Part 2

He stayed his rapid progress, as another query presented itself. What would this very prudent and sedate help-meet say and think of another bold innovation upon established rules, to wit, this expedition and its probable results? How should he meet the stare of mingled astonishment and rebuke that would rest upon his freight of “useless” playthings, upon his return home? She disapproved of toys, except when great moderation was displayed in their bestowal. Nettie had but one doll in the world, and, careful as she was of this treasure, her loving arts could not conceal the ravages of time; said manikin having been Aunt Mary’s gift to her niece, upon her third birthday. Ally had never owned a hobby-horse. His mother had a dread of “rough plays.” Our hero was quite aware that on this occasion he was not inclined to moderation. He would cheerfully have bought the entire contents of any one of the illuminated windows whose splendors drew around them a swarm of admiring juveniles, as a hive of honey would tempt hungry bees. The difficulty was to know what would best please the unsuspecting twain at home.

“This sort of thing is not in my line!” he soliloquized. “I suppose there is a difference between girls’ and boys’ playthings. I have it! These people ought to know their business! I will state my dilemma, and take whatever they advise.”

Thus resolving, he entered the largest and most brilliant toy emporium he had yet seen, and making his way, with considerable labor, through the throng of eager buyers, presented himself at the counter. Luckily, the saleswoman nearest him had just dismissed a customer, and turned to him with an engaging smile. She looked tired--as well she might, poor thing! having been on her feet for twelve hours, and hard at work all the time--but it was not in a kind-hearted tradeswoman’s nature to be cross on Christmas eve.

“What can I show you, sir?” she asked, politely.

“That is what you must tell _me_, madam! I want some toys for my little girl, aged six, and my boy, who is two years older. If you can inform me what will suit them, you will oblige me, and please them.”

His fluent, pleasant speech amazed himself. Certainly, the witchery of the festal eve was working upon him fast.

“Has your daughter a tea or dinner set?” inquired the shop-woman, taking down two wooden boxes; pulling back the sliding tops, and rummaging among the shred paper used for packing the fragile contents. “Here is something very handsome.”

“Just the thing!” ejaculated the father, upon beholding the wee tureen; covered and shallow dishes, gravy-boat, saltcellars, casters, and a dozen plates, white, with a rim of gold; all so graceful in design, so dainty in material, as to elicit his unqualified admiration. Already he saw, in imagination, Nettie’s eyes glisten at sight of them; her deft fingers arranging them--cunning little housewife that she was.

“Then you don’t care for the tea-set?” making a movement to close the box.

“I--don’t--know!” hesitatingly. “I suppose she will want to spread a supper and breakfast table, as well as play dinner, won’t she?”

“If she has not cups and saucers already, I would certainly recommend you to take these,” and the artful tempter made a tea-tray of the lid of the case, setting out the service so attractively, that her inexperienced customer speedily regarded the second array of china as a “must have.”

“Now, perhaps, you will look at a table!” pursued the woman, leading the way to the back of the store. “We have a novelty in that line--an extension-table.”

“Of course! how stupid in me not to remember that the china would be useless unless she had something upon which to arrange it!”

Mr. Dryden had entered thoroughly into the spirit of the enterprise, and was highly diverted at his oversight; very grateful to her who had corrected his blunder. The table was a neat affair, with turned legs and polished top, and constructed, as had been said, upon the extension principle. Mr. Dryden took it on the spot.

“Chairs?” he said, interrogatively.

It was now the lady’s turn to be ashamed of _her_ forgetfulness. Half a dozen cane-seat chairs were added to the pile, which betokened Mr. Dryden to be a valuable customer. Then followed a case of knives, a knife-box, and an assortment of silver (?) ware, and both parties came to a momentary halt. The gentleman recovered himself first.

“Now, a doll--for which she can keep house!”

“Wax finish, porcelain, biscuit, or rubber?” said the other, glibly. “Dressed, or undressed?”

“Dressed--I suppose, since to-morrow is so near. As to the rest, I am no judge. But I want the prettiest doll in the establishment.”

His experience in this species of merchandise was so limited that he might well be excused for starting at the wonderfully life-like lady paraded for his inspection. Her hair waved in natural ringlets; she rolled her eyes, as the shopwoman moved her to and fro. She was dressed in the height of the mode--neither gloves, nor hat, nor parasol being wanting to complete her toilet; and when, in obedience to a dexterous pull of a wire upon her left side, she squeaked “Mamma!” and, responding to a similar twitch of the corresponding muscle under the right arm, she cried “Papa!” Mr. Dryden was overwhelmed.

“What _will_ toy makers do next?” he articulated.

“The art of manufacturing dolls is carried to great perfection,” quietly replied the woman. “Did you say that you would take this, sir?”

Take it! what could have bribed him to forego the treat of witnessing Nettie’s rapture in the survey of this resplendent and accomplished demoiselle?

“We have some very pretty doll-carriages, in which the lady can take the air,” was the next attack, and Mr. Dryden fell a willing sacrifice to this new snare.

In very compassion for her victim, the woman directed his thoughts to the boy’s gifts. A velocipede; a wheelbarrow, with spade, rake, and hoe; a set of jackstraws, for winter evenings; a football and a sled made up the complement that was to transport the semi-infidel to the seventh heaven of ecstacy.

Truth obliges me to mention that the lavish parent sustained a slight shock when the obliging saleswoman figured up and presented the amount of his indebtedness; but he rallied bravely.

“Christmas comes but once a year!” he said, manfully, and paid his bill with a good grace.

“You could not purchase the same quantity of happiness so cheaply in any other manner,” remarked the bland merchant, oracularly.

The tit-bit of wisdom was assuredly not original with her, but it impressed the hearer as a profound and truthful observation--one well worth remembering. He was getting on very swiftly, indeed, in the acquisition of Christmas lore.

“You have but two children, then, sir?” remarked the lady, casually, in handing him his change.

“Bless my life! I forgot the twins!” exclaimed the father, aghast. “But I suppose they are too young to appreciate Christmas presents.”

“What age?” queried the other, sweetly.

“Two and a half.”

“My dear sir! they would be disconsolate if they were overlooked! Children understand these matters astonishingly soon.”

And having ascertained the sex of the twins, she selected two rubber balls, and two sets of building blocks for their delectation.

“Our porter will take them for you,” she said, amused at Mr. Dryden’s amazed contemplation of the dimensions of the pyramid she constructed of his purchases. “Please favor us with your address!”

“Really, a little more practice will render me an adept in toy shopping!” thought Mr. Dryden, complacently, when he was beyond the enchanted ground, the seductions of which had lightened both heart and pocket. “It is not a disagreeable or difficult operation, after all.”

As he neared his own door on his return, his pockets crammed with conical packages of sugar-plums, nuts, and crystallized fruits, he overtook the porter with his barrow.

“Quietly, my man!” he said, inserting his latch-key in the lock with secret trepidation of spirit. “It would never do to awaken the children. Or to attract my wife’s attention,” he added, inly.

The porter’s load was transferred to the hall so silently that even Mrs. Dryden’s cat-like ears did not hear any bustle. Mr. Dryden sent the man off with a gratuity, and proceeded to dispose of the presents in the following style: the table bestraddled the right arm, and upon it were the boxes of crockery, surmounted by the chairs; the case of jackstraws and several other light articles. The velocipede was borne in like manner upon the left coat sleeve; then came the wheelbarrow; the boxes of building-blocks, the balls, and on the top, held firmly in its place by Mr. Dryden’s chin, was the doll, In the right hand he carried the sled; in the other Dolly’s carriage. This staid, prosaic _pater-familias_ would have made no bad representation of the patron saint of the anniversary, the suggestion of whose existence he had scouted, a few hours previously, as he slowly ascended the stairs on tiptoe, his face radiant with arch delight, despite the cowardly fear tugging at his heart-strings, as to the reception in store for him at the hands of his better half. Treading yet more delicately, in passing his sleeping-room, wherein, he had no doubt, Mrs. Dryden was soundly reposing, it being ten o’clock, her invariable bedtime, he pushed open the door of the smaller chamber beyond, and entered. The gas was burning--not brightly--but it enabled him to see with terrible distinctness the figure that started up in the aisle between the beds and confronted him with an excited air. It was his wife!

Dropping the curtain upon a tableau which the reader can picture to himself better than I can describe, we will take a step or two backward in our story.

“And it’s sorry for the children I am, this blessed night!” said Ellen, to the cook, over their dish of tea. “Sorra a bit of a merry-making will they have to-morrow--and they such good, peaceful little things, too! I was asking Miss Nettie, just now, if I shouldn’t hang up her stockings, at a venture-like; ‘for,’ sez I, ‘there’s no knowing but the saint might pop down the chimney, unbeknownst to you, and ’twould be a pity not to be ready for him.’ For, you see, my heart was that tinder towards the lonesome craturs, that I thought I would step out myself, presently, and buy some candies and apples to put into their poor, empty, desolate little stockings. But, ‘No,’ says she, kinder pitiful, ‘I am afraid Mamma might not like it, Ellen. She doesn’t believe in keeping Christmas.’ And wid that she give a sigh, like a sorrowful woman, and Master Ally growled over something cross to himself.”

“It’s ra’al hard--that’s what it is!” responded Biddy. “They begged their Mamma, to-day, to let me fry some doughnuts--‘Just this once, Mamma,’ says they, ‘because to-morrow’s Christmas’--and she wouldn’t hear a word to it. Ah! no good ever came of ch’ating childer out of the fun the Lord meant they should have.”

“There’s the parlor bell!” said Ellen, jumping up. “What’s wanted now, I wonder?”

Her mistress stood upon the rug before the fire in the parlor, hat and cloak on.

“Ellen, if you have finished your supper, I want you to get your bonnet and shawl and go out with me. Take a basket along. I am going to buy some things for the children.”

Her voice shook in uttering these few sentences; and, although her face was averted, the girl was positive that she had been weeping. Brimful of curiosity and excitement, she dashed up-stairs for her wrappings, then down to the kitchen to ask Biddy to listen for sounds from the nursery while she was out.

“For we are going a-Christmassing--glory be to all the saints--St. Nicholas, in particular! for he must have put it into her head to remember the swate innocents.”

It is not our purpose to follow them in their tramp, as we have traced the course of the lady’s husband. Suffice it to say, that Ellen’s basket was heavily burdened when they re-entered the house, and her mistress bore sundry parcels in her hands, all of which were carefully deposited upon the carpet beside the cots of the calmly-sleeping children. Ellen was made happy, on her own account, by the present of a bank-bill for her private spending, and intrusted with another of the same value for Biddy; then excused from further service. If the maid had been mistaken in her surmise as to the tears she had seen in eyes which were generally dry and bright, there was no doubt as to the melting mood that overtook the mother when she removed the four stockings from the place where Nettie had laid them. She even pressed them to her lips before fastening the tops of each pair together with a stout pin, and hanging them over the footboards of the beds. To unpack the basket and undo papers, with as little rustling as was practicable, was her next act. She paused, when everything was uncovered, to survey her acquisitions. Her expenditures had been on a scale far less grand than her husband’s, but maternal tact had guided her in the selection of acceptable gifts. There were a cooking-stove, with its assortment of pans, griddles, and kettles; a work-box of satinwood, lined with red velvet, and well stocked; a cradle with a baby-doll asleep under the muslin curtain, for Nettie. For Ally, she had provided a bag of beautiful agate marbles; a fine humming-top; a paint-box, and a set--fourteen in number--of Abbott’s inimitable “Rollo” books for boys. She had not forgotten the twins, as was evidenced by a couple of whips; two picture-books, and two tin horses mounted upon wheels; one attached to an express wagon, the other to a baker’s cart. Nor had she disdained to call upon the confectioner. Her conical bundles contained “Christmas mixture;” plain sugar candy; peppermint lozenges and oranges; more wholesome, or, rather, less hurtful sweets than the richer and costly delicacies that had captivated her lord’s fancy. Altogether, the sight was a pleasant one, and a satisfactory, if one might judge by the gleam of comfort that overspread the tear-stained visage. She had just dropped a handful of the “mixture” into the foot of Ally’s sock, when a soft tap at the door startled her. It was Ellen, and she bore a plate, covered with a napkin, in her hand.

“If you plaze, mem--Biddy hopes you won’t be offended, mem--but the children were so disappointed to-day, mem; and when I told her you were going to give them a Christmas, she made so bold as to fry them a few doughnuts. She wouldn’t have taken the privilege, only, seeing Christmas comes but once a year, and it’s good children they are, mem!”

“They are, Ellen! Tell Biddy that I am much obliged to her. These are very nice, indeed!”

Yet she cried over them when the girl was gone. Her very servants pitied the cruelly-oppressed little ones!

“I have been a hard, unsympathizing mother!” she thought, sobbingly. “God forgive me this, my sin!” She wiped away the tears, and resumed her task. “William will think I have lost my senses!” she ruminated, cramming an orange into the leg of the tightly-stuffed sock. “But I can’t help it, if he does!”

And, as if invoked by her unspoken thought, her husband, accoutred as I have described, stood before her.

“William!”

“Emily!”

The two detected culprits stared at one another for an instant, in unuttered, because unutterable amazement; then, as the truth dawned upon their minds, they burst into a fit of laughter that threatened to awake the dreamers.

“Hush-sh-sh!” said Mrs. Dryden, wiping away the tears of mirth that now hung where bitterer drops had trickled awhile ago, and pointing to the beds, “Let me see what you have been doing?”

The prudent economist could not repress a single exclamation of gentle reproof, as she examined the store. “William Dryden! And in these hard times, my dear!”

“Christmas comes but once a year, wifie! and then I had to make up for lost time, you know. I’ll tell you how it happened, and then you won’t blame me. I felt badly after tea, and came up to say a kind word to them”--nodding towards the brother and sister--“before they went to sleep, and, that door being ajar, I heard them talking”--

“And listened, as I did at _that_ one!” cried Mrs. Dryden, throwing her arms around his neck, and beginning to cry afresh. “O husband! I have been so miserable ever since! have felt so guilty! Only to think, that I was teaching my children to hate me and to hate their home--making their lives wretched!”

“Don’t think of it, dear! After this, there will be peace and good-will among us!” soothed the husband, his own eyes shining suspiciously. “If we have made a mistake, we are ready to correct it. Now, let us see what disposition can be made of this cargo of valuables. And I left a lot of gimcracks--sweet things, you know--down stairs.”

Christmas morning came, clear and brilliant, with frosty sunlight, and Mrs. Dryden, as was her custom, tapped at the children’s door, having beforehand stealthily unclosed it far enough to allow herself and her accomplice a view of the interior of the dormitory.

“Come, little birds, it is time you were out of your nests!”

The cheery, loving voice aroused the sleepers more thoroughly than sterner accents would have done. The mother was spared the pain of knowing that the novelty of the address made it so efficacious.

“Yes, Mamma!” answered Nettie, starting up in bed.

“All right!” responded Ally, and he turned over.

Thus it happened that the eyes of both rested simultaneously upon an object in the centre of the apartment, and a ringing cry of joy escaped them.

“Nettie, Santa Claus _did_ come!”

“Ally, don’t you know what I prayed for?”

They were upon the floor before the words had left their lips. The next few minutes were passed in speechless admiration of the miraculous edifice that had arisen during their hours of unconsciousness. Mr. Dryden had made a second trip to the street, the night before, to buy a Christmas tree. A broad, flat box, covered with a white cloth, formed the base upon which this was set. The larger toys were placed around the trunk, and smaller ones hung among the gilt balls, flags, and flowers, that decked the boughs. Miss Dolly sat at the root upon one of her new chairs, her foot upon the rocker of the new cradle, and, perched up in the topmost branches, was Santa Claus--white beard, pipe, pack, and all--smiling broadly upon his enraptured devotees.

Nettie broke the spell of ecstatic silence. “Dear Mamma! Papa, darling!” she screamed. “Come and see! It is just like fairy-land!”

And flying to the door, her curls streaming back, and her face fairly luminous with delight, she ran directly into her parents’ arms.

“Christmas shall be an ‘institution’ in our family, hereafter!” said Mr. Dryden, that night, when the happy children had kissed them “good-night” over and over again. “I am a better man for last evening’s work and this day’s innocent frolic. I feel twenty years younger, and fifty degrees happier. It pays, my dear--_it pays!_”

A Christmas Talk

With Mothers.

A Christmas Talk with Mothers.

“I do not approve of lady lecturers, as a general thing,” I remarked meditatively, a while since, to a gentleman, in whose presence I am somewhat prone to think aloud.

“You allude to _public_ lectures?” said he, interrogatively, with unnecessary emphasis.

“Of course!”

“Oh!” and he resumed the study of a very dry-looking volume.

Affecting not to observe the mischievous gleam of his eye, I resumed:--

“But I am sometimes tempted to ask the use of your lecture-room for one evening, to call together an audience from which all persons of the masculine gender shall be excluded, and, then and there, harangue my own sex upon a subject that has engrossed much of my time and thoughts for eight years past.”

“What is it--cookery or dry goods? Either topic would be popular.”

“Something more important than both put together!” I retorted. My theme would be--

“‘_The Rights of Babies and the Responsibilities of Mothers!_’”

My auditor raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips very slightly--just enough to give one the impression that he would have whistled, had not politeness restrained him. Seeing that I was in nowise abashed by these discouraging manifestations, he offered an amendment to my resolution.

“Better write your discourse, instead, and have it printed.”

“But,” I objected, “what I would say would be addressed to women alone. We don’t care to let men know how unmercifully we can handle one another. Moreover, I should use great plainness of speech”--

“I think I can set your mind at rest on that point,” interrupted my companion, drily. “I don’t believe many men would read your treatise.”

Whereupon he picked up _his_ treatise and withdrew to his sanctum, leaving me to arrange the heads of my “discourse,” or to ponder the meaning of his last equivocal observation.

And thus it came to pass, that, sitting lonely here, and arranging plans for the coming festival--the jubilee that, throughout Christendom, commemorates the birth of a little Child in the grotto of far-off Bethlehem; musing of that Child and his mother, while from the wall, the Mater Dolorosa, wondrous in beauty and in sorrow, looked down upon me--thought followed thought, and memories--sweet, tender, and full of joy, others sad, yet precious, and mingled with wistful yearning, flowed in upon me, and I have taken up my pen, not to indite a lecture or an essay, but a simple, homely, heartfelt Christmas letter to my fellow-workers in the great mission to which God has called us.

“And first, let me remark, by way of ‘beginning at the beginning,’ as old-time teachers were wont to exhort their scholars to do--that _Babies have a right to be_.”

This is not the page whereon to record a frank and full opinion upon such a subject, nor is mine the will or ability to treat of the mysteries of iniquity, the violence done to conscience, humanity, and natural affection, that have come to be talked of in the so-called higher circles as familiar things, convenient and expedient measures for leaving fashionable mothers--(does not the holy word look like a bitter sarcasm, written in this connection?)--for leaving frivolous, heartless mothers, I say, at liberty to follow the devices of their own foolish brains, and delivering sordid fathers from what I have heard professing Christians style--“the curse of a large family.” I know that such abominations do exist, and so does the fair reader, who is ready to ostracize me for daring to hint thus publicly at what she privately approves and advocates. I can see that our pleasure-loving neighbors over the water are in a fair way to be rivaled, if not eclipsed, in certain respects, by their American cousins. Further than this I will not go. I only refer to this, to me revolting subject, to substantiate a conclusion at which I have arrived in the course of my serious and often sadly troubled lucubrations with regard to this matter. It is my conviction that the real root of the evil lies back of this, its most reprehensible offshoot. I have no means of settling the date at which the opinion or prejudice was implanted on this continent, but certain it is, that a vast proportion--I fear, a large majority--of American mothers, would secretly, if not openly, controvert my first proposition. There is among us, if not a woeful deficiency of genuine maternal instinct, a style--a fashion, if you choose to call it, and a very vile fashion it is--of deprecating as a grievous affliction the repeated visits of what a higher authority than “the noted Dr. ----, from Paris,” or the autocrat of neighborhood gossips, has declared to be among Heaven’s best gifts to human kind.

“Poor Mrs. A., with her eight children, like a flight of stairs--just two years between them”--is, by her friends’ very pity, made to feel that she is, in some sense, the inferior of Mrs. B., who “manages _so_ beautifully!” She has but three, and they are seven years apart.