* * *
The little girl drew a deep sigh of satisfaction.
* * *
"And how was it at Thanksgiving?"
* * *
Her papa hesitated. "Well, I'm almost afraid to tell you. I'm afraid you'll think it's wicked."
* * *
"Well, tell, anyway," said the little girl.
* * *
Well, before it came Thanksgiving it had leaked out who had caused all these Christmases. The little girl had suffered so much that she had talked about it in her sleep; and after that hardly anybody would play with her. People just perfectly despised her, because if it had not been for her greediness it wouldn't have happened; and now, when it came Thanksgiving, and she wanted them to go to church, and have squash-pie and turkey, and show their gratitude, they said that all the turkeys had been eaten up for her old Christmas dinners, and if she would stop the Christmases, they would see about the gratitude. Wasn't it dreadful? And the very next day the little girl began to send letters to the Christmas Fairy, and then telegrams, to stop it. But it didn't do any good; and then she got to calling at the Fairy's house, but the girl that came to the door always said, "Not at home," or "Engaged," or "At dinner," or something like that; and so it went on till it came to the old once-a-year Christmas Eve. The little girl fell asleep, and when she woke up in the morning--
* * *
"She found it was all nothing but a dream," suggested the little girl.
* * *
"No, indeed!" said her papa. "It was all every bit true!"
* * *
"Well, what did she find out, then?"
* * *
"Why, that it wasn't Christmas at last, and wasn't ever going to be, any more. Now it's time for breakfast."
* * *
The little girl held her papa fast around the neck.
* * *
"You sha'n't go if you're going to leave it so!"
* * *
"How do you want it left?"
* * *
"Christmas once a year."
* * *
"All right," said her papa; and he went on again.
* * *
Well, there was the greatest rejoicing all over the country, and it extended clear up into Canada. The people met together everywhere, and kissed and cried for joy. The city carts went around and gathered up all the candy and raisins and nuts, and dumped them into the river; and it made the fish perfectly sick; and the whole United States, as far out as Alaska, was one blaze of bonfires, where the children were burning up their gift-books and presents of all kinds. They had the greatest time!
* * *
The little girl went to thank the old Fairy because she had stopped its being Christmas, and she said she hoped she would keep her promise and see that Christmas never, never came again. Then the Fairy frowned, and asked her if she was sure she knew what she meant; and the little girl asked her, Why not? and the old Fairy said that now she was behaving just as greedily as ever, and she'd better look out. This made the little girl think it all over carefully again, and she said she would be willing to have it Christmas about once in a thousand years; and then she said a hundred, and then she said ten, and at last she got down to one. Then the Fairy said that was the good old way that had pleased people ever since Christmas began, and she was agreed. Then the little girl said, "What're your shoes made of?" And the Fairy said, "Leather." And the little girl said, "Bargain's done forever," and skipped off, and hippity-hopped the whole way home, she was so glad.
* * *
"How will that do?" asked the papa.
* * *
"First-rate!" said the little girl; but she hated to have the story stop, and was rather sober. However, her mamma put her head in at the door, and asked her papa:
* * *
"Are you never coming to breakfast? What have you been telling that child?"
* * *
"Oh, just a moral tale."
* * *
The little girl caught him around the neck again.
* * *
"We know! Don't you tell what, papa! Don't you tell what!"
The Night Before Christmas
A Morality
William Dean Howells
Chapter 1
MR. AND MRS. CLARENCE FOUNTAIN
* * *
Mrs. Clarence Fountain, backing into the room, and closing the door noiselessly before looking round: "Oh, you poor thing! I can see that you are dead, at the first glance. I'm dead myself, for that matter." She is speaking to her husband, who clings with one hand to the chimney-piece, and supports his back with the other; from this hand a little girl's long stocking lumpily dangles; Mrs. Fountain, turning round, observes it. "Not finished yet? But I don't wonder! I wonder you've even begun. Well, now, I will take hold with you." In token of the aid she is going to give, Mrs. Fountain sinks into a chair and rolls a distracted eye over the littered and tumbled room. "It's worse than I thought it would be. You ought to have smoothed the papers out and laid them in a pile as fast as you unwrapped the things; that is the way I always do; and wound the strings up and put them one side. Then you wouldn't have had to wade round in them. I suppose I oughtn't to have left it to you, but if I had let you put the children to bed you know you'd have told them stories and kept them all night over their prayers. And as it was each of them wanted to put in a special Christmas clause; I know what kind of Christmas clause I should have put in if I'd been frank! I'm not sure it's right to keep up the deception. One comfort, the oldest ones don't believe in it any more than we do. Dear! I did think at one time this afternoon I should have to be brought home in an ambulance; it would have been a convenience, with all the packages. I simply marvel at their delivery wagons getting them here."
* * *
Fountain, coming to the table, where she sits, and taking up one of the toys with which it is strewn: "They haven't all of them."
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "What do you mean by all of them?"
* * *
Fountain: "I mean half." He takes up a mechanical locomotive and stuffs it into the stocking he holds.
* * *
Mrs. Fountain, staying his hand: "What are you doing? Putting Jimmy's engine into Susy's stocking! She'll be perfectly insulted when she finds it, for she'll know you weren't paying the least attention, and you can't blame Santa Claus for it with her. If that's what you've been doing with the other stockings— But there aren't any others. Don't tell me you've just begun! Well, I could simply cry."
* * *
Fountain, dropping into the chair on the other side of the table, under the shelter of a tall Christmas tree standing on it: "Do you call unwrapping a whole car-load of truck and getting it sorted, just beginning? I've been slaving here from the dawn of time, and I had to have some leisure for the ghosts of my own Christmases when I was little. I didn't have to wade round in the wrappings of my presents in those days. But it isn't the sad memories that take it out of you; it's the happy ones. I've never had a ghastlier half-hour than I've just spent in the humiliating multiplicity of these gifts. All the old birthdays and wedding-days and Fourth of Julys and home-comings and children's christenings I've ever had came trooping back. There oughtn't to be any gay anniversaries; they should be forbidden by law. If I could only have recalled a few dangerous fevers and funerals!"
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "Clarence! Don't say such a thing; you'll be punished for it. I know how you suffer from those gloomy feelings, and I pity you. You ought to bear up against them. If I gave way! You must think about something cheerful in the future when the happiness of the past afflicts you, and set one against the other; life isn't all a vale of tears. You must keep your mind fixed on the work before you. I don't believe it's the number of the packages here that's broken you down. It's the shopping that's worn you out; I'm sure I'm a mere thread. And I had been at it from immediately after breakfast; and I lunched in one of the stores with ten thousand suburbans who had come pouring in
with the first of their unnatural trains: I did hope I should have some of the places to myself; but they were every one jammed. And you came up from your office about four, perfectly fresh."
* * *
Fountain: "Fresh! Yes, quite dewy from a day's fight with the beasts at Ephesus on the eve of Christmas week."
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "Well, don't be cynical, Clarence, on this, of all nights of the year. You know how sorry I always am for what you have to go through down there, and I suppose it's worse, as you say, at this season than any other time of year. It's the terrible concentration of everything just before Christmas that makes it so killing. I really don't know which of the places was the worst; the big department stores or the separate places for jewelry and toys and books and stationery and antiques; they were all alike, and all maddening. And the rain outside, and everybody coming in reeking; though I don't believe that sunshine would have been any better; there'd have been more of them. I declare, it made my heart ache for those poor creatures behind the counters, and I don't know whether I suffered most for them when they kept up a ghastly cheerfulness in their attention or were simply insulting in their indifference. I know they must be all dead by this time. 'Going up?' 'Going down?' 'Ca-ish!' 'Here, boy!' I believe it will ring in my ears as long as I live. And the whiz of those overhead wire things, and having to wait ages for your change, and then drag your tatters out of the stores into the streets! If I hadn't had you with me at the last I should certainly have dropped."
* * *
Fountain: "Yes, and what had become of your good resolutions about doing all your Christmas shopping in July?"
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "My good resolutions? Really, Clarence, sometimes if it were not cruelty to animals I should like to hit you. My good— You know that you suggested that plan, and it wasn't even original with you. The papers have been talking about it for years; but when you brought it up as such a new idea, I fell in with it to please you—"
* * *
Fountain: "Now, look out, Lucy!"
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "Yes, to please you, and to help you forget the Christmas worry, just as I've been doing to-night. You never spare me."
* * *
Fountain: "Stick to the record. Why didn't you do your Christmas shopping in July?"
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "Why didn't I? Did you expect me to do my Christmas shopping down at Sculpin Beach, where I spent the whole time from the middle of June till the middle of September? Why didn't you do the Christmas shopping in July? You had the stores under your nose here from the beginning till the end of summer, with nothing in the world to hinder you, and not a chick or a child to look after."
* * *
Fountain: "Oh, I like that. You think I was leading a life of complete leisure here, with the thermometer among the nineties nine-tenths of the time?"
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "I only know you were bragging in all your letters about your bath and your club, and the folly of any one going away from the cool, comfortable town in the summer. I suppose you'll say that was to keep me from feeling badly at leaving you. When it was only for the children's sake! I will let you take them the next time."
* * *
Fountain: "While you look after my office? And you think the stores are full of Christmas things in July, I suppose."
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "I never thought so; and now I hope you see the folly of that idea. No, Clarence. We must be logical in everything. You can't get rid of Christmas shopping at Christmas-time."
* * *
Fountain, shouting wrathfully: "Then I say get rid of Christmas!"
Chapter 2
MR. FRANK WATKINS, MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
* * *
Watkins, opening the door for himself and struggling into the room with an armful of parcels: "I'm with you there, Clarence. Christmas is at the root of Christmas shopping, and Christmas giving, and all the rest of it. Oh, you needn't be afraid, Lucy. I didn't hear any epithets; just caught the drift of your argument through the keyhole. I've been kicking at the door ever since you began. Where shall I dump these things?"
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "Oh, you poor boy! Here—anywhere—on the floor—on the sofa—on the table." She clears several spaces and helps Watkins unload. "Clarence! I'm surprised at you. What are you thinking of?"
* * *
Fountain: "I'm thinking that if this goes on, I'll let somebody else arrange the presents."
* * *
Watkins: "If I saw a man coming into my house with a load like this to-night, I'd throw him into the street. But living in a ninth-story flat like you, it might hurt him."
* * *
Mrs. Fountain, reading the inscriptions on the packages: "'For Benny from his uncle Frank.' Oh, how sweet of you, Frank! And here's a kiss for his uncle Frank." She embraces him with as little interruption as possible. "'From Uncle Frank to Jim.' Oh, I know what that is!" She feels the package over. "And this is for 'Susy from her aunt Sue.' Oh, I knew she would remember her namesake. 'For Maggie. Merry Christmas from Mrs. Watkins.' 'Bridget, with Mrs. Watkins's best wishes for a Merry Christmas.' Both the girls! But it's like Sue; she never forgets anybody. And what's this for Clarence? I must know! Not a bath-gown?" Undoing it: "I simply must see it. Blue! His very color!" Holding it up: "From you, Frank?" He nods. "Clarence!"
* * *
Watkins: "If Fountain tries to kiss me, I'll—"
* * *
Fountain: "I wouldn't kiss you for a dozen bath-gowns." Lifting it up from the floor where Mrs. Fountain has dropped it: "It is rather nice."
* * *
Watkins: "Don't overwhelm me."
* * *
Mrs. Fountain, dancing about with a long, soft roll in her hand: "Oh, oh, oh! She saw me gloating on it at Shumaker's! I do wonder if it is."
* * *
Fountain, reaching for it: "Why, open it—"
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "You dare! No, it shall be opened the very last thing in the morning, now, to punish you! How is poor Sue? I saw her literally dropping by the way at Shumaker's."
* * *
Watkins, making for the door: "Well, she must have got up again. I left her registering a vow that if ever she lived to see another Christmas she would leave the country months before the shopping began. She called down maledictions on all the recipients of her gifts and wished them the worst harm that can befall the wicked."
* * *
Mrs. Fountain: "Poor Sue! She simply lives to do people good, and I can understand exactly how she feels toward them. I'll be round bright and early to-morrow to thank her. Why do you go?"
* * *
Watkins: "Well, I can't stay here all night, and I'd better let you and Clarence finish up." He escapes from her detaining embrace and runs out.
Chapter 3
The Big Book of Christmas Page 381