Judge — December 3, 1910 — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

over there. We knew that round the comer from our house there was a store kept by three red cheeked German ladies and to that store people came in carriages from New York—right across the ferry and up Fulton Street to buy worsted in pretty colored skeins. But that store did not appeal to us at THECHRISTMASGIRL Christmas and it You catch her ‘neath the always smelled her: have grown up we She's quite resigned to have noticed the have it so, And takes what's com- ing to her. same smell in wholesale dry goods stores and conclude that it has something to do with worsted But there was a store where we used to go with delight, a store where they had hobby horses that you could try when the clerk was busy waiting on somebody else. No hobby horse was ever stabled in our house, but we knew a boy who had a wonderful kind of hobby horse that galloped like a real horse along the street just by rocking up and down on him. Since we grew up we have described this horse to those of our elders who are still living and none of them can remember it and say we must have dreamed it, but there is no doubt that that wooden horse used to gallop around the block like mad. It may have been the only one of its kind and we may have been the only children who ever noticed it but— On asking brother if he remembered that horse he gave me a peculiar look and then said he had an idea for a children's song and he went to the piano and began to com- pose. He is a composer by trade. After it was all composed and set down on paper I glanced at it and saw he'd called it * Dreams of Childhood.” All right, then I was the only one who ever saw that horse except the boy that owned it and I don’t know who he was. I don’t think I ever knew him I only watched the horse gallop past the window and wished I had one. But I did have a velocipede in course of time. Yes, sir, a three-wheeled velocipede, painted red and black. It was the hand- somest velocipede I ever saw in my life. Why, I could ride to Prospect Park on it. And I did. Of course this was years after the sled came (that sled was for by the way), and although brother was too young to ride I did not lack for a companion, for a boy on the block above had found a like present underneath his Christmas stocking. He was sorry it was not in the stocking. He said a Christmas present didn't seem half as Christmassy outside of a stocking as it did in one. Now, there was where we differed, because we didn't hang up our stockings at all. We JUDGE had a large clothes basket and the night before Christmas cach member of the house- hold put his or her present into the basket and then came away. Grandmother and sister arranged the presents the last thing before going to bed so that brother would be sure to have something right away, be otherwise he wouldn't have been interested in the proceedings. Just before going to bed grandmother would put a white sheet over the basket It covered not only the basket, but also some of the bulkier presents that were on the floor. We never could get to sleep until after grandmother had shut the door of the sitting room where the basket lay Father didn’t come home until very late— sometimes ajter nine o'clock and grand- mother always went to bed early Christmas ‘¢; So after all was still, brother and I would. get out of bed and creep on tip toe in our bare feet to the sitting room and open the door and look in. Once brother got as far as a package that lay on the outskirts and was preparing to unwrap it, but that seemed awful to me be- cause it wasn't Christmas yet and I took hold of his night gown and yanked him backwards and tore it, and made him mad, and he hit me with the present and broke it We didn’t know what it was because we were both frightened and hurried back to bed And then I found my nose was bleeding— on the outside of it—from a scratch I'd re- ceived when he hit me and I told him that he had committed a hi-enous crime. I told him that hi-enous came from hyena and that hyenas killed dead people and ate them and I got him crying before I stopped. And all on Christmas Eve He was an excitable little fellow and he got all worked up over it and finally he came and kissed me on the nose where the scratch was and said he was sorry Then I forgave him very grandly. What's the use of Christmas Eve if you can't for- giv Next moming father waked us boys « then we opened our eyes which had reall been open behind their lids for some time anc we didn’t want any breakfast because we wanted our presents, but father said that breakfast would do us as much good on Christmas as on any other day and when he was a boy they didn’t have Christmas where he lived down in Maine We did feel so sorry for him. We nibbled at something or other for breakfast and then we rushed up the base- ment stairs and up the other stairs till we ume to the sitting room and father and grandmother and sister followed after. Then father pulled the mysterious sheet off the basket and picked up a package that lay out in the middle of the floor *T wonder how that got there" said grand- mother in her sweet voice. (Grandmother had been a singer in her younger days.) No one answered, but I looked at brother and brother looked at me. “From sister to bruvve handed the package to bro! was his pet name, just as Brudder Bones" was mine. He opened the package and dis- clesed a horse and wagon made of tin. But the horse was broken off at the shafts and A read father and brother began to cry and I went to the look- ing glass and looked at my nose. The scratch was quite red and it had been made by a broken shaft. Grandmother looked at father and laughed and I believe she knew what had happened. She was rather wonderful at knowing. The very next present dried brother's tears. It was a lovely handkerchief with a picture of Red Riding Hood on it. And then came a box of lead soldiers. By that time I began to think that Christ- mas was a long time coming to me, but when it of red roller skates with wooden wheels From sister to Brudder Bones" was di closed to my view, I ran and hugged her and then sat down to put them on. Everybody had at least four presents and we children had more. Why,I had three of Horatio Alger's books and one by Harry Castlemon and a penknife from Naples; and the velocipede came that Christmas, I think. Grandmother always went to church and so did sister, but we made the plea that it wasn’t Sunday and were let off. Go to church when you could read “Tattered Tom?" Of the turkey dinner and the delightful overeating; the stuffing with candy and figs and raisins, the snow squall in the after- noon and the hope there would be enough for sledding—well, others remember those things, so there's no use telling about them. 1 wanted to tell how I rode to Prospect k an my velocipede and was "held up” by a gang of boys from Ninth Avenue who “pucked me in the, snoot' and stole six cents from me; and how Fatty Smith on the next block above us insisted on riding my nd broke it right in two, but nd this is a velocipede all that was after Christmas Christmas number. I wonder if they have Christmas now. I left Brooklyn long ago, so I can’t say. The flaunting display in New York, the tired clerks and the cross shoppers, the expensive presents—those are not Christmas. But if they do have it anywhere, I wish you all a Merry Christmas Z Z SB Ze ES S 2 NN Mr. Jack Horner sat in the corner Of a street car looking shy, While scanning the news He cut off the views Of his wifey's Christmas tie. comicbooks.com am sath