A CHRISTMAS CAROL

: The Children's Book Of Christmas Stories

Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the

goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.



Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of

all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter

of course--and in truth it was something very like it in that house.

Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)

h
ssing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;

Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot

plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the

two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting

themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into

their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came

to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It

was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly

all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but

when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth,

one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,

excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle

of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!



There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was

such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness,

were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the apple-sauce

and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;

indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small

atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet

every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular,

were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates

being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too

nervous to bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.



Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in

turning out. Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the

back-yard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose--a

supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of

horrors were supposed.



Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A

smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an

eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a

laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute

Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding,

like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of

half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly

stuck into the top.



Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he

regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since

their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her

mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of

flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or

thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have

been, flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at

such a thing.



At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth

swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and

considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a

shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew

round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a

one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glasses.

Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.



These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden

goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks,

while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob

proposed:



"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"



Which all the family re-echoed.



"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.







HOW CHRISTMAS CAME TO THE SANTA MARIA FLATS*









There were twenty-six flat children, and none of them had ever been

flat children until that year. Previously they had all been home

children. and as such had, of course, had beautiful Christmases, in

which their relations with Santa Claus had been of the most intimate

and personal nature.



Now, owing to their residence in the Santa Maria flats, and the Lease,

all was changed. The Lease was a strange forbiddance, a ukase issued by

a tyrant, which took from children their natural liberties and rights.



Though, to be sure--as every one of the flat children knew--they were

in the greatest kind of luck to be allowed to live at all, and

especially were they fortunate past the lot of children to be permitted

to live in a flat. There were many flats in the great city, so polished

and carved and burnished and be-lackeyed that children were not allowed

to enter within the portals, save on visits of ceremony in charge of

parents or governesses. And in one flat, where Cecil de Koven le Baron

was born--just by accident and without intending any harm--he was

evicted, along with his parents, by the time he reached the age where

he seemed likely to be graduated from the go-cart. And yet that flat

had not nearly so imposing a name as the Santa Maria.



The twenty-six children of the Santa Maria flats belonged to twenty

families. All of these twenty families were peculiar, as you might

learn any day by interviewing the families concerning one another. But

they bore with each other's peculiarities quite cheerfully and spoke in

the hall when they met. Sometimes this tolerance would even extend to

conversation about the janitor, a thin creature who did the work of

five men. The ladies complained that he never smiled.



"I wouldn't so much mind the hot water pipes leaking now and then," the

ladies would remark in the vestibule, rustling their skirts to show

that they wore silk petticoats, "if only the janitor would smile. But

he looks like a cemetery."



"I know it," would be the response. "I told Mr. Wilberforce last night

that if he would only get a cheerful janitor I wouldn't mind our having

rubber instead of Axminster on the stairs."



"You know we were promised Axminster when we moved in," would be the

plaintive response. The ladies would stand together for a moment

wrapped in gloomy reflection, and then part.



The kitchen and nurse maids felt on the subject, too.



"If Carl Carlsen would only smile," they used to exclaim in sibilant

whispers, as they passed on the way to the laundry. "If he'd come in

an' joke while we wus washin'!"



Only Kara Johnson never said anything on the subject because she knew

why Carlsen didn't smile, and was sorry for it, and would have made it

all right--if it hadn't been for Lars Larsen.



Dear, dear, but this is a digression from the subject of the Lease.

That terrible document was held over the heads of the children as the

Herodian pronunciamento concerning small boys was over the heads of the

Israelites.



It was in the Lease not to run--not to jump--not to yell. It was in the

Lease not to sing in the halls, not to call from story to story, not to

slide down the banisters. And there were blocks of banisters so smooth

and wide and beautiful that the attraction between them and the seats

of the little boy's trousers was like the attraction of a magnet for a

nail. Yet not a leg, crooked or straight, fat or thin, was ever to be

thrown over these polished surfaces!



It was in the Lease, too, that no peddler or agent, or suspicious

stranger was to enter the Santa Maria, neither by the front door nor

the back. The janitor stood in his uniform at the rear, and the lackey

in his uniform at the front, to prevent any such intrusion upon the

privacy of the aristocratic Santa Marias. The lackey, who politely

directed people, and summoned elevators, and whistled up tubes and rang

bells, thus conducting the complex social life of those favoured

apartments, was not one to make a mistake, and admit any person not

calculated to ornament the front parlours of the flatters.



It was this that worried the children.



For how could such a dear, disorderly, democratic rascal as the

children's saint ever hope to gain a pass to that exclusive entrance

and get up to the rooms of the flat children?



"You can see for yourself," said Ernest, who lived on the first floor,

to Roderick who lived on the fourth, "that if Santa Claus can't get up

the front stairs, and can't get up the back stairs, that all he can do

is to come down the chimney. And he can't come down the chimney--at

least, he can't get out of the fireplace."



"Why not?" asked Roderick, who was busy with an "all-day sucker" and

not inclined to take a gloomy view of anything.



"Goosey!" cried Ernest, in great disdain. "I'll show you!" and he led

Roderick, with his sucker, right into the best parlour, where the

fireplace was, and showed him an awful thing.



Of course, to the ordinary observer, there was nothing awful about the

fireplace. Everything in the way of bric-a-brac possessed by the Santa

Maria flatters was artistic. It may have been in the Lease that only

people with esthetic tastes were to be admitted to the apartments.

However that may be, the fireplace, with its vases and pictures and

trinkets, was something quite wonderful. Indian incense burned in a

mysterious little dish, pictures of purple ladies were hung in odd

corners, calendars in letters nobody could read, served to decorate, if

not to educate, and glass vases of strange colours and extraordinary

shapes stood about filled with roses. None of these things were awful.

At least no one would have dared say they were. But what was awful was

the formation of the grate. It was not a hospitable place with

andirons, where noble logs of wood could be laid for the burning, nor

did it have a generous iron basket where honest anthracite could glow

away into the nights. Not a bit of it. It held a vertical plate of

stuff that looked like dirty cotton wool, on which a tiny blue flame

leaped when the gas was turned on and ignited.



"You can see for yourself!" said Ernest tragically.



Roderick could see for himself. There was an inch-wide opening down

which the Friend of the Children could squeeze himself, and, as

everybody knows, he needs a good deal of room now, for he has grown

portly with age, and his pack every year becomes bigger, owing to the

ever-increasing number of girls and boys he has to supply



"Gimini!" said Roderick, and dropped his all-day sucker on the old

Bokara rug that Ernest's mamma had bought the week before at a

fashionable furnishing shop, and which had given the sore throat to all

the family, owing to some cunning little germs that had come over with

the rug to see what American throats were like.



Oh, me, yes! but Roderick could see! Anybody could see! And a boy could

see better than anybody.



"Let's go see the Telephone Boy," said Roderick. This seemed the wisest

thing to do. When in doubt, all the children went to the Telephone Boy,

who was the most fascinating person, with knowledge of the most

wonderful kind and of a nature to throw that of Mrs. Scheherazade

quite, quite in the shade--which, considering how long that loquacious

lady had been a Shade, is perhaps not surprising.



The Telephone Boy knew the answers to all the conundrums in the world,

and a way out of nearly all troubles such as are likely to overtake

boys and girls. But now he had no suggestions to offer and could speak

no comfortable words.



"He can't git inter de front, an' he can't git inter de back, an' he

can't come down no chimney in dis here house, an' I tell yer dose," he

said, and shut his mouth grimly, while cold apprehension crept around

Ernest's heart and took the sweetness out of Roderick's sucker.



Nevertheless, hope springs eternal, and the boys each and individually

asked their fathers--tremendously wise and good men--if they thought

there was any hope that Santa Claus would get into the Santa Maria

flats, and each of the fathers looked up from his paper and said he'd

be blessed if he did!



And the words sunk deep and deep and drew the tears when the doors were

closed and the soft black was all about and nobody could laugh because

a boy was found crying! The girls cried too--for the awful news was

whistled up tubes and whistled down tubes, till all the twenty-six flat

children knew about it. The next day it was talked over in the brick

court, where the children used to go to shout and race. But on this day

there was neither shouting nor racing. There was, instead, a shaking of

heads, a surreptitious dropping of tears, a guessing and protesting and

lamenting. All the flat mothers congratulated themselves on the fact

that their children were becoming so quiet and orderly, and wondered

what could have come over them when they noted that they neglected to

run after the patrol wagon as it whizzed round the block.



It was decided, after a solemn talk, that every child should go to its

own fireplace and investigate. In the event of any fireplace being

found with an opening big enough to admit Santa Claus, a note could be

left directing him along the halls to the other apartments. A spirit of

universal brotherhood had taken possession of the Santa Maria flatters.

Misery bound them together. But the investigation proved to be

disheartening. The cruel asbestos grates were everywhere. Hope lay

strangled!



As time went on, melancholy settled upon the flat children. The parents

noted it, and wondered if there could be sewer gas in the apartments.

One over-anxious mother called in a physician, who gave the poor little

child some medicine which made it quite ill. No one suspected the

truth, though the children were often heard to say that it was evident

that there was to be no Christmas for them! But then, what more natural

for a child to say, thus hoping to win protestations--so the mothers

reasoned, and let the remark pass.



The day before Christmas was gray and dismal. There was no

wind--indeed, there was a sort of tightness in the air, as if the

supply of freshness had given out. People had headaches--even the

Telephone Boy was cross--and none of the spirit of the time appeared to

enliven the flat children. There appeared to be no stir--no mystery. No

whisperings went on in the corners--or at least, so it seemed to the

sad babies of the Santa Maria.



"It's as plain as a monkey on a hand-organ," said the Telephone Boy to

the attendants at his salon in the basement, "that there ain't to be no

Christmas for we--no, not for we!"



Had not Dorothy produced, at this junction, from the folds of her

fluffy silken skirts several substantial sticks of gum, there is no

saying to what depths of discouragement the flat children would have

fallen!



About six o'clock it seemed as if the children would smother for lack

of air! It was very peculiar. Even the janitor noticed it. He spoke

about it to Kara at the head of the back stairs, and she held her hand

so as to let him see the new silver ring on her fourth finger, and he

let go of the rope on the elevator on which he was standing and dropped

to the bottom of the shaft, so that Kara sent up a wild hallo of alarm.

But the janitor emerged as melancholy and unruffled as ever, only

looking at his watch to see if it had been stopped by the concussion.



The Telephone Boy, who usually got a bit of something hot sent down to

him from one of the tables, owing to the fact that he never ate any

meal save breakfast at home, was quite forgotten on this day, and dined

off two russet apples, and drew up his belt to stop the ache--for the

Telephone Boy was growing very fast indeed, in spite of his poverty,

and couldn't seem to stop growing somehow, although he said to himself

every day that it was perfectly brutal of him to keep on that way when

his mother had so many mouths to feed.



Well, well, the tightness of the air got worse. Every one was cross at

dinner and complained of feeling tired afterward, and of wanting to go

to bed. For all of that it was not to get to sleep, and the children

tossed and tumbled for a long time before they put their little hands

in the big, soft shadowy clasp of the Sandman, and trooped away after

him to the happy town of sleep.



It seemed to the flat children that they had been asleep but a few

moments when there came a terrible burst of wind that shook even that

great house to its foundations. Actually, as they sat up in bed and

called to their parents or their nurses, their voices seemed smothered

with roar. Could it be that the wind was a great wild beast with a

hundred tongues which licked at the roof of the building? And how many

voices must it have to bellow as it did?



Sounds of falling glass, of breaking shutters, of crashing chimneys

greeted their ears--not that they knew what all these sounds meant.

They only knew that it seemed as if the end of the world had come.

Ernest, miserable as he was, wondered if the Telephone Boy had gotten

safely home, or if he were alone in the draughty room in the basement;

and Roderick hugged his big brother, who slept with him and said, "Now

I lay me," three times running, as fast as ever his tongue would say it.



After a terrible time the wind settled down into a steady howl like a

hungry wolf, and the children went to sleep, worn out with fright and

conscious that the bedclothes could not keep out the cold.



Dawn came. The children awoke, shivering. They sat up in bed and looked

about them--yes, they did, the whole twenty-six of them in their

different apartments and their different homes. And what do you suppose

they saw--what do you suppose the twenty-six flat children saw as they

looked about them?



Why, stockings, stuffed full, and trees hung full, and boxes packed

full! Yes, they did! It was Christmas morning, and the bells were

ringing, and all the little flat children were laughing, for Santa

Claus had come! He had really come! In the wind and wild weather, while

the tongues of the wind licked hungrily at the roof, while the wind

howled like a hungry wolf, he had crept in somehow and laughing, no

doubt, and chuckling, without question, he had filled the stockings and

the trees and the boxes! Dear me, dear me, but it was a happy time! It

makes me out of breath to think what a happy time it was, and how

surprised the flat children were, and how they wondered how it could

ever have happened.



But they found out, of course! It happened in the simplest way! Every

skylight in the place was blown off and away, and that was how the wind

howled so, and how the bedclothes would not keep the children warm, and

how Santa Claus got in. The wind corkscrewed down into these holes, and

the reckless children with their drums and dolls, their guns and toy

dishes, danced around in the maelstrom and sang:



"Here's where Santa Claus came!

This is how he got in-

We should count it a sin

Yes, count it a shame,

If it hurt when he fell on the floor."



Roderick's sister, who was clever for a child of her age, and who had

read Monte Cristo ten times, though she was only eleven, wrote this

poem, which every one thought very fine.



And of course all the parents thought and said that Santa Claus must

have jumped down the skylights. By noon there were other skylights put

in, and not a sign left of the way he made his entrance--not that the

way mattered a bit, no, not a bit.



Perhaps you think the Telephone Boy didn't get anything! Maybe you

imagine that Santa Claus didn't get down that far. But you are

mistaken. The shaft below one of the skylights went away to the bottom

of the building, and it stands to reason that the old fellow must have

fallen way through. At any rate there was a copy of "Tom Sawyer," and a

whole plum pudding, and a number of other things, more useful but not

so interesting, found down in the chilly basement room. There were,

indeed.



In closing it is only proper to mention that Kara Johnson crocheted a

white silk four-in-hand necktie for Carl Carlsen, the janitor--and the

janitor smiled!



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