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A LITTLE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS




[Illustration: "What are you doing?" he asked, drawing near.
FRONTISPIECE. _See page_ 69.]




    A LITTLE BOOK OF
    CHRISTMAS

    BY
    JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
    ARTHUR E. BECHER

    BOSTON
    LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
    1912




    _Copyright, 1912_,
    BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

    _All rights reserved_

    Published, September, 1912


    THE COLONIAL PRESS
    C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.




CONTENTS


                                           PAGE

    THE CONVERSION OF HETHERINGTON            5

    THE CHILD WHO HAD EVERYTHING BUT--       47

    SANTA CLAUS AND LITTLE BILLEE            87

    THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN SANTAS           129




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


    "What are you doing?" he asked, drawing near      _Frontispiece_

    She stood with her eyes popping out of her head          PAGE 39

    He thought it very strange that Santa Claus'
    hand should be so red and cold and rough                      91

    One by one the prisoners of the night dropped
    in surreptitiously                                           155




A TOAST TO SANTA CLAUS


    Whene'er I find a man who don't
      Believe in Santa Claus,
    And spite of all remonstrance won't
      Yield up to logic's laws,
    And see in things that lie about
      The proof by no means dim,
    I straightway cut that fellow out,
      And don't believe in him.

    The good old Saint is everywhere
      Along life's busy way.
    We find him in the very air
      We breathe day after day--
    Where courtesy and kindliness
      And love are joined together,
    To give to sorrow and distress
      A touch of sunny weather.

    We find him in the maiden's eyes
      Beneath the mistletoe,
    A-sparkling as the star-lit skies
      All golden in their glow.
    We find him in the pressure of
      The hand of sympathy,
    And where there's any thought of love
      He's mighty sure to be.

    So here's to good old Kindliheart!
      The best bet of them all,
    Who never fails to do his part
      In life's high festival;
    The worthy bearer of the crown
      With which we top the Saint.
    A bumper to his health, and down
      With them that say he ain't!




THE CONVERSION OF HETHERINGTON


I

Hetherington wasn't half a bad sort of a fellow, but he had his
peculiarities, most of which were the natural defects of a lack of
imagination. He didn't believe in ghosts, or Santa Claus, or any of the
thousands of other things that he hadn't seen with his own eyes, and as
he walked home that rather chilly afternoon just before Christmas and
found nearly every corner of the highway decorated with bogus Saints,
wearing the shoddy regalia of Kris-Kringle, the sight made him a trifle
irritable. He had had a fairly good luncheon that day, one indeed that
ought to have mellowed his disposition materially, but which somehow or
other had not so resulted. In fact, Hetherington was in a state of raspy
petulance that boded ill for his digestion, and when he had reached the
corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, the constant iteration
and reiteration of these shivering figures of the god of the Yule had
got on his nerves to such an extent as to make him aggressively
quarrelsome. He had controlled the asperities of his soul tolerably well
on the way uptown, but the remark of a small child on the highway, made
to a hurrying mother, as they passed a stalwart-looking replica of the
idol of his Christmas dreams, banging away on a tambourine to attract
attention to the iron pot before him, placed there to catch the pennies
of the charitably inclined wayfarer--"Oh, mar, there's Sandy Claus
now!"--was too much for him.

"Tush! Nonsense!" ejaculated Hetherington, glowering at the shivering
figure in the turkey-red robe. "The idea of filling children's minds up
with such balderdash! Santa Claus, indeed! There isn't a genuine Santa
Claus in the whole bogus bunch."

The Saint on the corner banged his tambourine just under Hetherington's
ear with just enough force to jar loose the accumulated irascibility of
the well-fed gentleman.

"This is a fine job for an able-bodied man like you!" said Hetherington
with a sneer. "Why don't you go to work instead of helping to perpetuate
this annual fake?"

The Saint looked at him for a moment before replying.

"Speakin' to me?" he said.

"Yes. I'm speaking to you," said Hetherington. "Here's the whole country
perishing for the lack of labor, and in spite of that fact this town has
broken out into a veritable rash of fake Santa Clauses--"

"That'll do for you!" retorted Santa Claus. "It's easy enough for a
feller with a stomach full o' victuals and plenty of warm clothes on
his back to jump on a hard-workin' feller like me--"

"Hard-working?" echoed Hetherington. "I like that! You don't call
loafing on a street corner this way all day long hard work, do you?"

He rather liked the man's spirit, despite his objection to his
occupation.

"Suppose you try it once and find out," retorted Santa Claus, blowing on
his bluish fingers in an effort to restore their clogged-up circulation.
"I guess if you tried a job like this just once, standin' out in the
cold from eight in the mornin' to ten at night, with nothin' but a cup
o' coffee and a ham-sandwich inside o' you--"

"What's that?" cried Hetherington, aghast. "Is that all you've had to
eat to-day?"

"That's all," said the Saint, as he turned to his work with the
tambourine. "Try it once, mister, and maybe you won't feel so cock-sure
about its not bein' work. If you're half the sport you think you are
just take my place for a couple of hours."

An appeal to his sporting instinct was never lost on Hetherington.

"By George!" he cried. "I'll go you. I'll swap coats with you, and while
you're filling your stomach up I'll take your place, all right."

"What'll I fill me stomach up with?" demanded the man. "I don't look
like a feller with a meal-ticket in his pocket, do I?"

"I'll take care of that," said Hetherington, taking out a roll of bills
and peeling off a two-dollar note from the outside. "There--you take
that and blow yourself, and I'll take care of the kitty here till you
come back."

The exchange of externals was not long in accomplishment. The gathering
of the shadows of night made it a comparatively easy matter to arrange
behind a conveniently stalled and heavily laden express wagon hard by,
and in a few moments the irascible but still "sporty" Hetherington, who
from childhood up to the present had never been able to take a dare,
found himself banging away on a tambourine and incidentally shivering in
the poor red habiliments of a fraudulent Saint. For a half-hour the
novelty of his position gave him a certain thrill, and no Santa Claus in
town that night fulfilled his duties more vociferously than did
Hetherington; but as time passed on, and the chill of a windy corner
began to penetrate his bones, to say nothing of the frosty condition of
his ears, which his false cotton whiskers but indifferently protected,
he began to tire of his bargain.

"Gosh!" he muttered to himself, as it began to snow, and certain passing
truckmen hurled the same kind of guying comments at him as had been more
or less in his mind whenever he had passed a fellow-Santa-Claus on his
way up-town, "if General Sherman were here he'd find a twin-brother to
War! I wish that cuss would come back."

He gazed eagerly up and down the street in the hope that the departed
original would heave in sight, but in vain. A two-dollar meal evidently
possessed attractions that he wished to linger over.

"Can't stand this much longer!" he muttered to himself, and then his eye
caught sight of a group that filled his soul with dismay: two policemen
and the struggling figure of one who appeared to have looked not wisely
but too well upon the cup that cheers, the latter wearing Hetherington's
overcoat and Hetherington's hat, but whose knees worked upon hinges of
their own, double-back-action hinges that made his legs of no use
whatsoever, either to himself or to anybody else.

"Hi there!" Hetherington cried out, as the group passed up the street on
the way to the station-house. "That fellow's got my overcoat--"

But the only reply Hetherington got was a sturdy poke in the ribs from
the night-stick of the passing officer.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" growled Hetherington.


II

Ten minutes later a passing taxi was hailed by a shivering gentleman
carrying an iron pot full of pennies and nickels and an occasional
quarter in one hand, and a turkey-red coat, trimmed with white cotton
cloth, thrown over his arm. Strange to say, considering the inclemency
of the night, he wore neither a hat nor an overcoat.

"Where to, sir?" queried the chauffeur.

"The police-station," said Hetherington. "I don't know where it is, but
the one in this precinct is the one I want."

"Ye'll have to pay by the hour to-night, sir," said the chauffeur. "The
station ain't a half-mile away, sir, but Heaven knows how long it'll
take us to get there."

"Charge what you please," retorted Hetherington. "I'll buy your darned
old machine if it's necessary, only get a move on."

The chauffeur, with some misgivings as to the mental integrity of his
fare, started on their perilous journey, and three-quarters of an hour
later drew up in front of the police-station, where Hetherington, having
been compelled in self-defense to resume the habiliments of Santa Claus
under penalty of freezing, alighted.

"Just wait, will you?" he said, as he alighted from the cab.

"I'll go in with you," said the chauffeur, acting with due caution. He
had begun to fear that there was a fair chance of his having trouble
getting his fare out of a very evident lunatic.

Utterly forgetful of his appearance in his festal array, Hetherington
bustled into the station, and shortly found himself standing before the
sergeant behind the desk.

"Well, Santa Claus," said the official, with an amused glance at the
intruder, "what can I do for you to-night? There ain't many rooms with a
bath left."

Hetherington flushed. He had intended to greet the sergeant with his
most imposing manner, but this turkey-red abomination on his back had
thrust dignity out in the cold.

"I have come, officer," he said, as impressively as he could under the
circumstances, "to make some inquiries concerning a man who was brought
here about an hour ago--I fear in a state of intoxication."

"We have known such things to happen here, Santa," said the officer,
suavely. "In fact, this blotter here seems to indicate that one George
W. Hetherington, of 561 Fifth Avenue--"

"Who?" roared Hetherington.

"George W. Hetherington is the name on the blotter," said the sergeant;
"entered first as a D. D., but on investigation found to be suffering
from--"

"But that's my name!" cried Hetherington. "You don't mean to tell me he
claimed to be George W. Hetherington?"

"No," said the sergeant. "The poor devil didn't make any claims for
himself at all. We found that name on a card in his hat, and a letter
addressed to the same name in his overcoat pocket. Puttin' the two
together we thought it was a good enough identification."

"Well, I'll have you to understand, sergeant--" bristled Hetherington,
cockily.

"None o' that, Santa Claus--none o' that!" growled the sergeant, leaning
over the desk and eying him coldly. "I don't know what game you're up
to, but just one more peep in that tone and there'll be two George W.
Hetheringtons in the cooler this night."

Hetherington almost tore the Santa Claus garb from his shoulders, and
revealed himself as a personage of fine raiment underneath, whatever he
might have appeared at a superficial glance. As he did so a crumpled
piece of paper fell to the floor from the pocket of the turkey-red coat.

"I don't mean to do anything but what is right, sergeant," he said,
controlling his wrath, "but what I do want is to impress it upon your
mind that _I_ am George W. Hetherington, and that having my name spread
on the blotter of a police court isn't going to do me any good. I
loaned that fellow my hat and coat to get a square meal, while I took
his place--"

The officer grinned broadly, but with no assurance in his smile that he
believed.

"Oh, you may not believe it," said Hetherington, "but it's true, and if
this thing gets into the papers to-morrow morning--"

"Say, Larry," said the sergeant, addressing an officer off duty, "did
the reporters copy that letter we found in Hetherington's pocket?"

"Reporters?" gasped Hetherington. "Good Lord, man--yuh-you don't
mum-mean to say yuh-you let the reporters--"

"No, chief," replied Larry. "They ain't been in yet--I t'ink ye shoved
it inter yer desk."

"So I did, so I did," grinned the sergeant. Here he opened the drawer in
front of him and extracted a pretty little blue envelope which
Hetherington immediately recognized as a particularly private and
confidential communication from--well, somebody. This is not a _cherchez
la femme_ story, so we will leave the lady's name out of it altogether.
It must be noted, however, that a sight of that dainty missive in the
great red fist of the sergeant gave Hetherington a heart action that
fifty packages of cigarettes a day could hardly inflict upon a less
healthy man.

"That's the proof--" cried Hetherington, excitedly. "If that don't
prove it's my overcoat nothing will."

"Right you are, Santa Claus," said the sergeant, opening the envelope
and taking out the delicately scented sheet of paper within. "I'll give
you two guesses at the name signed to this, and if you get it right once
I'll give you the coat, and Mr. Hetherington Number One in our evening's
consignment of Hetheringtons gets re-christened."

"'Anita'!" growled Hetherington.

"You win!" said the sergeant, handing over the letter.

Hetherington drew a long sigh of relief.

"I guess this is worth cigars for the house, sergeant," he said. "I'll
send 'em round to-morrow--meanwhile, how about--how about the other?"

"He's gone to the hospital," said the sergeant, grimly. "The doctor says
he wasn't drunk--just another case of freezing starvation