Laura Spencer Portor

“ He felt now a desire to share all this—these riches; to tell others of these things; to boast a little, if you like, as children innocently will, of what a real Christmas may be, in the world, in the heart of a real woman and that woman his mother. He would leave them for a while presently, soon now, since in this place—the golden facts being established—he could come and go at will, with never again any fear of baffling, estranging darkness. Always now there would be light of one kind or another. ”

“ Darkness! Nothing but the dark. Immediately he could feel the "things," possessed anew of their power, climbing the stairs, pursuing him, an approaching and dreadful company.
He staved them off once more, remembering how his mother loved mystery, oh, yes, loved to be mysterious, for the very delight of clearing the mystery away. He would find her in her room. There she would be waiting to catch him up in her arms. He would say "Mum-Mummy! Where is it?" And she would light the lights and bring all the shadows back and would show him where it was, and he would have a real Christmas once more. ”

“ No shadows! Nothing real! No assurance of reality! only the dark—unbroken, formless, fearful; the dark which like grief, and forgetfulness, and selfishness, fives for itself only, without regard for the pain or joy or suffering of others; all the world else shut out; a fearful, shadowless thing in which all the beautiful realities of life are lost and blotted out. ”

“ He knew a thing or two about the crudeness and disappointment of the world. It seemed to him to be his duty—as it was perhaps appreciably, too, his pleasure of a kind—to correct the absurd optimism of others; to show them the obvious if dark sign-posts and put them upon the right road that would lead them to grim facts and reality.
"But there will be!" the boy said. Palumbo had not looked up; Mr. Dietrick had not heard him; Martin, even Martin, had not been aware of him; but surely it was not possible that these three boys did not know him. He felt so at home with them. ”

“ And his mother had explained to him once, in that sympathetic understanding way of hers which could beautifully account for anything, that it takes shadows to make the world a real place, a livable place, because, when you see a shadow, you know by that shadow's very presence, that there is something real and true, that you can lay your hands upon, which makes the shadow. ”

“ We look at the heavens nightly, but there are those with us who at a certain ineffable moment catch, as it were, the eye of a star. When this is so, it is useless to try to detain them. They leave all that has been most dear to them; leave it with a strange ease, and without renunciation at all, and are gone.
But the child, you see, when his eyes had met summoning starlight, had the little rabbit-skin purse close in his hand ”

“ The faint blurred shadows of the delicately budded trees in spring! the crisp sure ones of the winter; sunlight-shadows, and moonlight-shadows; and, above all, oh, yes, and dearer than all, the firelight shadows! And all the things that shadows do! The quaintness, and fidelity of them; and the grotesquerie of them! The way they run when you run, and stand still on the very instant that you stand still! A nimble people, so that their following of you is nearly like a game and it is impossible to catch them napping. ”

“ Even Enrico betrayed his secret hopes by having nothing scornful to say. Giovanni was mutely shocked, bewildered. Something had happened! What was it! Surely everybody in the house must be asleep! But Toni was swept by a very passion of disappointment. In a wordless rage of despair, disbelief, defeat, he stooped and picked up from the driveway a handful of pebbles. ”

“ Against the dim square of it, he could see that she was looking out.
"Aw, there won't be any Christmas! There won't nobody come!" It was Enrico who spoke, Enrico who had received so many blows of so many kinds before this one. He had already turned to go away, and was only waiting for the others to be inevitably as well convinced as himself. Awaiting this, with a certain considerate patience, he was kicking the snow scuffingly, scoffingly, with the broken toe of one of his stiff worn shoes.
"Throw some more!" said Giovanni hopefully.
Toni was for agreeing. ”

“ They were boys whom he knew—Toni, Enrico, Giovanni, poor boys, who had been invited to share his Christmas with him for the past three years. They were discussing the gifts they had received at his home last Christmas, and were having some argument about them; the argument being interspersed with adoring attention to the unattainable things glowing there in front of them behind the cold glass of the window. He took his place beside them. He noticed that they had grown. ”

“ Toni, Enrico, Giovanni and his mother! and his mother coming and going, bringing comfort, with her loving understanding. And the acting living thought of him there among them!—So! There was a real Christmas, after all, in a real world. The terrible egotistical darkness, which knew nothing but itself; the darkness which had had possession of that house which he had loved; and the similar, not less baffling darkness of his mother's grief—these had been dispelled. There was lamplight; there was firelight; there were shadows; other people; things outside oneself ”

“ The boy stepped in amongst them.
"Yes, of course, there'll be a Christmas tree! There always is."
"Maybe there'd be one, same as always," admitted Giovanni, in late response to Toni's query.
"Come along!" the boy said, almost a little impatiently. "There is going to be a Christmas tree!"
"Ef there was one," speculated Toni, not speaking to the boy at all, but still only to the others, "there'd be somethin' fer us, sure."
"Aw, look here! there won't be!" said Enrico. Enrico was not one whom Life had encouraged to believe easily in good fortune. ”

“ That was like her! a woman of most deep sentiment.
The other toys and gifts that he had left behind were put away by a friend of his mother's, because his mother had not the heart to touch them, in what he and his mother called the "forgettery box." In this box there had always been put from time to time, all through the year, toys and gifts of any sort which would serve as gifts to hang upon the Christmas tree of the following Christmas. There they accumulated—almost forgotten—until the season approached. ”

“ He looked about, trying to find someone else who would give him the chocolate duck. Then his Companion stooped, spoke to him once more, and made a suggestion.
Again the boy felt the sense of strangeness and bewilderment; then he followed the suggestion. He made his own selection from the whole flock of chocolate ducks with red bills; opened his rabbit-skin purse and put the money on the counter beside the sharp-faced, sharp-nosed clerk, who was paying no attention to him.
"There's the money," he said. ”

“ The way, too, that they scramble in such fantastic crooked good-natured forms, hump-backed, over irregularities and rush on and waver in absurd lengths along level places. The way, too, in an utterly other humor, they move so stately slow across the lawn that you cannot tell when they move nor how ”