Mince Pie | Page 6

George III held up by a
highwayman on Hampstead Heath, why not a deftly delineated sketch
of victims in a steam-heated lobby submitting to the plunder of the
hat-check bandit? Come, let us be honest! The romance of to-day is as
good as any!
Many must have felt this same uneasiness in trying to find Christmas
cards that would really say something of what is in their hearts. The
sentiment behind the card is as lovely and as true as ever, but the cards
themselves are outmoded bottles for the new wine. It seems a cruel
thing to say, but we are impatient with the mottoes and pictures we see
in the shops because they are a conventional echo of a beauty that is
past. What could be more absurd than to send to a friend in a city
apartment a rhyme such as this:
As round the Christmas fire you sit And hear the bells with frosty
chime, Think, friendship that long love has knit Grows sweeter still at

Christmas time!
If that is sent to the janitor or the elevator boy we have no cavil, for
these gentlemen do actually see a fire and hear bells ring; but the
apartment tenant hears naught but the hissing of the steam in the
radiator, and counts himself lucky to hear that. Why not be honest and
say to him:
I hope the janitor has shipped You steam, to keep the cold away; And if
the hallboys have been tipped, Then joy be thine on Christmas Day!
We had not meant to introduce this jocular note into our meditation, for
we are honestly aggrieved that so many of the Christmas cards hark
back to an old tradition that is gone, and never attempt to express any
of the romance of to-day. You may protest that Christmas is the oldest
thing in the world, which is true; yet it is also new every year, and
never newer than now.

ON UNANSWERING LETTERS
[Illustration]
There are a great many people who really believe in answering letters
the day they are received, just as there are people who go to the movies
at 9 o'clock in the morning; but these people are stunted and queer.
It is a great mistake. Such crass and breathless promptness takes away a
great deal of the pleasure of correspondence.
The psychological didoes involved in receiving letters and making up
one's mind to answer them are very complex. If the tangled process
could be clearly analyzed and its component involutions isolated for
inspection we might reach a clearer comprehension of that curious bag
of tricks, the efficient Masculine Mind.
Take Bill F., for instance, a man so delightful that even to contemplate
his existence puts us in good humor and makes us think well of a world

that can exhibit an individual equally comely in mind, body and estate.
Every now and then we get a letter from Bill, and immediately we pass
into a kind of trance, in which our mind rapidly enunciates the ideas,
thoughts, surmises and contradictions that we would like to write to
him in reply. We think what fun it would be to sit right down and churn
the ink-well, spreading speculation and cynicism over a number of
sheets of foolscap to be wafted Billward.
Sternly we repress the impulse for we know that the shock to Bill of
getting so immediate a retort would surely unhinge the well-fitted
panels of his intellect.
We add his letter to the large delta of unanswered mail on our desk,
taking occasion to turn the mass over once or twice and run through it
in a brisk, smiling mood, thinking of all the jolly letters we shall write
some day.
After Bill's letter has lain on the pile for a fortnight or so it has been
gently silted over by about twenty other pleasantly postponed
manuscripts. Coming upon it by chance, we reflect that any specific
problems raised by Bill in that manifesto will by this time have settled
themselves. And his random speculations upon household management
and human destiny will probably have taken a new slant by now, so
that to answer his letter in its own tune will not be congruent with his
present fevers. We had better bide a wee until we really have something
of circumstance to impart.
We wait a week.
By this time a certain sense of shame has begun to invade the privacy
of our brain. We feel that to answer that letter now would be an
indelicacy. Better to pretend that we never got it. By and by Bill will
write again and then we will answer promptly. We put the letter back in
the middle of the heap and think what a fine chap Bill is. But he knows