how they love
us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that needs no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap--wherefore we sold it. Gold was good--we hoped to hold
it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.
Gray dusk behind the tamarisks--the parrots fly together--
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether
That drags us back howe'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment--she in ancient, tattered raiment--
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If the year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is shut--we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks--the owls begin their chorus--
As the conches from the temples cream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors--let us feast with friends and
neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
RUDYARD KIPLING
_By permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen & Co._
A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession