Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa Claus' Reading List

by A. A. Milne

  * * *

  The bleak December sun rose next morning upon ruin and catastrophe. As well as I can collect my scattered reminiscences of that dismal time, my offences against decorum were once more condoned: not in consequence of my complaint (in which my relatives and friends persisted in disbelieving), but on the ground that it was “only once a year.” Lawyers came backwards and forwards to Snargatestone Villa during the forenoon. There was a great production of tin boxes, red tape, blue seals, foolscap paper, and parchment; and my uncle Bonsor was more responsible than ever. They brought me a paper to sign at last, whispering much among themselves as they did so; and I protest that I could see nothing but a large pool of white, jogging about in a field of green tablecloth, while on the paper an infinity of crabbed characters seemed racing up and down in a crazed and furious manner. I endeavoured to nerve myself to the task of signing, I bit my lips, I clenched my left hand, I tried to screw my wagging head on to my neck, I cramped my toes up in my boots, I held my breath; but was it my fault, when I clutched the pen and tried to write my name, that the abominable goosequill began to dance, and skate, and leap, and plunge, and dig its nibs into the paper; that when, in despair, I seized the inkstand, to hold it nearer to the pen, I shook its sable contents, in horrid, horned, tasseled blots, all over a grave legal document? I finished my achievement by inflicting a large splash on my uncle’s sacred waistcoat, and hitting Captain Standfast under the third rib with the pen.

  * * *

  “That will do,” my papa-in-law cried, collaring me. “Leave the house, scoundrel!”

  * * *

  But I broke from his grasp, and fled to the drawing-room, knowing that my Tilly would be there with her bridesmaids and her bonnets.

  * * *

  “Tilly — my adored Matilda!” I cried.

  * * *

  “No further explanation is needed, sir,” broke in my beloved, in an inexorable tone. “I have seen and heard quite enough. Alfred Starling, I would sooner wed the meanest hind that gathers samphire on yon cliff than become the bride of a profligate and drunkard. Go, sir; repent if you can; be ashamed if you can. Henceforth we are strangers. Slave of self-indulgence, adieu for ever!” And she swept out of the room, and I could hear her sobbing her pretty heart out in the boudoir beyond.

  * * *

  I was discarded and expelled for ever from Snargatestone Villa; my uncle Bonsor repudiated me, and disinherited me from any share in his waistcoat; I hurled myself into the next train at the station, and shook all the way back to town. At about dusk on that dreadful Boxing day, I found myself wandering and jolting about the purlieus of Soho.

  * * *

  From Soho square — the south-west side, I think — branches a shabby, dingy little court, called Bateman’s buildings. I was standing shivering at the corner of this ill-favoured place, when I stumbled against a gentleman, who looked about seven-eighths soldier and one-eighth civilian.

  * * *

  He was a little, dapper, clean-limbed, young-looking old man, with a yellow face, and grey hair and whiskers. Soldiers, save in the cavalry, didn’t wear moustaches then. He wore a blue uniform coat, rather white at the seams, and a silver medal with a faded ribbon on his breast. He had a bunch of parti-coloured streamers in his undress cap; he carried a bamboo cane under his arm; on each sleeve he wore golden stripes, much tarnished; on his scarlet collar was embroidered a golden lion; and on his shoulders he had a pair of little, light, golden epaulettes, that very much resembled two sets of teeth from a dentist’s glass-case, covered with bullion.

  * * *

  “And how are you, my hearty?” said the military gentleman, cheerily.

  * * *

  I answered that I was the most miserable wretch in the world; upon which the military gentleman, slapping me on the back and calling me his gallant comrade, asked me to have a pint of beer, warmed with a little spice, and a dash, of Old Tom in it, for the sake of Christmas.

  * * *

  “You’re a roving buck,” observed my new friend. “I’m a roving buck. You never happened to have a twin brother named Siph, did you?”

  * * *

  “No,” I answered, moodily.

  * * *

  “He was as like you as two peas,” continued the military gentleman, who had by this time taken my arm, and was leading me all shaking and clattering towards a mouldy little tavern, on whose door-jambs were displayed a couple of coloured cartoons, framed and glazed and much fly-blown, and displaying, the one, the presentment of an officer in sky-blue uniform much belaced with silver, and the other a bombadier with an enormous shako ramming the charge into a cannon: the whole surmounted by a placard setting forth that smart young men were required for the Honourable East India Company’s infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and earnestly exhorting all smart young men, as aforesaid, to apply forthwith to Sergeant–Major Chutnee, who was always to be heard of at the bar of the “Highland Laddie,” or at the office in Bateman’s buildings.

  * * *

  “The last time I saw him,” went on the man with the yellow face and the grey whiskers, when he had tilted me into the “Highland Laddie,” pinned me, shaking, against the bar-counter, and ordered a pint of sophisticated beer, “he had left our service, and was a field-marshal in the army of the King of Oude. Many’s the time I’ve seen him with his cocked-hat and di’mond epulets riding on a white elephant, with five-and-twenty black fellows running after him to brush the flies away and draw the soda-water corks. Such brandy he’d have with it, and all through meeting me promiscuous in this very public.”

  * * *

  It is useless to prolong the narrative of my conversation with the military gentleman; suffice it to say, that within an hour I had taken the fatal shilling, and enlisted in the service of the Honourable East India Company. I was not a beggar. I possessed property, over which my uncle Bonsor had no control. I had not committed any crime; but I felt lost, ruined, and desperate, and I enlisted. For a wonder, when I was brought before a magistrate to be attested, and before a surgeon to be examined respecting my sanitary fitness for the service, my ague seemed entirely to have left me. I stood firm and upright in the witness-box, and under the measuring standard, and was only deterred by shame and anguish at the misconstruction put upon my conduct at Dover from negotiating for my discharge.

  * * *

  I had scarcely reached the East India recruiting depot at Brentwood, however, before the attacks of ague returned with redoubled severity. At first, on my stating that I had an ear for music, they began to train me for a bandsman, but I could not keep a wind instrument in my hands, and struck those that were played by my comrades from their grasp. Then, I was put into the awkward squad among the recruits, and the sergeants caned me; but I could never get beyond the preliminary drill of the goose-step, and I kept my own time, and not the squad’s, even then. The depot surgeons wouldn’t place the slightest credence in my ague, and the sergeant-major of my company reported that I was a skulking, “malingering” impostor. Among my comrades who despised, without pitying me, I got the nickname of “Young Shivery–Shakery.” And the most wonderful thing is, that, although I could have procured remittances at any time, the thought of purchasing my discharge never entered my poor, shaking, jarring head.

  * * *

  How they came to send such a trembling, infirm creature as a soldier to India, I can’t make out; but sent I was, by long sea, in a troop-ship, with seven or eight hundred more recruits. My military career in the East came to a very speedy and inglorious termination. We had scarcely arrived at Bombay when the battalion of the European regiment into which I was draughted was sent up-country to the banks of the Sutlej, where the Sikh war was then raging. It was the campaign of Aliwal and Sobraon, but it was very little that I saw of that glorious epoch in our military annals. In contemptuous reference to my nervous disorder, I was only permitted to form part of the baggage-guard, and one night, after perhaps ten days’ march, throughout which I had shaken most awfully, a
n attack was made on our rear for mere purposes of plunder by a few rascally budmashes or thieves. Nothing was easier than to put these paltry scoundrels to the rout. I had been brave enough as a lad and as a young man. I declare that on the present occasion I didn’t run away; but my unhappy disease got the mastery of me. I shook my musket out of my hands, my shako off my head, and my knapsack off my back, and my wretched legs shook and jolted me, as it seemed, over miles of arid country. There was some talk of shooting me afterwards, and some of flogging me; but corporal punishment did not exist in the Company’s army. They sent ine to a vile place of incarceration called a “congee house,” where I was fed principally on rice-water, and at last I was conveyed to Bombay, tried by court-martial, sentenced, and publicly drummed out of my regiment as a coward. Yes, I, the son of a gentleman, and the possessor of a genteel private property, had the facings cut off my uniform, and, to the sound of the “Rogues’ March,” was dismissed from the service of the Honourable East India Company with ignominy and disgrace.

  * * *

  I can scarcely tell how I reached England again; whether a berth was given me, whether I paid for it, or whether I worked my passage home. I can only remember that the ship in which I was a passenger broke her back in Algoa Bay, close to the Cape, and became a total wreck. There was not the slightest danger; we were surrounded by large and small craft, and every soul on board was saved; but I shook so terribly and incessantly while the boats were leaving the vessel, that the whole ship’s company hooted and groaned at me when I was shoved over the side, and I was not allowed to go in the long-boat, but was towed alone and aft in the dingy to shore.

  * * *

  I took passage in another ship, which did nothing but shake all the way from the Cape to Plymouth, and at last I reached England. I wrote innumerable letters to my friends and relatives, to Tilly and to my uncle Bonsor; but the only answer I received was a few formal lines from my uncle’s lawyer, telling me that my illegible scrawls had come to the hands of the persons for whom they were designed; but that no further notice could be taken of my communications. I was put into the possession of my property to the last penny, but it seems to me that I must have shaken it away either at dice or bagatelle, or ninepins or billiards. And I remember that I never made a stroke at the latter game without hitting my adversary with the cue in the chest, knocking down the marker, sending the balls scudding through the windows, disarranging the scores, and cutting holes in the cloth, for which I had to pay innumerable guineas to the proprietor of the rooms.

  * * *

  I remember one day going into a jeweller’s shop in Regent street to purchase a watch-key. I had only a silver one now, my gold repeater had been shaken away in some unaccountable manner. It was winter-time, and I wore an overcoat with long loose sleeves. While the shopkeeper was adjusting a key to my watch, my ague fit came upon me with demoniacal ferocity, and, to my horror and dismay, in catching hold of the counter to save myself, I tilted a trayful of diamond rings over. Some fell on the floor; but some, horror and anguish! fell into the sleeves of my overcoat. I shook so that I seemed to have shaken diamond rings into my hands, my pockets, my very boots. By some uncontrollable impulse I attempted flight, but was seized at the very shop door, and carried, shaking, to the police station.

  * * *

  I was taken before a magistrate, and committed, still shaking, in a van, to gaol. I shook for some time in a whitewashed cell, when I was brought up, shaking, to the Central Criminal Court, and placed, shaking, on my trial for an attempted robbery of fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of property. The evidence was clear against me. My counsel tried to plead something about “kleptomania,” but in vain. My uncle Bonsor, who had come expressly up from Dover, spoke strongly against my character. I was found guilty; yes, I, the most innocent and unfortunate young man breathing, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation! I can recal the awful scene vividly to memory now. The jury in a body were shaking their heads at me. So was the judge, so was my uncle Bonsor, so were the spectators in the gallery; and I was holding on by the spikes on the ledge of the dock, shaking from right to left like ten thousand million aspen-leaves. My skull was splitting, my brain was bursting, when ——

  * * *

  I woke.

  * * *

  I was lying in a very uncomfortable position in a first-class carriage of the Dover mail train; everything in the carriage was shaking; the oil was surging to and fro in the lamp;” my companions were swaying to and fro, and the sticks and umbrellas were rattling in the network above. The train was “at speed,” and my frightful dream was simply due to the violent and unusual oscillation of the train. Then, sitting up, and rubbing my eyes, immensely relieved, but holding on by the compartments near me (so violently did the carriages shake from side to side), I began to remember what I had dreamed or heard of others’ dreams before; while at sea, or while somebody was knocking loudly at the door; and of the odd connexions between unusual sound and motion on the thoughts of our innermost souls. And again with odd distinctness I remember that at one period of my distempered vision, namely, when I was attested and examined as a recruit, I had remained perfectly still and steady. This temporary freedom from ague I was fain to ascribe to the customary two or three minutes’ stoppage of the train at Tunbridge Wells. But, thank Heaven, all this was but a dream!

  * * *

  “Enough to shake one’s head off!” exclaimed the testy old lady opposite, alluding to the oscillation of the train, as the guard appeared at the window with a shout of “Do — vor,!”

  * * *

  “Well, mum, it have bin a shaking most unusual all the way down,” replied that functionary. “Thought we should have bin off the line, more than once. Screws will be looked to tomorrow morning. ‘Night, sir!” this was to me: I knew the man well. “Merry Christmas and a happy new year! You’ll be wanting a fly to Snargatestone Villa, won’t you, sir? Now, por — ter!”

  * * *

  I did want that fly, and I had it. I paid the driver liberally, and did not scatter his money over the pavement. Mr. Jakes insisted upon my having something hot in the dining-room the moment I arrived. The weather was so “woundy cold’ he said. I joined the merry party upstairs, and was received by my Tilly with open arms, and by my uncle Bonsor with an open waistcoat. I partook in cheerful moderation of the snapdragon festivities of Christmas-eve. We all dined together on Christmas day, and I helped the soup and carved a turkey, beautifully; and on the morrow, Boxing day, was complimented by my uncle’s lawyer on my remarkably neat calligraphy, as displayed in the signatures to the necessary legal documents. On the twenty-seventh of December, eighteen forty-six, I was married to my darling Tilly, and was going to live happy ever afterwards, when ——

  * * *

  I woke again

  * * *

  — really did wake in bed in this Haunted House — and found that I had been very much shaken on the railway coming down, and that there was no marriage, no Tilly, no Mary Seaton, no Van Plank, no anything but myself and the Ghost of the Ague, and the two inner windows of the Double Room rattling like the ghosts of two departed watchmen who wanted spiritual assistance to carry me to the dead and gone old Watch-house.

  Christmas Day in the Workhouse

  George Robert Sims

  Christmas Day in the Workhouse

  It is Christmas Day in the workhouse,

  And the cold, bare walls are bright

  With garlands of green and holly,

  And the place is a pleasant sight;

  For with clean-washed hands and faces,

  In a long and hungry line

  The paupers sit at the table,

  For this is the hour they dine.

  * * *

  And the guardians and their ladies,

  Although the wind is east,

  Have come in their furs and wrappers,

  To watch their charges feast;

  To smile and be condescending,

  Put pudding on pauper plates.r />
  To be hosts at the workhouse banquet

  They've paid for — with the rates.

  * * *

  Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly

  With their "Thank'ee kindly, mum's!'"

  So long as they fill their stomachs,

  What matter it whence it comes!

  But one of the old men mutters,

  And pushes his plate aside:

  "Great God!" he cries, "but it chokes me!

  For this is the day she died!"

  * * *

  The guardians gazed in horror,

  The master's face went white;

  "Did a pauper refuse the pudding?"

  "Could their ears believe aright?"

  Then the ladies clutched their husbands,

  Thinking the man would die,

  Struck by a bolt, or something,

  By the outraged One on high.