 Part five of A Christmas Miscellany, 2019, by various authors. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part five, More William, William's Christmas Eve, by Rick Moll Crompton. It was Christmas. The air was full of excitement and secrecy. William, whose old-time faith in the notes to Father Christmas, sent up the chimney, had died a natural death as the result of bitter experience, had thoughtfully presented each of his friends and relations with a list of his immediate requirements. He had a vague and not unfounded misgiving that his family would begin at the bottom of the list instead of the top. He was not surprised, therefore, when he saw his father come home, rather later than usual, carrying a parcel of books under his arm. A few days afterwards, he announced casually at breakfast, Well, I only hope no one gives me the great chief, or the pirate ship, or the land of danger for Christmas. His father started. Why? he said sharply. Just because I've read him, that's all, exclaimed William, with a bland look of innocence. The glance that Mr. Brown threw at his offspring was not altogether devoid of suspicion. But he said nothing. He set off after breakfast with the same parcel of books under his arm, and returned with another. This time, however, he did not put them in the library covered, and William searched in vain. The question of Christmas festivities loomed large upon the social horizon. Robert and Ethel can have their party on the day before Christmas Eve, decided Mrs. Brown, and then William can have his on Christmas Eve. William surveyed his elder brother and sister gloomily. Yes, and us eat up jazz what they've left, he said with bitterness. I know. Mrs. Brown changed the subject hastily. Now, let's see whom we'll have for your party, William, she said, taking out pencil and paper. You say whom you like, and I'll make a list. Ginger, Douglas, Henry, and Joan, said William promptly. Yes, who else? I like the milkman. You can't have the milkman, William. Don't be so foolish. Well, I'd like to have Fisty Green. He can whistle with his fingers in his mouth. He's a butcher's boy, William. You can't have him. Well, who can I have? Johnny Brent? I don't like him. But you must invite him. He asked you to his. Well, I didn't want to go. Irritably, you made me. But if he asked you to his, you must ask him back. You don't want me to invite folks I don't want, William said, in the voice of one goaded against his will into exasperation. You must invite people who invite you, said Mrs. Brown firmly. And that's what we always do in parties. Then they've got to invite you again, and it goes on and on and on, argued William. Where's the sense of it? I don't like Johnny Brent, and he don't like me. And if we go on inviting each other, and our mothers go on making us go, it'll go on and on and on. Where's the sense of it? I only just want to know, where's the sense of it? His logic was unanswerable. Well, anyway, William, I'll draw up the list. You can go and play. William walked away frowning with his hands in his pockets. Where's the sense of it? He muttered as he went. He began to wind his way towards the spot where he and Douglas and Ginger and Henry met daily in order to while away the hours of the Christmas holidays. At present, they lived and moved and had their being in the characters of Indian chiefs. As William walked down the back street, which led by a shortcut to their meeting place, he unconsciously assumed an arrogant strut, suggestive of some warrior prince surrounded by his gallant braves. Garn, swack, he turned with a dark scowl. On a doorstep sat a little girl gazing up at him with blue eyes beneath a tousled mop of auburn hair. William's eye traveled sternly from her Titian curls to her bare feet. He assumed a threatening attitude and scowled fiercely. You better not say that again, you said darkly. Why not, she said with a jeering laugh. Well, you just better not, you said with a still more ferocious scowl. What do you do, she persisted. He considered for a moment in silence. Then, you'll see what I do, he said ominously. Garn, swank, she repeated. Now do it, go on, do it. I'll let you off this time, he said judicially. Garn, softy, you can't do anything. You can't, you're a softy. I could cut your head off and scalp you and leave you hanging on a tree, I could, he said fiercely. And I will too, if you go on calling me names. Softy, swank, now cut it off, go on. He looked down at her mocking blue eyes. You're jolly lucky I don't start on you, he said threateningly. Folks, I do start on, soon get sorry, I can tell you. What do you do to them? He changed the subject abruptly. What's your name, he said. Sheila, what's yours? Red hand, I mean William. I'll tell you something if you'll come and sit down by me. What'll you tell me? Dump him, I bet you don't know. I bet I do. Well, come here and I'll tell you. He advanced towards her suspiciously. Through the open door he could see a bed in a corner of the dark dirty room and a woman's white face upon the pillow. Oh, come on, said the little girl impatiently. He came on and sat down beside her. Well, he said condescendingly. I bet I knew all the time. No, you didn't. Do you know? She sank her voice to a confidential whisper. There's a chap called Father Christmas but comes down chimney's Christmas Eve and leaves presents in people's houses. He gave a scornful laugh. Oh, that rot. You don't believe that rot, do you? Rot, she repeated indignantly. Well, it's true, true as true. A boy told me what hanged his stalking up by the chimney and in the morning it was full of things and there was just the things what he'd wrote on a bit of paper and thrown up the chimney to this year Christmas chap. Only kids believe that rot, persisted William. I left off believing it years and years ago. Her face grew pink with the effort of convincing him but the boy told me. The boy what got things from this here chap what comes down chimney's and I wrote what I want and send it up the chimney. Don't you think I'll get it? William looked down at her. Her blue eyes, big with apprehension, were fixed on him. Her little rosy lips were parted. William's heart softened. Why, don't know, he said doubtfully. You might, I suppose. What do you want for Christmas? You won't tell if I tell you? No, not to no one. No, say, cross my throat. William complied with much interest and stored up the phrase for future use. Well, she sank her voice very low and spoke into his ear. Dad's coming out Christmas Eve. She lent back and watched him, anxious to see the effect of this stupendous piece of news. Her face expressed pride and delight. William's merely bewilderment. Coming out, he repeated, coming out of where? Her expression changed to one of scorn. Prison, of course, silly. William was half offended, half thrilled. Well, I couldn't know it was prison, could I? How could I know it was prison without being told? It might have been out of anything. What, in hushed curiosity and awe, what was he in prison for? Stealen. Her pride was unmistakable. William looked at her in disapproval. Stealen's wicked, he said, virtuously. She jeered, you can't steal. You're too soft, softy. You can't steal without being caught first go, you can't. I could, he said indignantly. And anyway, he got caught, didn't he? Or he'd not be in prison, so there. He didn't get caught first go. It was just a sort of mistake, he said. He said it wouldn't happen again. He's a jolly good stealer. The cop said he was, and they are no. Well, said William, changing the conversation. What do you want for Christmas? I wrote it on a bit of paper and sent it up the chimney, she said compilingly. I thought I didn't want no toys, no sweeties, no nothing. I thought I only wanted a nice supper for dad when he comes out Christmas Eve. We ain't got much money, me and mother, and we can't get much of a spread. But if this here Christmas chap sends one for him, it'll be fine. Her eyes were dreamy with ecstasy. William stirred uneasily on his seat. I told ya it was rot, he said. There isn't any Father Christmas. It's just an old tale folks tell ya when you're a kid. And you'll find it's not true. He won't send no supper just cause he isn't anything. He's just nothing, just an old tale. Oh, shut up. William turned sharply at the sound of the shrill voice from the bed within the room. Let the kid have a bit of pleasure looking forward to a cancher. It's little enough she has anyway. William rose with dignity. All right, he said, goodbye. He strolled away down the street. Softy. It was a malicious, sweet little voice. Swank. William flushed but forbore to turn around. That evening he met the little girl from next door in the road outside her house. Hello, Joan. Hello, William. In these blue eyes there was no malice or mockery. To Joan, William was a god-like hero. His very wickedness partook of the divine. Would you like to come and make a snowman in our garden, William? She said tentatively. William knit his brows. Well, I don't know, he said ungraciously. I was a kinder thinking. She looked at him silently, hoping that he would deign to tell her his thoughts, but not daring to ask. Joan held no modern views on the subject of the equality of the sexes. Do you remember that old tale about Father Christmas, Joan? He said at last. She nodded. Well, suppose you wanted something very bad and you believed that old tale and sent a bit of paper up the chimney about what you wanted very bad and then you never got it. You'd feel kind of rotten, wouldn't you? She nodded again. I did one time, she said, I sent a lovely list up the chimney and I never told anyone about it and I got lots of things for Christmas and not one of the things I'd written for. Did you feel awful rotten? Yes, I did, awful. I say, Joan, importantly, I've got her secret. Do tell me, William, she pleaded. Can't, it's a coursemother secret. She was mystified and impressed. How lovely, William, is it something you're going to do? He considered, well, might be, he said. I'd love to help, she fixed adoring blue eyes upon him. Well, I'll see, said the Lord of Creation. I say, Joan, are you coming to my party? Oh, yes, well, there's an awful lot coming. Johnny Brand and all that lot. I'm jolly well not looking forward to it, I can tell you. Oh, I'm so sorry, why did you ask him, William? William laughed bitterly. Why did I invite him? He said, I don't invite people to my parties. They do that. In William's vocabulary, they always signified his immediate family circle. William had a strong imagination. When an idea took hold upon his mind, it was almost impossible for him to let it go. He was quite accustomed to Joan's adoring homage. The scornful mockery of his Auburn-haired friend was something quite new, and in some strange fashion it intrigued and fascinated him. Mentally, he recalled her excited little face, flushed with eagerness as she described the expected spread. Mentally also, he conceived a vivid picture of the long-waiting on Christmas Eve, the slowly fading hope, the final, bitter disappointment. While engaging in furious snowball fights with Ginger, Douglas, and Henry, while annoying peaceful passers-by with well-aimed snow missiles, while bruising himself and most of his family black and blue on long and glassy slides along the garden path, while perloining his family's clothes to adorn various unshapely snowmen, while walking across all the ice, preferably cracked in the neighborhood, and being several times narrowly rescued from a watery grave, while following all these light holiday pursuits, the picture of the little Auburn-haired girl's disappointment was ever vividly present in his mind. The day of his party drew near. My party, he would echo bitterly when any one of his family mentioned it, I don't want it, I don't want, oh Johnny Bren and all that lot, I'd just like to un-invite them all. But you want Ginger, and Douglas, and Henry, coaxed his mother, I can have them any time, and I don't like them at parties, they're not the same, I don't want anyone at parties, I don't want a party. But you must have a party, William, to ask back people who ask you. William took up his previous attitude, well, where's the sense of it, he groaned. As usual he had the last word, but left his audience unconvinced. They began on him a full hour before his guests were due. He was brushed, and scrubbed, and scoured, and cleaned. He was compressed into an eaten suit, and patent leather pumps, and finally deposited in the drawing-room, cowed and despondent, his noble spirit all but broken. The guests began to arrive. William shook hands politely with three strangers, shining with soap, brushed to excess, and clothed in ceremonial, eaten suits, who, in ordinary life, were Ginger, Douglas, and Henry. They then sat down, engaged at each other, in strained and unnatural silence. They could find nothing to say to each other. Ordinary topics seemed to be precluded by their festive appearance, and the formal nature of the occasion. Their informal meetings were usually celebrated by impromptu wrestling matches. This being debarred, a stiff, unnatural atmosphere descended upon them. William was a host. They were guests. They had all listened to final maternal admonitions, in which the word manners and politeness recurred at frequent intervals. They were, in fact, for the time being, complete strangers. Then Joan arrived, and broke the constrained silence. Hello, William, up, William, you do look nice. William smiled with distant politeness, but his heart warmed to her. It is always some comfort to learn that one has not suffered in vain. How do you do, he said, with a stiff bow? Then Johnny Brent came, and after him, a host of small boys and girls. William greeted friends and foes alike, with the same icy courtesy. Then the conjurer arrived. Mrs. Brown had planned the arrangement most carefully. The supper was laid on the big dining-room table. There was to be conjuring for an hour before supper to break the ice. In the meantime, while the conjuring was going on, the grown-ups who were officiating at the party were to have their meal in peace in the library. William had to met the conjurer at various parties and despised him utterly. He despised his futile jokes and high-pitched laugh, and he knew his tricks by heart. They sat in rows in front of him, shining-faced, well-brushed little boys and dark-eaten suits and gleaming collars, and dainty white-dressed little girls with gay air ribbons. William sat in the back row near the window, and next him sat Joan. She gazed at his set expressionless face in mute sympathy. He listened to the monotonous voice of the conjurer. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will proceed to swallow these three needles and these three strands of cotton, and shortly to wring out each needle threaded with a strand of cotton. Will any lady step forward and examine the needles? Ladies ought to know all about needles, oughtn't they? You young gentlemen don't learn to sew a school, do you? Ah! Perhaps some of you young gentlemen don't know what a needle is! Ah! William scowled, and his thoughts flew off to the little house in the dirty back street. It was Christmas Eve. Her father was coming out. She would be waiting, watching with bright, expectant eyes, for the spread she had demanded from Father Christmas to welcome her returning parent. It was a beastly shame. She was a silly little ass, anyway, not to believe him. He'd told her there wasn't any Father Christmas. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will bring out the three needles threaded with the three strands of cotton. Watch carefully, ladies and gentlemen. There! One, two, three. Now, I don't advise you young ladies and gentlemen to try this trick. Needles are very indigestible to some people. Ah! Not to me, of course. I can digest anything, needles or marbles or matches or glass bowls, as you will soon see. Ah! I will go to proceed, ladies and gentlemen. William looked at the clock and sighed. Anyway, there'd be supper soon, and that was a jolly good one, because he'd had a look at it. Suddenly, the inscrutable look left his countenance. He gave a sudden gasp, and his whole face lit up. Joan turned to him. Come on! He whispered, rising stealthily from his seat. The room was in half-darkness, and the conjurer was just producing a white rabbit from his left toe, so that few noticed William's quiet exit by the window, followed by that of the blindly obedient Joan. You wait, he whispered in the darkness of the garden. She waited, shivering in her little white muslin dress, till he returned from the stable, wheeling a hand-card, consisting of a large packing case on wheels, and finished with a handle. He wheeled it round to the open French window that led into the dining room. Come on! He whispered again. Following his example, she began to carry the plates of sandwiches, sausage rolls, meat pies, bread and butter, cakes, and biscuits of every variety, from the table to the hand-card. On the top, they balanced carefully the plates of jelly and blanche, and dishes of trifle, and round the sides they packed armfuls of crackers. At the end she whispered softly, What's it for, William? It's the secret, he said, The Roars Me Throat Secret, I told you. Am I going to help? She said in delight. He nodded. Just wait a minute, he added, and crept from the dining-room to the hall and upstairs. He returned with a bundle of clothing which he proceeded to arrange in the garden. He first dawned his own red dressing-gown, and then wound a white scarf around his head, tying it under his chin so that the ends hung down. I make a believe on Father Christmas, he deigned to explain, and I make him believe this white stuff is hair and beard, and this is for you to wear so you won't get cold. He held out a little white satin cloak edged with swans down. Oh, how lovely, William! But it's not my cloak, it's Sadie Merford's. Never mind, you can wear it, said William generously. Then taking the handles of the cart, he set off down the drive. From the drawing-room came the sound of a chorus of delight as the conjurer produced a goldfish and a glass bowl from his head. From the kitchen came the sound of the hilarious laughter of the maids. Only in the dining-room, with its horrible expanse of empty table, was silence. They walked down the road, without speaking, till Joan gave a little excited laugh. This is fun, William! I do wonder what we're going to do. You'll see, said William, I'd better not tell you yet. I promised, of course, we'd throw a promise I wouldn't tell anyone. All right, William, she said sweetly, I don't mind a bit. The evening was dark and rather foggy, so that the strange couple attracted little attention except when passing beneath the street lamps. Then certainly people stood still and looked at William and his cart in open-mouthed amazement. At last they turned down a back street towards the door that stood open to the dark, foggy night. Inside the room was a bare table at which sat a little girl, her blue, anxious eyes fixed on the open door. I hope he gets here before Dad, she said. I wouldn't like Dad to come and find it not ready. The woman on the bed closed her eyes wearily. I don't think he'll come now, dearie. We must just get on without it. The little girl sprang up. Her pale cheeks suddenly flushed. Oh, listen! She cried. Something's coming. They listened in breathless silence, while the sound of wheels came down the street towards the empty door. Then an old hand-card appeared in the doorway and behind it William in a strange attire and Joan in her fairy-like white, white cloak, white dress, white socks and shoes. Her bright curls clustered with gleaming fog jewels. The little girl clasped her hands. Her face broke into a wrapped smile. Her blue eyes were like stars. Oh, oh, she cried. It's Father Christmas and a fairy! Without a word William pushed the cart through the doorway into the room and began to remove its contents and place them on the table. First the jellies and trifles and blanc-mange, then the meat pies, pastries, sausage rolls, sandwiches, biscuits and cakes, sugar-coated, cream interlayered, full of plums and nuts and fruit. William's mother had had white experience and knew well what food most appealed to small boys and girls. Moreover, she had provided plentifully for her twenty guests. The little girl was past speech. The woman looked at them in dumb wonder. Then, why, you're the boy she was talking to, she said at last. It's real kind of you. She was getting that upset. She made a broker hard of nothing had come and I couldn't do nothing. It's real kind of you, sir. Her eyes were misty. Joan placed the last cake on the table and William, who was rather warm after his exertions, removed his scarf. The child gave a little sobbing laugh. Oh, isn't it lovely? I'm so happy. You're the funny boy, aren't you? Dressed up as Father Christmas. Or did Father Christmas send you? Or were you Father Christmas all the time? May I kiss the fairy? Would she mind? She's so beautiful. Joan came forward and kissed her shyly and the woman on the bed smiled unsteadily. It's real kind of you both, she murmured again. Then the door opened and the lord and master of the house entered after his six months' absence. He came in no sheepish hangdog fashion. He entered cheerily and boisterously as any parent might on returning from a hard-earned holiday. Hello, Mrs. Hello, kid. Hello, what's all his ear? His eyes fell upon William. Hello, young gent. Happy Christmas, William murmured politely. Time to you and many a-ma. How are you, Mrs. Good? Look, are you all right? That's right. Oh, I sigh. Where'd the grub come from? Where, Mike? Smell my mouth water. I haven't seen nothing like this, not for some time. There was a torrent of explanations, everyone talking at once. He gave a loud guffaw at the inn. Well, we're much obliged to this young gent and this little lady, and now we'll have a good old supper. This is all right. This is. Now, Mrs., you have a good feed. Now, before we begin, I'll sigh three cheers for the young gent and little lady. Come now. Array. Now, little lady, you come here. That's fine. That is. Now, we'll have a meat pie. Who's for a meat pie? Come on, Mrs., that's right. We'll all have meat pies. This here's something like Christmas, huh? We're not at a Christmas like this, not for many a long year. Now, hurry up, kid. Don't spend all your time warfing. Now, ladies and gents, who's for a sausage roll? All of us. Come on, then. Nothing to eat too heavy, or I won't be able to think to your afterwards, will I? I've got some fine songs, young gent, and kid, here, old dance freer. She's a fine little dancer she is. Now, come on, ladies and gents, sandwiches, more pies, come on. They laughed and chatter demerrily. The woman sat up in bed, her eyes bright, and her cheeks flushed. To William and Joan, it was like some strange and wonderful dream. And at that precise moment Mrs. Brown had sunk down upon the nearest dining-room chair on the verge of tears, and twenty pairs of hungry, horrified eyes, in twenty clean, staring, open-mouthed little faces, surveyed the barracks' vans of the dining-room table, and the cry that went up all around was, Where's William? And then, Where's Joan? They searched the house and garden and stable for them in vain. They sent the twenty enraged guests home, supperless and aggrieved. Has William eaten all our suppers, they said? Where is he? Is he dead? People will never forget, wailed Mrs. Brown. It's simply dreadful, and where is William? They rang up police stations for miles around. If they've eaten all that food, the two of them, said Mrs. Brown, almost distraught, they'll die. They may be dying in some hospital now. I do wish Mrs. Murford would stop ringing up about Sadie's cloak. I've told her it's not here. Meantime there was dancing and singing and games and cracker-pulling in a small house in a back street, not very far away. I have never had such a lovely time in my life, gasped the kid breathlessly at the end of one of the many games into which William had initiated them. I've never, never, never. We won't forget you in a hurry, young man, her father added. Nor the little lady either. We'll have many talks about this year. Joan was sitting on the bed, laughing and panting. Her curls all disordered. I wish, said William wistfully, I wish he'd let me come with you when you go stealing some day. I'm not going stealing no more, young gent, said his friend solemnly. I got a job, a real steady job, brick-land, and I'm going to stick to it. All good things must come to an end, and soon William dawned his red dressing gown again and Joan her borrowed cloak, and they hoped to store the remnants of the feast in the larder. The remnants of the feast would provide the ex-Burgler and his family with food for many days to come. Then they took the empty handcart, and after many fawn farewells, set off homeward through the dark. Mr. Brown had come home and assumed charge of operations. Ethel was weeping on the sofa in the library. Oh, dear little William! She sobbed. I do wish I'd always been kind to him. Mrs. Brown was reclining, pale and haggard in the armchair. There's a rough-burl canal, John, she was saying, weakly, and Joan's mother will always say it was our fault. Oh, poor little William! It's a good ten miles away, said her husband, dryly. I don't think even William. He rang up fiercely, cunt found these brainless police. Hello? Any news? A boy and girl and supper for twenty can't disappear off the face of the earth. No, there's been no trouble at home. There probably will be when he turns up, but there was none before. If he wanted to run away, why would he burden himself with a supper for twenty? Why? One minute. The front door opened and Mrs. Brown ran into the hall. A well-known voice was heard speaking quickly and irritably. I just went away, that's all. I just thought of something I wanted to do, that's all. Yes, I did take the supper. I just wanted it for something. It's secret. I did it for I— William, said Mr. Brown. Through the scenes that followed, William preserved a dignified silence, even to the point of refusing any explanation. Such explanation as there was filtered through from Joan's mother by means of the telephone. It was all William's idea, Joan's mother said plaintively, Joan would never have done anything if William hadn't practically made her. I expect she's caught her death of cold, she's in bed now. Yes, so is William. I can't think what they wanted to take all the food for, and he was just a common man straight from prison. It's dreadful. I do hope they haven't picked up any awful language. Have you given Joan some quinine? Oh, Mrs. Murphurs just sprung up to see if Sadie's cloak has turned up. Will you send it around? I feel so upset by it all. If it was at Christmas Eve, the houses occupied by William's and Joan's families, respectively, were semi-detached, but William's and Joan's bedroom windows faced each other, and there was only about five yards between them. There came to William's ears as he laid drowsily in bed the sound of a gentle rattle at the window. He got up and opened it. At the opposite window, a little white-robed figure lent out, whose golden curls shone in the starlight. William, she whispered, I threw some bees to see if you were awake. Were your folks mad? Awful, said William leconically. Mine were, too. I didn't care. Did you? No, I didn't. Not a bit. William, wasn't it fun? I wish it was just beginning again, don't you? Yeah, I just do. Well, I say, Joan, wasn't she a jolly little kid, and didn't she dance fine? Yes. A pause. Then, William, you don't like her better than me, do you? William considered. No, I don't, he said at last. A soft sigh of relief came through the darkness. I'm so glad. Good night, William. Good night, said William sleepily, drawing down his window as he spoke. End of Part 5 Part 6 of A Christmas Miss Alanie, 2019, by various authors. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 6 The Little City of Hope, A Christmas Story, by Francis Marion Crawford. Section 1 1. How John Henry Overholt sat on Pandora's Box. Hope is very cheap, there's always plenty of it about. Unfortunately, for poor men, good morning. With this mild retort and civil salutation, John Henry Overholt rose and went towards the door, quite forgetting to shake hands with Mr. Burnside, though the latter made a motion to do so. Mr. Burnside always gave his hand in a friendly way, even when he had flatly refused to do what people had asked of him. It was cheap, so he gave it. But he was not pleased when they did not take it, for whatever he chose to give seemed of some value to him as soon as it was offered, even his hand. Therefore when his visitor forgot to take it, out of pure absence of mind, he was offended and spoke to him sharply before he had time to leave the private office. You need not go away like that, Mr. Overholt, without shaking hands. The visitor stopped and turned back at once. He was thin and rather shabbily dressed. I know many poor men who are fat, and some who dress very well. But this was not that kind of poor man. Excuse me, he said mildly, I didn't mean to be rude, I quite forgot. He came back and Mr. Burnside shook hands with becoming coldness as having just given a lesson in manners. He was not a bad man, nor a miser, nor a scrooge, but he was a great stickler for manners, especially with people who had nothing to give him. Besides, he had already lent Overholt money, or to put it nicely, he had invested a little in his invention, and he did not see any reason why he should invest any more until it succeeded. Overholt called it selling shares, but Mr. Burnside called it borrowing money. Overholt was sure that if he could raise more funds, not much more, he could make a success of the air-motor. Mr. Burnside was equally sure that nothing would ever come of it. They had been explaining their respective points of view to each other, and in sheer absence of mind Overholt had forgotten to shake hands. Mr. Burnside had no head for mechanics, but Overholt had already made an invention which was considered very successful, though he had got little or nothing for it. The mechanic, who had helped him in its construction, had stolen his principal idea before the device was patented, and had taken out a patent for a cheap little article which everyone at once used and which made a fortune for him. Overholt's instrument took its place in every laboratory in the world, but the mechanic's labor-saving utensil took its place in every house. It was on the strength of the valuable tool of science that Mr. Burnside had invested two thousand dollars in the air-motor without really having the smallest idea whether it was to be a machine that would move the air or was to be moved by it. A number of businessmen had done the same thing. Then at a political dinner in a club three of the investors had dined at the same small table and in an interval between the dull speeches one of the three told the others that he had looked into the invention and that there was nothing in Overholt's motor after all. Overholt was crazy. It's like this, he's had said. You know how a low pressure engine acts, the steam does a part of the work and the weight of the atmosphere does the rest. Now this man Overholt thinks he can make the atmosphere do both parts of the work with no steam at all, and as that's absurd, of course, he won't get any more of my money. It's like getting into a basket and trying to lift yourself up by the handles. Each of the two hearers repeated this simple demonstration to at least a dozen acquaintances who repeated it to dozens of others, and after that John Henry Overholt could not raise another dollar to complete the air motor. Mr. Burnside Refusal had been definite and final, and he had been the last to whom the investor had applied, merely because he was undoubtedly the most close fisted man of business of all who had invested in the invention. Overholt saw failure before him at the very moment of success, with the not quite indifferent accompaniment of starvation. The M.N., as good as he, has been in the same straits, even more than once in life, and has succeeded after all, and Overholt knew this quite well, and therefore did not break down, nor despair, nor even show distinct outward signs of mental distress. Metaphorically he took Pandora's box to the park, put it in a sunny corner, and sat upon it, to keep the lid down, with hope inside, while he thought over the situation. It was not at all a pleasant one. It is one thing to have no money to spare, but it is quite another to have none at all, and he was not far from that. He had some small possessions, but those with which he was willing to part were worth nothing, and those which would bring a little money were the expensive tools and valuable materials with which he was working. For he worked alone, profiting by his experience with the mechanic who had robbed him of one of his most profitable patents. When the idea of the air-motor had occurred to him, he had gone into a machine shop, and had spent nearly two years in learning the use of fine tools. Then he had bought what he needed out of the money invested in his idea, and had gone to work himself, sending models of such castings as he required to different parts of the United States that the pieces might be made independently. He was not an accomplished workman, and he made slow progress with only his little son to help him when the boy was not in school. Often through lack of skill he wasted a good material, and more than once he spoiled an expensive casting and was obliged to wait till it could be made again and sent to him. Besides he and the boy had to live, and living is dear nowadays, even in a cottage and an out-of-the-way corner of Connecticut, and he needed fire and light in abundance for his work, besides something to eat and decent clothes to wear and somebody to cook the dinner. And when he took out his diary notebook and examined the figures on the page near the end, headed cash account November, he made out that he had $318.12 to his credit, and nothing to come after that, and he knew that the men who had believed in him had invested amongst themselves $10,000 in shares, and had paid him the money and cash in the course of the past three years, but would invest no more, and it was all gone. One thousand more, clear of living expenses, would do it. He was positively sure that it would be enough, and he and the boy could live on his little cash balance by great economy for four months, at the end of which time the air motor would be perfected. But without the thousand the end of the four months would be the end of everything that was worthwhile in life. After that he would have to go back to teaching in order to live, and the invention would be lost for the work needed all his time and thought. He was a mathematician and a very good one, besides being otherwise a man of cultivated mind and wide reading. Unfortunately for himself, or the contrary, if the invention ever succeeded, he had given himself up to higher mathematics when a young man, instead of turning his talent to account in an architect's office, a ship-building-yard, or a locomotive shop. He could find the strain at any part of an iron-frame building by the differential and integral calculus to the millionth of an ounce, but the everyday technical routine work with volumes of ready-made tables was unfamiliar and un-ken-genial to him. He would rather have calculated the tables themselves. The true science of mathematics is the most imaginative and creative of all sciences, but the mere application of mathematics to figures for the construction of engines, ships, or buildings is the dullest sort of drudgery. Rather than that he had chosen to teach what he knew and to dream of great problems at his leisure when teaching was over for the day or for the term. He had taught in a small college and had known the rare delight of having one or two pupils who were really interested. It had been a good position, and he had married a clever New England girl, the daughter of his predecessor, who had died suddenly. They had been very happy together for years, and one boy had been born to them, whom his father insisted on christening Newton. Then overholt had thrown up his employment for the sake of getting freedom to perfect his invention, though much against his wife's advice, for she was a prudent little woman, besides being clever, and she thought of the future of the two beings she loved, and of her own, while her husband dreamed of hastening the progress of science. Overholt came to New York because he could work better there than elsewhere, and could get better tools made, and could obtain more easily the materials he wanted. For a time everything went well enough, but when the investors began to lose faith in him, things went very badly. Then Mrs. Overholt told her husband that two could live where three could not, especially when one was a boy of twelve, and as she would not break his heart by teasing him into giving up the invention as a matter of duty, she told him that she would support herself until it was perfected, or until he abandoned it of his own accord. She was very well fitted to be a governess. She was thirty years old and as strong as a pony, she said, and she had friends in New England who would find her a situation. He should see her whenever it was possible, she added, but there was no other way. Now it is not easy to find a thoroughly respectable married governess of unexceptionably good manners, who comes of a good stock and is able to teach young ladies. Such a person is a treasure to rich people who need somebody to take charge of their girls while they fly around and round the world in automobiles seeking whom they may destroy. Therefore Mrs. Overholt obtained a very good place before long, and when the family in which she taught had its next attack of European fever, and it was decided that the girls must stay in Munich to improve their German and their music, Mrs. Overholt was offered an increase of salary if she would take them there and see to it, while their parents quartered Germany, France, Spain, and Austria at the rate of forty miles an hour, or even fifty and sixty, where the roads were good. If the parents broke their necks, Mrs. Overholt would take the children home, but this was rather in the understanding than in the agreement. Such was the position when John Henry sat down upon the lid of Pandora's box in a sunny corner of the central park and reflected on Mr. Burnside's remark that there was plenty of hope about. The inventor thought that there was not much, but such as it was, he did not mean to part with it on the ground that the man of business had called it cheap. He resolved his feelings into factors and simplified the form of each, and this little mathematical operation showed that he was miserable for three reasons. The first was that there was no money for the tangent balance of the air motor, which was the final part on which he had spent months of hard work and a hundred more than half sleepless nights. The second was that he had not seen his wife for nearly a year and had no idea how long it would be before he saw her again, and he was just as much in love with her as he had been fourteen years ago when he married her. The third, and not the least, was that Christmas was coming, and he did not see how in the world he was to make a Christmas out of nothing for Newton, seeing that a thirteen year old boy wants everything under the sun to cheer him up when he has no brothers and sisters, and school is closed for the holidays, and his mother is away from home, and there is nobody but a dear old tiresome father who has his nose over a lathe all day long unless he is blinding himself with calculating quaternions for some reason that no lad and very few men could possibly understand. John Henry was obliged to confess that hope was not much of a Christmas present for a boy in Newton's surroundings, for the surroundings would be dismal and the extreme. A rickety cottage on an abandoned Connecticut farm that is waiting for a bohemian immigrant to make it pay is not a gay place, especially when two-thirds of the house has been turned into a workshop that smells everlastingly of smith's coal, brass filings, and a nauseous chemical which seemed to be necessary to the life of the air motor, and when the rest of the house is furnished in a style that would make a condemned cell look attractive by contrast. Besides, it would rain or snow, and it rarely snowed in a decent Christian manner by Christmas. It snowed slush, as Newton expressed it. A certain kind of snow slush makes nice hard snowballs, it is true, just like stones, but when there is no other boy to fight, it is no good. Overholt had once offered to have a game of snowballing with his son on a Saturday afternoon in winter, and the invitation was accepted with alacrity, but it was never extended again. The boy was a perfect terror at that form of diversion. Yet so distressed was overholt at the prospect of a sad Christmas for his son that he even thought of voluntarily giving up his thin body to the torment again on the 25th of December if that would amuse Newton and make it seem less dull for him. Goodwill towards men, and even towards children, could go no further than that, even at Christmas time. At least overholt could think of no greater sacrifice that might serve. For what are toys to a boy of thirteen? He wants a gun and something to kill, or he wants a boat in which he can really sail or a live pony with a real head, a real tail, and four real legs, one at each corner. That had been Newton's definition of the desired animal when he was six years old, and someone had given him a wooden one on rockers with the legs painted on each side. Girls of thirteen can still play with dolls, and John Henry had read that far away in ancient times girls dedicated their dolls with all the dolls' clothes to Artemis on the eve of their wedding day. But no self-respecting boy of thirteen cares a straw for anything that is not real, except an imaginary pain that will keep him away from school without cutting down his rations. And in the invention and the presentation of such fictitious suffering he beats all the doll makers in Germany and all the playwrights and actors in the world. You must have noticed that the pain is always as far from the stomach as is compatible with probability. Toothache is a grand thing, for nobody can blame a healthy boy for eating then if he can only bear the pain. And he can and does bear it nobly, though with awful faces. The little beast knows that all toothaches do not make your cheeks well. Then there is earache, that is a splendid invention. It goes through your head like a Red Hawk corkscrew with a powerful breakman at the other end, turning it steadily between meals. Only certain kinds of things really serve to make him stop. Ice cream is one, and it takes a great deal of it. It is well known that ice will cool a Red Hawk corkscrew. But this is a digression, for no boy ever has any pain at Christmas. It is only afterwards that it comes on, usually about 10 days. After an hour, Overholt came to the conclusion that he had better take Pandora's box out to the cottage and sit on it there, since nothing suggested itself to him, in spite of his immense goodwill to accept any suggestion which the spirit of coming Christmas might be kind enough to offer. And if he could do nothing else, he could at least work at his machine, and try to devise some means of constructing the tangent balance, with the materials he had left, and perhaps by the time he was thoroughly grimy and the workshop smelled like the biblical bottomless pit, something would occur to him for Newton. He could also write a letter to his wife, a sort of anticipatory Christmas letter, and send her the book he had bought as a little gift, wrapping it in nice white paper first, tied with a bit of pale green ribbon, which she had left behind her, and which he had cherished nearly a year, and marking it to be opened on Christmas morning. And the parcel should then be done up securely in good brown grocers paper, and addressed to her, and even registered so that it could not possibly be lost. It was a pretty book, and also a very excellent book, which he knew she wanted, and would read often, so it was as well to take precautions. He wished that Newton wanted a book, or even two or three, or magazines, with gaily colored pictures, or anything that older or younger boys would have liked a little. But Newton was at that age which comes sooner or later to every healthy boy, and the sight of a book which he was meant to read, and ought to read, was infinitely worse than the ugliest old toad that ever flops out of a hollow tree at dusk, spitting poison and blinking his devilish little eyes at you when you come too near him. Overhold had been brought up by people who lived in peace and goodwill towards men, in a city where the spirit of Christmas still dwells, and sleeps most of the time, but weakens every year, like a giant of good courage and good cheer at the sound of the merry bells across the snow, and to the sweet carol under the windows in the frosty night. The Germans say that bad men have no songs, and we and all good fellows may say that bad people have no Christmas, and, though they copy the letter, they know not the spirit. And I say that a copied Christmas is no Christmas at all, because Christmas is a feast of hearts and not of poor bits of cut-down trees, stuck up in sawdust and covered with lights and tinsel, even if they are hung with the most expensive giegos and gim-cracks that ever are bought for gifts by people who are expected to give, whether they like or not. But when the heart for Christmas is there and is beating, then a very little free will do, if there be none better to the hand. Overholt thought so, while the train rumbled, creaked, and clattered and jerked itself along, as only local trains can, probably because they are old and rheumatic and stiff and weak in the joints, like superannuated crocodiles, though they may have once been young express trains, sleek and shiny, and quick and noiseless as bright snakes. Overholt thought so too, but the trouble was that he saw not even the least little might of a tree in sight for his boy when the 25th of December should come, and it was coming, and was only a month away, and time is not a local train that stops at every station, and then kicks itself on a bit to stop at the next. It is the fast limited, and what is more, it is the only one we can go by, and we cannot get out because it never stops anywhere. Two. How a man and a boy founded the little city of Hope. Overholt's boy came home from school at the usual hour with his books buckled together in an old skate strap, which had never been very good because the leather was too soft and tore from one hole to the next. But it served very well for the books, as no great strain was caused by an arithmetic thumbed to mushiness, a history in the same state, and a geography of which the binding gave in and doubled up from sheer weariness, while the edges were so worn that the eastern coast of China and Siberia had quite disappeared. He was a good-looking lad, not tall for his age, but as tough as a street cat and hard training. He had short and thick brown hair, a clear complexion, his father's energetically intellectual features, though only half developed yet, a boldly set mouth, and his mother's kindly practical blue eyes. For surely the eyes of practical people are always quite different from those of all others, and not many people are practical, though I never knew anybody who did not think he or she was, except pinch-back artists, writers, and players who are sure that since they must be geniuses it is necessary to be Bohemians in order to show it. The really big ones are always trying to be practical, like Sir Isaac Newton, when he ordered a good-sized hole to be cut in his barn door for the cat, and a little one next did for the kitten. But Newton overholt did not at all resemble his great name's sake. He was a practical young soul, and had not yet developed the American disease, which consists in thinking of two things at the same time. John Henry had it badly, for he had been thinking of the tangent balance, his wife, his boy, and the coming Christmas, all together, since he had got home, and the three problems had got mixed and had made his head ache. Nevertheless, he looked up from his work table and smiled when his son came in. Everything all right? Yes, with an attempt to be cheerful. Oh yes, fine, answered the boy, looking at the motionless model for the five hundredth time, and sticking his hands into his pockets. I'm only third in mathematics yet, but I'm head in everything else. I wish I had your brain's father, I'd be at the head of the arithmetic class, and have a shake of a lamb's tail if I had your brains. So far as mathematics were concerned, this sounded probable to John Henry, who would have considered the speed of the tail to be a variable function of lamb, depending on the value of mother, plus or minus milk. Well, he said, in an encouraging tone, I never could remember geography, so it makes us even. I'd like to know how, cried the boy in a tone of protest, you could do sums, and you grew up to be a great mathematician and inventor. But what is the good of a geographician anyway? They can only make school books. They never invent anything, do they? You can't invent geography, can you? At least you can, and some boys do, but they go to the bottom of the class like lead. It's safer to invent history than geography, isn't it, father? Overhold's clever mouth twitched. Oh, it's much safer, my boy. Almost all historians have found it so. There, I said so today, and now you say just the same thing. I don't believe one word of ancient history, not one word. They wrote it about their own nations, didn't they? All right, then you might just as well expect them to tell what really happened, as think that I'd tell on another boy in my own school. I must say it would be as mean as dog-pie of them if they did. But all the same, that does not make history true, does it? Newton had a practical mind. His father, who had not, meditated with unnecessary gravity on the boy's point of view and said nothing. For instance, continued the lad sitting down on the high stool before the lathe overhold was not using, the charge of Balaklava is a true story because it's been told by both sides. But they all say that it did no good anyway except to make poetry of. But marathon, nobody had a chance to say a word about it except the Greeks themselves, and they weren't going to allow that the Persians wiped up the floor with them, were they? Why should they? And if Balaklava had happened then, those Greek fellows would have told us that the Light Brigade carried the Russian guns back with them across their saddles, wouldn't they? I say, Father. What is it, asked over hold, looking up, for he had gone back to his work and was absorbed in it. The boys are all beginning to talk about Christmas down at the school. Now, what are we going to do at Christmas? I've been wondering. So have I responded the man laying down the screw plate with which he was about to cut a fine thread on the end of a small brass rod for the tangent balance. I've been thinking about it a good deal today, and I haven't decided on anything. Let's have Turkey and cranberry sauce anyway, said Newton thoughtfully, for he had a practical mind, and I suppose we can have ice cream if it freezes and we can get some ice. Snow does pretty well if you pack it down tight enough with salt and go on putting in more when it melts. Barbara doesn't make ice cream as well as they do in New York. She puts in a lot of wintergreen and two little coconut. But it's not bad. We can have it, can't we, Father? Oh yes, Turkey, cranberry sauce, and ice cream. But that isn't a whole Christmas. I don't see what else you want, I'm sure, answered the boy thoughtfully. I mean, if it's a big turkey and there's enough ice cream—cream cakes, maybe—you can get good cream cakes at Bangs, too, for five cents. They're not very big, but they're all right inside. All gooey, you know. Can you think of anything else? Not to eat? Oh, well then, what's the matter with our Christmas? I can't see. No school and heaps of good gobbles. Good what? Overholt looked at the boy with an inquiring glance and then understood, I see. Is that the proper word? When there's lots, it is, answered Newton with conviction. Of course, there are all sorts of things I'd like to have, but it's no good wishing you could lay Columbus's egg and hatch the American eagle, is it? The writer acknowledges his indebtedness for this fact in natural and national history to his aunt, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, to whom it was recently revealed in the course of making an excellent speech. What would you like, Father, if you could choose? Three things, answered Overholt promptly. I should like to see that wheel going round, softly and steadily, all Christmas day. I should like to see that door open and your mother coming in. You bet I would too, cried Newton, dropping from bold metaphor to vulgar vernacular. Well, what's the third thing? You said there were three. I should like you to have a real old-fashioned, glorious Christmas, my boy, such as you had when you were smaller, before we left the house where you were born. Oh, well, you mustn't worry about me, Father. If there's plenty of turkey and ice cream and cream cakes, I can stand it. Mother can't come anyhow, so that's settled, and it's no use to think about it. But the motor, that's different. There's hope anyway. The wheel may go round. If you didn't hope so, you wouldn't go on fussing over it, would you? You'd go and do something else. They always say, hope's better than nothing. It's about all we shall have left for Christmas, so we may as well build as much on it as we can. Well, I love buildings, said Newton. I like to stand and watch a bricklayer just putting one brick on another and making the wall grow. Perhaps you'll turn out an architect. By like, too, I never showed you my city, did I? He knew very well that he had not, and his father looked at him inquiringly. No, oh, well, you won't care to see it. Yes, I should. But I don't understand. What sort of a city do you mean? Oh, it's nothing, answered the boy, affecting carelessness. It's only a little paper city on a board. I don't believe you'd care to see it, Father. Let's talk about Christmas. No, I want to see what you've made. Where is it? I'll go with you. Newton laughed. I'll bring it, if you really want me to. It's easy enough to carry. The whole thing's only paper. He left the workshop and returned before overhauled had finished cutting the thread of the screw he was making. The man turned as the boy pushed the door open with his foot and came in carrying what had evidently once been the top of a deal table. On the board he had built an ingenious model of a town, or part of one, but it was not finished. It was entirely made of bits of cardboard, chips of wood, the sides of matchboxes, and odds and ends of all sorts, which he picked up wherever he saw them and brought home in his pocket for his purpose. He had an immense supply of such stuff stored away, much more than he could ever use. Overhauled looked at it with admiration, but said nothing. It was the college town where he had lived so happily and hoped to live again. It was distinctly recognizable and many of the buildings were not only cleverly made, but were colored very like the originals. He was so much interested that he forgot to say anything. It's a silly thing anyway, said Newton, disappointed by his silence. It's like toys. Overhauled looked up and the boy saw his pleased face. It's very far from silly, he said. I believe you're born to be a builder, boy. It's not only not silly, but it's very well done indeed. I'll bet you can't tell what the place is, observed Newton, a secret joy, stealing through him at his father's words. No, it. I should think I did, and I wish we were there now. Here's the college, and there's our house in the street on the other side of the common. The church is first rate. It's really like it, and there's the Roman Catholic Chapel and the public library in Main Street. Why, you really do recognize the places, cried Newton in delight? I didn't think anybody'd know them. One would have to be blind, not to, if one knew the town, said Overhauled, and there's the dear old lane. He was absorbed in the model, and the three hickory trees, and even the little bench. Why, do you remember that bench, father? Overhauled looked up again, quickly and rather dreamily. Yes, it was there that I asked your mother to marry me, he said. Not really. Then I'm glad I put it in. So am I, for the dear old time's sake, and for her sake, and for yours, my boy. Tell me when you made this, and how you can remember it all so well. The lad sat down on the high stool again before the lathe, and looked through the dingy window at the scraggie trees outside beyond the four-lorn yard. Oh, I don't know, he said. I kind of remember it, I suppose, because I liked it better than this. And when I first had the idea, I was sitting out there in the yard, looking at this board. It belongs to a broken table that had been thrown out there. And I carried it up to my room when you were out. I thought you wouldn't mind my taking it. And I picked up scraps that might be useful, and got some gum, and old Barbara made me some flour paste. It's got green now, and it smells like thunder, but it's good still. That's about all, I suppose. Now I'll take it away again. I keep it in the dark closet beside my room, because that doesn't leak when it rains. Don't take it away, said Oberholt suddenly. I'll make room for it here, and you can work at it while I'm busy, and in the evenings I'll try and help you, and we'll finish it together. Newton was amazed. Why, father, it's playing. How can you go to work at play? It would be so funny. But of course, if you really would help me a little, you've got such a lot of nice things. He wistfully eyed a little coil of some very fine steel wire, which would make a beautiful telegraph. Newton even dreamt of making the trolley, too, in the main street. But that would be a very troublesome job. And as for the railway station, it was easy enough to build a shed and a platform, but what is a railway station without a train? Oberholt did not answer the boy at once, and when he spoke, there was a queer little quaver in his voice. We'll call it our little city of hope, he said, and perhaps we can go to work to play, as you call it, so hard that hope will really come and live in the city. Well, said Newton, I never thought you'd ever care to see it. Shall I go up and get my stuff and the gum and the flower paste, and bring them down here, father? But the flower paste smells pretty bad. It might give you a headache. Bring it down, my boy, my headaches don't come from such things. Don't they? It's true that stuff you use hears about as bad as anything till you get used to it. What is it, anyway? Oberholt gave him the almost unpronounceable name of some recently discovered substance, and smiled at his expression as he listened. If that's its name, said the boy gravely, it sounds like the way it smells. I wonder what a sconce name is in science. But the flower paste's pretty bad, too. You'll see. He went off, and his father finished cutting the little screw while he was gone, and then turned to look at the model again, and became absorbed in tracing the well-known streets, and trying to recall the shops and houses in each, and the places where his friends had lived, and no doubt lived still, for college towns do not change as fast as others. He was amazed at the memory the boy had shown for details. If the lad had not yet developed any special talent, he had at least proved that he possessed one of those natural gifts, which are sometimes alone enough to make success. The born builder's eye is like an ear for music, a facility for languages, or the power of drawing from nature. All the application in the world will not do in years what any one of these does instantly, spontaneously, instinctively, without the smallest effort. You cannot make talent out of a combination of taste and industry. You cannot train a cart horse to trot a mile in a little over a minute. Newton returned, bringing his materials, to describe which would be profitless, if it were possible. He had everything littered together in two battered deal candle boxes, including the broken soup plate containing the flower paste, a loathly, molduring little mess that diffused a nauseous odor, distinctly perceptible through that of the unpronounceable chemical on which the air motor was to depend for its existence. The light outside was failing in the murky November air, and overhauled that the big reflecting lamp that hung over the work table, there was another above the lathe, for no gas or electricity, was to be had so far from the town, and one of old barbarous standing causes of complaint against overhauled was his reckless use of kerosene. She thought it would be better if he had more fat turkeys and rump steaks and less light. So the man and boy went to work to play at Building the City of Hope, for at least an hour before supper and a half an hour after it, almost every day, and with the boy's marvelous memory and the father's skill and the delicious profusion of fresh material which Newton kept finding in every corner of the workshop, it grew steadily till it was a little work of art in its way. There were the ups and downs, the crooked old roads and lanes, and the straight new streets, the little wooden cottages and the big brick houses, and there was the grassy common with its trees and its tiny iron railing, and John Henry easily made posts to carry the trolley wires which had seemed an impossible dream to the boy beyond all realization, and one day when the inventor seemed farther from the tangent balance than ever, he spent a whole afternoon in making a dozen little trolley cars that ran on real wheels made by sawing off little sections from a lead pencil, which is the best thing in the world for that because the lead comes out and leaves a nice round hole for the axles. When the first car was painted red and yellow and ran up and down Main Street, guided by the wire above, and only needing one little artificial push to send it either way, it looked so real that the boy was an ecstasy of delight. It's worthwhile to be a great inventor to be able to make things like that, he cried, and overhauled was as much pleased by the praise as an opera singer is, who is called out three times before the curtain after the first act. So the little city of hope grew, and they both felt that hope herself was soon coming to dwell therein if she had not come already. End of Part 6, Section 1. Part 6 of A Christmas Miscellany, 2019, by various authors. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 6, The Little City of Hope, A Christmas Story by Francis Marion Crawford, Section 2. 3. How They Made Bricks Without Straw. But then something happened, for overhauled was tormented by the vague consciousness of a coming idea, so that he had headaches and could not sleep at night. It flashed upon him at last one evening when Newton was in bed and he was sitting before his motor, wishing he had the thousand dollars which would surely complete it, even if he used the most expensive materials in the market. The idea which developed suddenly in all its clearness was that he had made one of the most important parts of the machine exactly the converse of what it should be. What was on the right should have been on the left, and what was down should certainly have been up. Then the engine would work, even if the tangent balance were a very poor affair indeed. The particular piece of brass casting, which was the foundation of that part, had been made in New York and owing to the necessity for its being finished very accurately and machine planed and turned, it had cost a great deal of money. Already it had been made and spoiled three times over, and now it was perfectly clear that it must be cast over again in a reversed form. It was quite useless to make the balance yet, for it would be of no use till the right casting was finished. It would have to be reversed, too, and the tangent would apply to a reversed curve. He had no money for the casting, but even before trying to raise the cash it was necessary to make the wooden model. He could do that, and he set to work to sketch the drawing within five minutes after the idea had once flashed upon him. As his eye followed the lines made by his pencil, he became more and more convinced that he was right. When the rough sketch was done, he looked up at the engine. Its familiar features seemed to be drawn into a diabolical grimace of contempt at his stupidity, and it looked as if it were conscious and wanted to throw the wrongly made piece at his head. But he was overwrought just then and could have fancied any folly. He rose, a shook himself, and then took a long pull at a black bottle that always stood on the shelf. When a man puts a black bottle to his lips, tips it up, and takes down several good bowls, almost without drawing breath, most people suppose that he is a person of vicious habits. In Overhold's case most people would have been wrong. The black bottle contained cold tea. It was strong, but it was only tea, and that is the finest drink in the world for an inventor or an author to work on. When I say an author, I mean a poor writer of prose, for I have always been told that all poets are either mad or bad or both. Many of them must be bad or they could not write such atrocious poems, but madness is different. Perhaps they read their own verses. When Overhold had swallowed his cold tea, he got out his drawing materials, stretched a fresh sheet of thick draftsman's paper on the board, and sat down between the motor that would not move and the little city in which Hope had taken lodgings for a while, and he went to work with rulers, scale, and dividers, and the hardwood template for drawing the curves he had constructed for the tangent balance by a very abstruse mathematical calculation. That was right at all events, only as it was to be reversed, he laid it on the paper with the underside up. He worked nearly all night to finish the drawing, slept two hours in a battered shaker rocking chair by the fire, woke in broad daylight, drank more cold tea, and went at once to his lathe, for the new piece was in the nature of a cylinder, and a good deal of the work could be done by turning. The chisel and the lathe seemed to be talking to each other over the block of wood, and what they said rang like a tune in John Henry's head. Bricks without straw, bricks without straw, bricks without straw, repeated the lathe regularly at each revolution, and when it said bricks the trellel was up, and when it said straw the trellel was down. For, of course, it was only a foot lathe, though a good one. Ever so much better than no bricks at all, answered the sharp chisel as it pressed and bit the wood, and made a little irregular clattering when it was drawn away, and then came forward against the block again with a long hushing sound. An overhauled was inclined to accept its opinion, and worked on as if an obliging brass founder were waiting outside to take the model away at once and cast it for nothing, or at least on credit. But no such worthy and confiding manufacturer appeared, even on the evening of the second day, when the wooden model was beautifully finished and ready for the foundry. While the inventor was busy, Newton had worked alone in a corner when he had time to spare from his lessons. But he understood what was going on, and he did not accomplish much beyond painting the front of the National Bank in the City of Hope, and planning a possible Wild West show to be set up on the outskirts. The tents would be easy to make, but the horses were beyond his skill, or his father's. It would not be enough that they should have a leg at each corner and a head and a tail. He understood well enough what was the matter, for he had seen similar things happen before. A pessimist is defined to be a person who has lived with an optimist, and every inventor is that. Poor Newton had seen that particular part of the engine spoiled and made over three times, and he understood perfectly that it was all wrong again, and must be cast once more. But he kept his reflections to himself, and tried to think about the City of Hope. I wish, said John Henry, sitting down opposite the boy at last, and looking at what he had done, that the National Bank and Main Street were real. He eyed it wistfully. Oh well, answered the boy. We couldn't rob it, because it's stealing, so I don't see what particular good it would do. Perhaps the business people in the City of Hope would be different from the bankers in New York, observed over and over thoughtfully. I don't believe it, Father. Newton answered in a skeptical tone. If they were bankers, they'd be rich. And you remember the sermon, Sunday before last, about it being easier for the camel to get through the rich man? No, which is it? Oh, I forget. It doesn't matter anyway, because we can imagine any kind of people we choose in our City, can't we? Say, Father, what's the matter? Are you going to cast that piece over again? That'll be the fourth time, won't it? It would be, my boy, but it won't be. They won't cast it for nothing, and I cannot raise the money. You cannot make bricks without straw. He looked steadily down at the tiny front of the bank in Main Street, and a hungry look came into his eyes. But Newton had a practical mind, even at thirteen. I was thinking, he said presently, it looks as if we were going to get stuck someday. What are we going to do then, Father? I was thinking about it just now. How are we going to get anything to eat if we have no money? Well, I shall have to go back to teaching mathematics for a living, I suppose, and give up the motor. Newton had never yet heard him suggest such a thing. Yes, overhauled answered in a low tone, and that was all, he said. Oh, that's ridiculous. You just died. That's all. Newton stared at the engine that was a failure. It looked as if it ought to work, he thought, with its neat cylinders, its polished levers, its beautifully designed gear. It stood under a big case, made of thick glass plates, set in an iron frame with a solid top. A chain ran through two cast-iron wheels overhead to a counter-boys in the corner, by which device it was easily raised and lowered. The motor was a very expensive affair, and had to be carefully protected from dust and all injury, though it was worth nothing at present, except for old brass and iron, unless the new part could be made. Come, my boy, let's think of something more cheerful, overhauled said, making an effort to rouse himself, and concentrated his attention on the paper model. Christmas is coming in three weeks, you know, and it will come just the same in the little city. I'm sure the people will decorate their houses in the church. Of course, we cannot see the insides of the houses, but in Boston they put reeds in the windows, and we'll have a snowstorm just as we used to have, and we can clear it away afterwards. Wasn't there a holly-tree somewhere near the college? You haven't put that in yet. You have no idea how cheerful it will look. Tomorrow we'll find a very small spring with berries on it, and plant it just in the right place. I'm sure you remember where it stood. Real leaves would be too big, observed the boy. They wouldn't look right. Of course, one could cut the branches out of tin, and paint them green with red spots, and stick them into a twig for the trunk. But it's rather hard to do. Well, let's try, said overhauled. I've got some fine chisels and some very thin brass, but I don't think I could draw the branches as well as you could. Oh, I can draw them something like, if you'll only cut them out, the boy answered cheerfully. Come on, Father, who says we can't make bricks without straw? I'll bet anything we can. So they worked together steadily, and for an hour or two the inventor was so busy in cutting out tiny branches of imaginary holly with a very small chisel that he did not look once at the plate glass from which his engine seemed to be grinning at him in fiendish delight over his misfortunes. There were times when he was angry with it outright, as if it knew what he was doing and did not mean to give it to him, and let itself be invented. But now the tune of the lathe and the chisel still ran on in his head, for he had heard it through two whole days and could not get rid of it. Bricks without straw, bricks without straw, repeated the lathe viciously, ever so much better than no bricks at all, shishishishish, answered the chisel, gibbering and hissing like an idiot. You will certainly be lying on straw before long, and then I suppose you'll wish you had something else squeaked the little chisel with which he was cutting out holly-leaves as it went through the thin plates into the wood of the bench under each push of his hand. The things in the workshop all seemed to be talking to him together and made his head ache. I had a letter from your mother today, he said, because it was better to hear his own voice say something than to listen to such depressing imaginary conversations. I'm sorry to say she sees no chance of getting home before the spring. I don't know where you'd put her if she came here, answered the practical Newton. Your room leaks when it rains, and so does mine. You two would have to sleep in the parlor. I guess it'll be better if she doesn't come now. Oh, for her far better, assented overholt. They've got a beautiful flat in Munich, and everything they can possibly think of. Your mother's only complaint, so far as that goes, is that those girls are completely spoiled by too much luxury. What is luxury exactly, Father? asked Newton, who always wanted to know things. I will never know myself, and perhaps you never will either. The wretched inventor tried to laugh. But that's no answer to your question, is it? I suppose luxury means always having twice as much of everything as you can possibly use, and having it about ten times as fine and expensive as other people can afford. I don't see any use in that, said the boy. Now I know just how much turkey and cranberry sauce and ice cream I really need, and if I get just a little more than that, it's Christmas. I don't mean much more, but about half a helping. I know all about proverbs. Haven't I copied millions of them in learning to write? One reason why it's so slow to learn is that the things you have to write are a perfect nonsense. Enough is as good as a feast! All I can say is, the man who made that proverb never had a feast, or he'd have known better. This green paint doesn't dry very quick, Father. We'll have to wait till tomorrow before we put on the red spots for the berries. I wish I had some little red beads. They'd stick on the wet paint now, like one o'clock. There were no red beads, so he rose to go to bed. When he had said good night and had reached the door, he stopped and looked back again. Say, Father, haven't you anything you can sell to get some more money for the motor? John Henry shook his weary head and smiled sadly. Nothing that would bring nearly enough to pay for the casting, he answered. Don't worry about it, boy. Leave that to me. I'm used to it. Go to bed and sleep, and you'll feel like an airmo to yourself in the morning. That's the worst of it, returned the boy, just to sit there under a glass case and have you take care of me and do nothing, like a girl. That's the way I feel sometimes. He shook his young head, quite as gravely as the inventor had shaken his own, and went quietly to bed without saying anything more. I don't know what to do, I'm sure, he said to himself, as he got into bed, but I'm sure there's something. Maybe I'll dream it, and then I'll do just the contrary, and it'll come all right. But boys of practical minds and sound bodies do not dream at all, unless it be after a feast, and most of them can stand even that without having nightmare, unless two feasts come near together, like Christmas and a birthday within the week. A great-uncle of mine was once taken for a clergyman at a public dinner nearly a hundred years ago, and he was asked to say grace. He was a good man, and also practical, and had a splendid appetite, but he was not eloquent, and this is what he said, The Lord give us appetites to enjoy and strength to digest all the good things set before us. Amen. And everybody said Amen, very cheerfully, and fell too. 4. How there was a famine in the city It rained in New York, and it snowed slush in Connecticut after its manner, and the world was a very dreary place, especially all around the dilapidated cottage where everything was going to pieces, including John Henry Overhold's Last Hopes. If he had been alone in the world, he would have taken his small cash balance and his model to the foundry quite careless as to whether he ever got a meal again until the motor worked. But there was the boy to be thought of, and desperate as the unhappy inventor was, he would not starve his son as well as himself. He was quite sure of his little balance, though he had never had any head for figures of that sort. It was an easy affair in his eyes to handle the differential calculus, which will do anything metaphorically speaking from smashing a rock as flat and thin as a postage stamp to regulating an astronomical clock. But to understand the complication of a passbook and a bank account was a matter of the greatest possible difficulty. Newton could have done it much better, though he could not get to the head of his class in arithmetic. That is the difference between being an inventor and having a practical mind. As for Mrs. Overhold, she was perfectly wonderful at keeping accounts. But then she had been taught a great many things from music and drawing to compound interest in double entry, and she had been taught them all just so far as to be able to do them nicely without understanding at all what she did, which is sound modern education, and no mistake. The object of music is to make a cheerful noise, which can be done very well without pencil and paper and the rules of harmony. But Overhold could neither make a cheerful noise nor draw a holly leaf nor speak French nor even understand a passbook, though he had invented an air motor, which would not work, but was a clear evidence of genius. The only business idea he had was to make his little balance last as long as possible, in spite of the terrible temptation to take it and offer it to the founder as a cash advance, if only he might have his piece of casting done. Where the rest of the money would come from, he did not know, probably out of the motor. It looked so easy, but there was the boy, and it might happen that there would be no dinner for several days. On the first of December he cashed a check in the town, as usual, and he paid Barbara's wages and the coal merchant and the months billed for kerosene and the butcher and the grocer and the baker, and that was practically all. And he went to bed that night, feeling that whatever happened there was a whole month before another first came round, and he owed no one anything more for the present, and Newton would not starve and could have his Christmas turkey if it was to be the last he ever ate, poor boy. On the morning of December 3rd it was still snowing slush, though it was more like real snow now, and the air was much colder, and by and by, when Oberholt had read a letter that Barbara brought him, he felt so terribly cold all at once that his teeth shattered, and then he was so hot that the perspiration ran down his forehead, and he steadied himself against the heavy glass case of the motor a moment, and then almost tumbled into a sitting posture on the stool before his work table, and his head fell forward on his hands as if he were fainting. The letter said that his account was overdrawn to the extent of three hundred and fifty-two dollars and thirteen cents, including the check he had drawn on the thirty-first, and would he please make a deposit at his earliest convenience. It had been just a little mistake in arithmetic, that was all. He had started with the wrong balance in his notebook, and what he thought was credit was debit, but the bank, where he had kept all the money that had been put up for the motor, had wished to be friendly and good-natured to the great inventor, and had not returned his checks with NG on them, and if his attention had already been called to his deficit, he must have forgotten to open the letter. Like all men who are much talked of in the newspapers, though they may be as poor as Job Sturkey, he received a great many circulars addressed by typewriter, and the only letters he really cared for were from his wife, so that when he was hard at work or much preoccupied, the others accumulated somewhere in the workshop and were often forgotten. What was perfectly clear this morning was that Sarvation was sitting on the doorstep, and that he had no moral right whatever to the dinner Barbara was already beginning to cook, nor to another tomorrow, nor to any more, for he was a proud man and ashamed of debt, though he mixed up debit and credit so disgracefully. He sat there half an hour, as he had let himself fall forward, only moving a little, so that his forehead rested on his arm instead of his hands, because that was a little more comfortable, and just then he did not want to see anything, least of all the motor. When he rose at last, the sleeve of his coat was all wet with the perspiration from his forehead. He left the workshop, half shutting his eyes in order not to see the motor. He was sure the thing was grinning at him behind the plate glass. It had two round brass vows near the top that looked like yellow eyeballs, and a lever at the bottom with double arms and a crossbar, which made him think of an iron jaw when he was in one of his fits of nervous depression. But John Henry Overholt was a man and an honest one. He went straight to the writing table in the next room and sat down, and though his hand shook, he wrote a clear and manly letter to the president of the college, where he had taught so well, stating his exact position, acknowledging the failure of his invention, and asking help to find immediate employment as a teacher, even in the humblest capacity which would afford bread for his boy and himself. Presidents and principals of colleges are in constant communication, with other similar institutions and generally know of vacant positions. When he had written his letter and read it over carefully, Overholt looked at his timetable, got his hat, coat, and umbrella, and trudged off through the slushy snow to the station on his way to New York. It was raining there, but it was not dismal. Hurry, confusion and noise can never be that. He had not been in the city since the day when he made his last attempt to raise money, and in his present state the contrast was overwhelming. The shopkeepers would have told him that it was a dull day for business, and that the rain was costing them hundreds of dollars every hour, because there are a vast number of people who buy things within the month before Christmas, if it is convenient and the weather is fine, but will not take the trouble if the weather is bad, and afterwards they are so glad to have saved their money that they buy nothing of that sort till the following year. For Christmas shopping is largely a matter of temptation on the one side and of weakness on the other, and you cannot tempt a man to buy your wares if he will not even go out and look at your shop window. At Christmas time every shopkeeper turns into a serpent with a big S, and a supply of apples varying, with his capital from a paper bag full to a whole orchard, and though the ladies are the more easily tempted, nine generous men out of ten show no more sense just at that time than Eve herself did. The very air has temptation in it when they see the windows full of pretty things, and think of their wives and their children and their old friends. Even Misers relax a little then, and a famous statesman who was somewhat close-fisted in his day is reported to have given his young colored servant twenty-five cents on Christmas Eve, telling him to go out to Mount Auburn Cemetery and see where the great men of New England lie buried. And the man, I believe, went there, but he was an African, and the spirit of Christmas was not in his race, for if it had moved him he would have wasted that money on cream cakes and cookies, reflecting that the buried worthies of Massachusetts could not tell tales on him. Overhold went downtown to the bank where he kept his account, and explained his little mistake very humbly, and asked for time to pay up. The teller looked at him as if he were an escaped lunatic, but on account of his great reputation as an inventor, he was shown to the desk of one of the partners, which stood in a corner of the vast place where one could converse confidentially if one did not speak above a whisper. But this stenographer girl could hear even whispering distinctly, and perhaps she sometimes took down what she heard if the partner made signal to her by carelessly rolling his pencil across his table. The partner whom Overhold saw was not ill-natured, and besides it was near Christmas, and he had been poor himself when he was young. If Overhold would kindly sign a note at sixty days for the overdraft it would be all right. The banker was sorry he could not authorize him to overdraw any further, but it was strictly against the rules, an exception had been made, because Mr. Overhold was such a well-known man and so forth, but the inventor explained that he had not meant to ask any favor, and had come to explain how he had made such a strange mistake. The banker, like the teller, thought that a man who could not count money must be mad, but was too civil, or too good-natured, to say so. Overhold signed the note, thanked him warmly, and went away. He and his old umbrella looked very dejected as he left the building, and dived into the stream of men in the street. But if he had paid any attention to his fellow beings, he would have seen here and there, a number who looked quite as unhappy as he did. He had come all the way from the country expressly to explain his error, and had been in the greatest haste to get downtown and have the interview over. To go home with the prospect of trying to eat a dinner that would be cold, and of sitting in his workshop all the afternoon, just to stare at his failure until Newton came home, was quite another matter. If the weather had been less disagreeable, he would have gone to the Central Park to sit in a quiet corner and think matters over. As that seemed out of the question, he walked from the bank to 42nd Street, taking an hour and a half over it. It was better to go on foot than to sit in a car facing a dozen or twenty strangers who would wonder why he looked so miserable. Sensitive people always fancy that everybody is looking at them and criticizing them, when in fact no one cares a straw how they look or what they do. Then too he was in such a morbid state of mind about his debt that it looked positively wrong to spend five cents on a car fare. Even the small change in his pocket was not his own, and that and hundreds of dollars besides must be paid back in sixty days. Otherwise he supposed he would be bankrupt, which to his simple mind meant disgrace as well as ruin. It had stopped raining before he reached Grace Church, and as he crossed Madison Square, the sun shone out and the wind had veered to the west and the sky was clearing all around. The streets had seemed full before, but they were positively choking with people now. The shops drew them in and blew them out again, with much less cash about them, as a Pacific whale swallows water and spouts it out, catching the little fish by thousands with his internal whalebone fishing net. But unlike the fishes, the people were not a quit less pleased. On the contrary, there was something in the faces of almost all that is only seen once a year in New York, and then only for certain hours, and that is real goodwill. For whatever the most home-loving New Yorker may say of his own great city, goodwill to men is not its dominant characteristic, nor peace its most remarkable feature. Even poor over hold, half crazy with disappointment and trouble, could not help noticing the difference between the expressions of the men he had seen downtown, and of those who were thronging the shops and the sidewalks in Fifth Avenue. In Wall Street and adjacent Broadway, a great many looked like more or less discontented birds of prey looking out for the next meal, and a few might have been compared to replete vultures. But here all those who were not alone were talking with their companions, and many were smiling, and now and then a low laugh was heard, which is a very rare thing in Fifth Avenue, though you may often hear children laughing in the park, and sometimes in the cross streets uptown. Then there was another eagerness in the faces, that was not for money, but was the anticipation of giving pleasure before long, and of being pleased too, and that is a great part of the Christmas spirit, if it is not the spirit itself. It is doubtless more blessed to give than to receive, but the receiving is very delightful, and it is cruel to teach children that they must not look forward to having pretty presence. What is Christmas Day to a happy child, but a first glimpse of heaven on earth? Overhold glanced at the faces of the passers-by with a sort of vague surprise, wondering why they looked so happy, and then he remembered what they were doing, and all at once his heart sank like lead. What was to become of the turkey and the ice cream on which Newton had built his hopes for Christmas? Would there be any dinner at all, or any one to cook it? How could he go and get things which he would not be able to pay for on the first of next month, exactly a week after the feast? His imagination could glide lightly over three weeks of starvation, but at the thought of his boy's disappointment, everything went to pieces, the present, the future, everything. He would have walked all the way downtown again to beg for a loan of only a few dollars, enough for that one Christmas dinner, but he knew from the banker's face that such a request would be refused as such, and he dreaded in his misery lest the money should be offered him as a charity. He got home at last, weary and wretched, and then for the first time he remembered the letter he had written asking for employment as a teacher. He had been a very good one, and the college had been sorry to lose him. In two days he might get an answer. All hope was not gone yet, at least not quite all, and his spirits revived a little. Besides, the weather was fine now, even in Connecticut. There would be a sharp frost in the night, and Newton would soon get some skating.