Delphi complete works of.., p.965
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 965
The little girl began to get frightened, keeping the secret all to herself; she wanted to tell her mother, but she didn’t dare to; and she was ashamed to ask the Fairy to take back her gift, it seemed ungrateful and ill-bred, and she thought she would try to stand it, but she hardly knew how she could, for a whole year. So it went on and on, and it was Christmas on St. Valentine’s Day and Washington’s Birthday, just the same as any day, and it didn’t skip even the First of April, though everything was counterfeit that day, and that was some little relief.
After a while coal and potatoes began to be awfully scarce, so many had been wrapped up in tissue-paper to fool papas and mammas with. Turkeys got to be about a thousand dollars apiece —
“Papa!”
“Well, what?”
“You’re beginning to fib.”
“Well, two thousand, then.”
And they got to passing off almost anything for turkeys — half-grown humming-birds, and even rocs out of the Arabian Nights — the real turkeys were so scarce. And cranberries — well, they asked a diamond apiece for cranberries. All the woods and orchards were cut down for Christmas-trees, and where the woods and orchards used to be it looked just like a stubble-field, with the stumps. After a while they had to make Christmas-trees out of rags, and stuff them with bran, like old-fashioned dolls; but there were plenty of rags, because people got so poor, buying presents for one another, that they couldn’t get any new clothes, and they just wore their old ones to tatters. They got so poor that everybody had to go to the poor-house, except the confectioners, and the fancy-store keepers, and the picture-book sellers, and the expressmen; and they all got so rich and proud that they would hardly wait upon a person when he came to buy. It was perfectly shameful!
Well, after it had gone on about three or four months, the little girl, whenever she came into the room in the morning and saw those great ugly, lumpy stockings dangling at the fire-place, and the disgusting presents around everywhere, used to just sit down and burst out crying. In six months she was perfectly exhausted; she couldn’t even cry any more; she just lay on the lounge and rolled her eyes and panted. About the beginning of October she took to sitting down on dolls wherever she found them — French dolls, or any kind — she hated the sight of them so; and by Thanksgiving she was crazy, and just slammed her presents across the room.
By that time people didn’t carry presents around nicely any more. They flung them over the fence, or through the window, or anything; and, instead of running their tongues out and taking great pains to write “For dear Papa,” or “Mamma,” or “Brother,” or “Sister,” or “Susie,” or “Sammie,” or “Billie,” or “Bobbie,” or “Jimmie,” or “Jennie,” or whoever it was, and troubling to get the spelling right, and then signing their names, and “Xmas, 18 — ,” they used to write in the gift-books, “Take it, you horrid old thing!” and then go and bang it against the front door. Nearly everybody had built barns to hold their presents, but pretty soon the barns overflowed, and then they used to let them lie out in the rain, or anywhere. Sometimes the police used to come and tell them to shovel their presents off the sidewalk, or they would arrest them.
“I thought you said everybody had gone to the poor-house,” interrupted the little girl.
“They did go, at first,” said her papa; “but after a while the poor-houses got so full that they had to send the people back to their own houses. They tried to cry, when they got back, but they couldn’t make the least sound.”
“Why couldn’t they?”
“Because they had lost their voices, saying ‘Merry Christmas’ so much. Did I tell you how it was on the Fourth of July?”
“No; how was it?” And the little girl nestled closer, in expectation of something uncommon.
Well, the night before, the boys stayed up to celebrate, as they always do, and fell asleep before twelve o’clock, as usual, expecting to be wakened by the bells and cannon. But it was nearly eight o’clock before the first boy in the United States woke up, and then he found out what the trouble was. As soon as he could get his clothes on he ran out of the house and smashed a big cannon-torpedo down on the pavement; but it didn’t make any more noise than a damp wad of paper; and after he tried about twenty or thirty more, he began to pick them up and look at them. Every single torpedo was a big raisin! Then he just streaked it up-stairs, and examined his fire-crackers and toy-pistol and two-dollar collection of fireworks, and found that they were nothing but sugar and candy painted up to look like fireworks! Before ten o’clock every boy in the United States found out that his Fourth of July things had turned into Christmas things; and then they just sat down and cried — they were so mad. There are about twenty million boys in the United States, and so you can imagine what a noise they made. Some men got together before night, with a little powder that hadn’t turned into purple sugar yet, and they said they would fire off one cannon, anyway. But the cannon burst into a thousand pieces, for it was nothing but rock-candy, and some of the men nearly got killed. The Fourth of July orations all turned into Christmas carols, and when anybody tried to read the Declaration, instead of saying, “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary,” he was sure to sing, “God rest you, merry gentlemen.” It was perfectly awful.
The little girl drew a deep sigh of satisfaction.
“And how was it at Thanksgiving?”
Her papa hesitated. “Well, I’m almost afraid to tell you. I’m afraid you’ll think it’s wicked.”
“Well, tell, anyway,” said the little girl.
Well, before it came Thanksgiving it had leaked out who had caused all these Christmases. The little girl had suffered so much that she had talked about it in her sleep; and after that hardly anybody would play with her. People just perfectly despised her, because if it had not been for her greediness it wouldn’t have happened; and now, when it came Thanksgiving, and she wanted them to go to church, and have squash-pie and turkey, and show their gratitude, they said that all the turkeys had been eaten up for her old Christmas dinners, and if she would stop the Christmases, they would see about the gratitude. Wasn’t it dreadful? And the very next day the little girl began to send letters to the Christmas Fairy, and then telegrams, to stop it. But it didn’t do any good; and then she got to calling at the Fairy’s house, but the girl that came to the door always said, “Not at home,” or “Engaged,” or “At dinner,” or something like that; and so it went on till it came to the old once-a-year Christmas Eve. The little girl fell asleep, and when she woke up in the morning —
“She found it was all nothing but a dream,” suggested the little girl.
“No, indeed!” said her papa. “It was all every bit true!”
“Well, what did she find out, then?”
“Why, that it wasn’t Christmas at last, and wasn’t ever going to be, any more. Now it’s time for breakfast.”
The little girl held her papa fast around the neck.
“You sha’n’t go if you’re going to leave it so!”
“How do you want it left?”
“Christmas once a year.”
“All right,” said her papa; and he went on again.
Well, there was the greatest rejoicing all over the country, and it extended clear up into Canada. The people met together everywhere, and kissed and cried for joy. The city carts went around and gathered up all the candy and raisins and nuts, and dumped them into the river; and it made the fish perfectly sick; and the whole United States, as far out as Alaska, was one blaze of bonfires, where the children were burning up their gift-books and presents of all kinds. They had the greatest time!
The little girl went to thank the old Fairy because she had stopped its being Christmas, and she said she hoped she would keep her promise and see that Christmas never, never came again. Then the Fairy frowned, and asked her if she was sure she knew what she meant; and the little girl asked her, Why not? and the old Fairy said that now she was behaving just as greedily as ever, and she’d better look out. This made the little girl think it all over carefully again, and she said she would be willing to have it Christmas about once in a thousand years; and then she said a hundred, and then she said ten, and at last she got down to one. Then the Fairy said that was the good old way that had pleased people ever since Christmas began, and she was agreed. Then the little girl said, “What’re your shoes made of?” And the Fairy said, “Leather.” And the little girl said, “Bargain’s done forever,” and skipped off, and hippity-hopped the whole way home, she was so glad.
“How will that do?” asked the papa.
“First-rate!” said the little girl; but she hated to have the story stop, and was rather sober. However, her mamma put her head in at the door, and asked her papa:
“Are you never coming to breakfast? What have you been telling that child?”
“Oh, just a moral tale.”
The little girl caught him around the neck again.
“We know! Don’t you tell what, papa! Don’t you tell what!”
TURKEYS TURNING THE TABLES.
“Well, you see,” the papa began, on Christmas morning, when the little girl had snuggled in his lap into just the right shape for listening, “it was the night after Thanksgiving, and you know how everybody feels the night after Thanksgiving.”
“Yes; but you needn’t begin that way, papa,” said the little girl; “I’m not going to have any moral to it this time.”
“No, indeed! But it can be a true story, can’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said the little girl; “I like made-up ones.”
“Well, this is going to be a true one, anyway, and it’s no use talking.”
All the relations in the neighborhood had come to dinner, and then gone back to their own houses, but some of the relations had come from a distance, and these had to stay all night at the grandfather’s. But whether they went or whether they stayed, they all told the grandmother that they did believe it was the best Thanksgiving dinner they had ever eaten in their born days. They had had cranberry sauce, and they’d had mashed potato, and they’d had mince-pie and pandowdy, and they’d had celery, and they’d had Hubbard squash, and they’d had tea and coffee both, and they’d had apple-dumpling with hard sauce, and they’d had hot biscuit and sweet pickle, and mangoes, and frosted cake, and nuts, and cauliflower —
“Don’t mix them all up so!” pleaded the little girl. “It’s perfectly confusing. I can’t hardly tell what they had now.”
“Well, they mixed them up just in the same way, and I suppose that’s one of the reasons why it happened.”
Whenever a child wanted to go back from dumpling and frosted cake to mashed potato and Hubbard squash — they were old-fashioned kind of people, and they had everything on the table at once, because the grandmother and the aunties cooked it, and they couldn’t keep jumping up all the time to change the plates — and its mother said it shouldn’t, its grandmother said, Indeed it should, then, and helped it herself; and the child’s father would say, Well, he guessed he would go back, too, for a change; and the child’s mother would say, She should think he would be ashamed; and then they would get to going back, till everything was perfectly higgledy-piggledy.
“Oh, shouldn’t you like to have been there, papa?” sighed the little girl.
“You mustn’t interrupt. Where was I?”
“Higgledy-piggledy.”
“Oh yes!”
Well, but the greatest thing of all was the turkey that they had. It was a gobbler, I tell you, that was nearly as big as a giraffe.
“Papa!”
It took the premium at the county fair, and when it was dressed it weighed fifteen pounds — well, maybe twenty — and it was so heavy that the grandmothers and the aunties couldn’t put it on the table, and they had to get one of the papas to do it. You ought to have heard the hurrahing when the children saw him coming in from the kitchen with it. It seemed as if they couldn’t hardly talk of anything but that turkey the whole dinner-time.
The grandfather hated to carve, and so one of the papas did it; and whenever he gave anybody a piece, the grandfather would tell some new story about the turkey, till pretty soon the aunties got to saying, “Now, father, stop!” and one of them said it made it seem as if the gobbler was walking about on the table, to hear so much about him, and it took her appetite all away; and that made the papas begin to ask the grandfather more and more about the turkey.
“Yes,” said the little girl, thoughtfully; “I know what papas are.”
“Yes, they’re pretty much all alike.”
And the mammas began to say they acted like a lot of silly boys; and what would the children think? But nothing could stop it; and all through the afternoon and evening, whenever the papas saw any of the aunties or mammas round, they would begin to ask the grandfather more particulars about the turkey. The grandfather was pretty forgetful, and he told the same things right over. Well, and so it went on till it came bedtime, and then the mammas and aunties began to laugh and whisper together, and to say they did believe they should dream about that turkey; and when the papas kissed the grandmother good-night, they said, Well, they must have his mate for Christmas; and then they put their arms round the mammas and went out haw-hawing.
“I don’t think they behaved very dignified,” said the little girl.
“Well, you see, they were just funning, and had got going, and it was Thanksgiving, anyway.”
Well, in about half an hour everybody was fast asleep and dreaming —
“Is it going to be a dream?” asked the little girl, with some reluctance.
“Didn’t I say it was going to be a true story?”
“Yes.”
“How can it be a dream, then?”
“You said everybody was fast asleep and dreaming.”
“Well, but I hadn’t got through. Everybody except one little girl.”
“Now, papa!”
“What?”
“Don’t you go and say her name was the same as mine, and her eyes the same color.”
“What an idea!”
This was a very good little girl, and very respectful to her papa, and didn’t suspect him of tricks, but just believed everything he said. And she was a very pretty little girl, and had red eyes, and blue cheeks, and straight hair, and a curly nose —
“Now, papa, if you get to cutting up—”
“Well, I won’t, then!”
Well, she was rather a delicate little girl, and whenever she over-ate, or anything,
“Have bad dreams! Aha! I told you it was going to be a dream.”
“You wait till I get through.”
She was apt to lie awake thinking, and some of her thinks were pretty dismal. Well, that night, instead of thinking and tossing and turning, and counting a thousand, it seemed to this other little girl that she began to see things as soon as she had got warm in bed, and before, even. And the first thing she saw was a large, bronze-colored —
“Turkey gobbler!”
“No, ma’am. Turkey gobbler’s ghost.”
“Foo!” said the little girl, rather uneasily; “whoever heard of a turkey’s ghost, I should like to know?”
“Never mind, that,” said the papa. “If it hadn’t been a ghost, could the moonlight have shone through it? No, indeed! The stuffing wouldn’t have let it. So you see it must have been a ghost.”
It had a red pasteboard placard round its neck, with First Premium printed on it, and so she knew that it was the ghost of the very turkey they had had for dinner. It was perfectly awful when it put up its tail, and dropped its wings, and strutted just the way the grandfather said it used to do. It seemed to be in a wide pasture, like that back of the house, and the children had to cross it to get home, and they were all afraid of the turkey that kept gobbling at them and threatening them, because they had eaten him up. At last one of the boys — it was the other little girl’s brother — said he would run across and get his papa to come out and help them, and the first thing she knew the turkey was after him, gaining, gaining, gaining, and all the grass was full of hen-turkeys and turkey chicks, running after him, and gaining, gaining, gaining, and just as he was getting to the wall he tripped and fell over a turkey-pen, and all at once she was in one of the aunties’ room, and the aunty was in bed, and the turkeys were walking up and down over her, and stretching out their wings, and blaming her. Two of them carried a platter of chicken pie, and there was a large pumpkin jack-o’-lantern hanging to the bedpost to light the room, and it looked just like the other little girl’s brother in the face, only perfectly ridiculous.
“THE OLD GOBBLER ‘FIRST PREMIUM’ SAID THEY WERE GOING TO TURN THE TABLES NOW.”
Then the old gobbler, First Premium, clapped his wings, and said, “Come on, chick-chickledren!” and then they all seemed to be in her room, and she was standing in the middle of it in her night-gown, and tied round and round with ribbons, so she couldn’t move hand or foot. The old gobbler, First Premium, said they were going to turn the tables now, and she knew what he meant, for they had had that in the reader at school just before vacation, and the teacher had explained it. He made a long speech, with his hat on, and kept pointing at her with one of his wings, while he told the other turkeys that it was her grandfather who had done it, and now it was their turn. He said that human beings had been eating turkeys ever since the discovery of America, and it was time for the turkeys to begin paying them back, if they were ever going to. He said she was pretty young, but she was as big as he was, and he had no doubt they would enjoy her.
The other little girl tried to tell him that she was not to blame, and that she only took a very, very little piece.
“But it was right off the breast,” said the gobbler, and he shed tears, so that the other little girl cried, too. She didn’t have much hopes, they all seemed so spiteful, especially the little turkey chicks; but she told them that she was very tender-hearted, and never hurt a single thing, and she tried to make them understand that there was a great difference between eating people and just eating turkeys.
