Christmas Waits

 P. Monsted, inscribed Langseth, and dated 1919

        "In England, more than in this country, I think, little troops of children go around singing Christmas carols under the windows of their friends. And for those of the Readers who live in countries where it snows I will whisper that there is no better fun, when the holidays come around, than to go down to the best stable in town and whisper to your friend who manages it that you want on Christmas Eve the biggest sleigh he has, with two horses or four, as he thinks best, and all the furs that can be piled in, and then start with the best of the drivers and pick up a sleigh load of young people -- boys and girls. Let it be five or twenty-five, according as the size of the sleigh suggests. But be sure that Joseph Haydn or Luke Tenor, or some one who can lead them well, Is tucked in-with the rest. Then spend the hours before ten o'clock in the evening singing carols under the windows of their friends.

       Under the full moon, on the snow still white, with sixteen children at the happiest, and with the blessed memories of the best the world has ever had, there can be nothing better than two or three such hours.

        "Oh, we went to twenty places that night, I suppose! We went to the grandest places and we went to the meanest. Everywhere they wished us a Merry Christmas and we wished them a Merry Christmas. Everywhere a little crowd gathered around us and then we dashed away far enough to gather quite another crowd. Then we would go back, perhaps, not sorry to double on our steps, if need were, and left every crowd with a happy thought of 'The Star, the Manger and the Child.'"

       A very tender and unselfish friend and companion of mine, living in a large city and without any bank account which enabled him to go into Howland's stable, or Hobson's, and give an order for four horses and twenty-live bearskins, used to take an evening walk as the sun went down before Christmas Eve, and take note of the boys or the girls who were flattening their noses against the windows of the toy shops. And after standing a minute or two he would select his boy and lead him in. "Which of all these things in the window would you like to have most?" he would say. And then that particular thing would be bought and paid for and wrapped up in a parcel and given to the amazed child, to whom this was much the same thing as if Santa Claus had driven his reindeer over the roof and had come down through the chimney.

       Yes, and as I write I remember another of the princes among men, who looks in at the post office every day of the week before Christmas, and with his own eyes sees the unfortunate parcels which have been left for Uncle Sam to carry by mail and which should arrive on Christmas morning. They should arrive, but alas! the postage is deficient, and here they are stranded d. p., which means "deficient postage." Then is it that this Santa Claus without a reindeer bids the clerk make up the deficiencies, and in his way helps on the belated present." Generous Hearts.

Sleigh Ride sung by The Ronettes