Now, a Christmas story should be one. For a goodmany years the ingenious writers have been putting forthtales for the holiday numbers that employed everysubtle, evasive, indirect and strategic scheme they couldinvent to disguise the Christmas flavor. So far has thisnew practice been carried that nowadays when you reada story in a holiday magazine the only way you can tellit is a Christmas story is to look at the footnote whichreads: ["The incidents in the above story happened onDecember 25th.--ED."]There is progress in this; but it is all very sad. There are just asmany real Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig 'em up. Me, Iam for the Scrooge and Marley Christmas story, and the Annie andWillie's prayer poem, and the long lost son coming home on the stroke oftwelve to the poorly thatched cottage with his arms full of talkingdolls and popcorn balls and--Zip! you hear the second mortgage on thecottage go flying off it into the deep snow.So, this is to warn you that there is no subterfuge about thisstory--and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plumpuddings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up andhanding over penny whistles to lame newsboys if you read further.Once I knocked at a door (I have so many things to tell you I keep onlosing sight of the story). It was the front door of a furnished roomhouse in West 'Teenth Street. I was looking for a young illustratornamed Paley originally and irrevocably from Terre Haute. Paley doesn'tenter even into the first serial rights of this Christmas story; Imention him simply in explaining why I came to knock at the door--somepeople have so much curiosity.The door was opened by the landlady. I had seen hundreds like her. And Ihad smelled before that cold, dank, furnished draught of air thathurried by her to escape immurement in the furnished house.She was stout, and her face and lands were as white as though she hadbeen drowned in a barrel of vinegar. One hand held together at herthroat a buttonless flannel dressing sacque whose lines had been cut byno tape or butterick known to mortal woman. Beneath this a too-long,flowered, black sateen skirt was draped about her, reaching the floor instiff wrinkles and folds.The rest of her was yellow. Her hair, in some bygone age, had beendipped in the fountain of folly presided over by the merry nymphHydrogen; but now, except at the roots, it had returned to its naturalgrim and grizzled white.Her eyes and teeth and finger nails were yellow. Her chops hung low andshook when she moved. The look on her face was exactly that smilelesslook of fatal melancholy that you may have seen on the countenance of ahound left sitting on the doorstep of a deserted cabin.I inquired for Paley. After a long look of cold suspicion the landladyspoke, and her voice matched the dingy roughness of her flannel sacque.Paley? Was I sure that was the name? And wasn't it, likely, Mr.Sanderson I meant, in the third floor rear? No; it was Paley I wanted.Again that frozen, shrewd, steady study of my soul from her pale-yellow,unwinking eyes, trying to penetrate my mask of deception and rout out mytrue motives from my lying lips. There was a Mr. Tompkins in the fronthall bedroom two flights up. Perhaps it was he I was seeking. He workedof nights; he never came in till seven in the morning. Or if it wasreally Mr. Tucker (thinly disguised as Paley) that I was hunting I wouldhave to call between five and ----But no; I held firmly to Paley. There was no such name among herlodgers. Click! the door closed swiftly in my face; and I heard throughthe panels the clanking of chains and bolts.I went down the steps and stopped to consider. The number of this housewas 43. I was sure Paley had said 43--or perhaps it was 45 or 47--Idecided to try 47, the second house farther along.I rang the bell. The door opened; and there stood the same woman. Iwasn't confronted by just a resemblance--it was the SAME woman holdingtogether the same old sacque at her throat and looking at me with thesame yellow eyes as if she had never seen me before on earth. I saw onthe knuckle of her second finger the same red-and-black spot made,probably, by a recent burn against a hot stove.I stood speechless and gaping while one with moderate haste might havetold fifty. I couldn't have spoken Paley's name even if I had rememberedit. I did the only thing that a brave man who believes there aremysterious forces in nature that we do not yet fully comprehend couldhave done in the circumstances. I backed down the steps to the sidewalkand then hurried away frontward, fully understanding how incidents likethat must bother the psychical research people and the census takers.Of course I heard an explanation of it afterward, as we always do aboutinexplicable things.The landlady was Mrs. Kannon; and she leased three adjoining houses,which she made into one by cutting arched doorways through the walls.She sat in the middle house and answered the three bells.I wonder why I have maundered so slowly through the prologue. I have it!it was simply to say to you, in the form of introduction rife throughthe Middle West: "Shake hands with Mrs. Kannon."For, it was in her triple house that the Christmas story happened; andit was there where I picked up the incontrovertible facts from thegossip of many roomers and met Stickney--and saw the necktie.Christmas came that year on Thursday, and snow came with it.Stickney (Harry Clarence Fowler Stickney to whomsoever his fullbaptismal cognominal burdens may be of interest) reached his address atsix-thirty Wednesday afternoon. "Address" is New Yorkese for "home."Stickney roomed at 45 West 'Teenth Street, third floor rear hall room.He was twenty years and four months old, and he worked in acameras-of-all-kinds, photographic supplies and films-developed store. Idon't know what kind of work he did in the store; but you must have seenhim. He is the young man who always comes behind the counter to wait onyou and lets you talk for five minutes, telling him what you want. Whenyou are done, he calls the proprietor at the top of his voice to wait onyou, and walks away whistling between his teeth.I don't want to bother about describing to you his appearance; but, ifyou are a man reader, I will say that Stickncy looked precisely like theyoung chap that you always find sitting in your chair smoking acigarette after you have missed a shot while playing pool--not billiardsbut pool--when you want to sit down yourself.There are some to whom Christmas gives no Christmassy essence. Ofcourse, prosperous people and comfortable people who have homes or flatsor rooms with meals, and even people who live in apartment houses withhotel service get something of the Christmas flavor. They give oneanother presents with the cost mark scratched off with a penknife; andthey hang holly wreaths in the front windows and when they are askedwhether they prefer light or dark meat from the turkey they say: "Both,please," and giggle and have lots of fun. And the very poorest peoplehave the best time of it. The Army gives 'em a dinner, and the 10 A. M.issue of the Night Final edition of the newspaper with the largestcirculation in the city leaves a basket at their door full of an apple,a Lake Ronkonkoma squab, a scrambled eggplant and a bunch of Kalamazoobleached parsley. The poorer you are the more Christmas does for you.But, I'll tell you to what kind of a mortal Christmas seems to be onlythe day before the twenty-sixth day of December. It's the chap in thebig city earning sixteen dollars a week, with no friends and fewacquaintances, who finds himself with only fifty cents in his pocket onChristmas eve. He can't accept charity; he can't borrow; he knows no onewho would invite him to dinner. I have a fancy that when the shepherdsleft their flocks to follow the star of Bethlehem there was abandy-legged young fellow among them who was just learning the sheepbusiness. So they said to him, "Bobby, we're going to investigate thisstar route and see what's in it. If it should turn out to be the firstChristmas day we don't want to miss it. And, as you are not a wise man,and as you couldn't possibly purchase a present to take along, supposeyou stay behind and mind the sheep."So as we may say, Harry Stickney was a direct descendant of the shepherdwho was left behind to take care of the flocks.Getting back to facts, Stickney rang the doorbell of 45. He had a habitof forgetting his latchkey.Instantly the door opened and there stood Mrs. Kannon, clutching hersacque together at the throat and gorgonizing him with her opaque,yellow eyes.(To give you good measure, here is a story within a story. Once a roomerin 47 who had the Scotch habit--not kilts, but a habit of drinkingScotch--began to figure to himself what might happen if two personsshould ring the doorbells of 43 and 47 at the same time. Visions of twohalves of Mrs. Kannon appearing respectively and simultaneously at thetwo entrances, each clutching at a side of an open, flapping sacque thatcould never meet, overpowered him. Bellevue got him.)"Evening," said Stickney cheerlessly, as he distributed little piles ofmuddy slush along the hall matting. "Think we'll have snow?""You left your key," said--(Here the manuscript ends.)
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