Christmas Every Day | Page 3

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