Tag: Christmas Page 1 of 3

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 27, 1941.

“It’s a queer Christmas,” sighed Jimmie Frise. “War on earth, ill-will amongst men.”

“Let’s go home,” I suggested. “At least we can preserve a little of the Christmas spirit in our homes.”

“I suppose,” surmised Jimmie, starting to rid up his drawing table, “I suppose Christians have always had to face this problem. There have always been wars. I guess there have been some pretty sad Christmases across the centuries.”

“None sadder than this,” I claimed, “because it is the most enlightened age in human history and is the occasion of the most savage war in human history. God could doubtless forgive war 500 or 1,000 years ago amongst benighted and ignorant men who blindly followed their masters. All men were foreign to one another a few centuries back. They had no communication with each other. There were no roads, few ships, hardly any books. But today, with every possible means at our disposal to know and understand one another, with radio and movies and marvellous communications by land, sea and air to help us mix with one another, we are locked in the most titanic and universal hate in history.”

“It isn’t just a couple of armies,” agreed Jim, “of professional soldiers bashing at each other. It is every man, woman and child, horse, cow, dog and cat.”

“When this war is over,” I declared, “mankind as a whole will have to enter into a long penance for its sins.”

“Thank heaven,” said Jim, “we didn’t start it.”

“Even so, what did we do to try to stop it?” I pointed out. “We were all pretty fat and comfortable and indifferent during the years all this was shaping up. We’ve got a penance to do, too.”

“Human nature learns,” said Jimmie, “by doing wrong. A child has to learn that fire burns. It is no use merely to tell him. Sooner or later, he has to find out. And it seems as if each new generation of men were like a child in that respect. Each has to learn for itself.”

“That is a grim and terrible prospect,” I declared. “It offers little hope for humanity.”

“Well,” explained Jim, “that is where Christianity comes in. It was Jesus who first taught the brotherhood of man through the fatherhood of God. Until we realize that God is our Father, we can never comprehend that we are brothers. Christianity has been patiently trying to get that into our heads for 2,000 years. One of these times, when our folly really gets too monstrous for any further refusal, we are likely to become Christians at last. The brotherhood of man is our only hope.”

The common men of all races,” I submitted, “are willing to be brothers. But somebody is always rising amongst us who believes that not only is he no relation to us but comes of a far finer family than the human. This is true not only of Germany now, amongst the nations; it is true of every city, town and village. There is always somebody in every community to whom the idea of being a brother or even a distant cousin to the rest of us is horrible. And he’s the one who generally holds all the mortgages on us.”

Precious Things to Guard

“It costs something to be a brother,” admitted Jim. “I think that is what scares us off this brotherhood of man idea. We are afraid bur brothers would expect too much of us. So the minute we start to collect some of this world’s goods, we begin to cut down on the number of our friends and relations. By the time a man has a million dollars he has hardly any kinfolk at all – much less brothers.”

“Well, Jim,” I said, “put your coat on and let’s get home. They can steal Christmas away from the world. But they can’t take it away from the home. It’s in the homes that Christmas is being preserved in times like these.”

“In fact,” said Jim, “now that you come to mention it, I don’t ever remember a more tender Christmas in my home than this one has been. It is as if we knew we had a precious thing to guard.”

“Will you bring your family around to my place,” I demanded, “for an old-fashioned Christmas visit? There will be Christmas cake and a cup of tea…”

“I will,” said Jimmie kindly, “and will you come and visit my house in turn? Let’s be old-fashioned. Let us make this Christmas the occasion of visiting around among our friends and relations instead of treating it as a day of selfish domestic celebration.”

We locked up the office and walked along the hall. One of the office caretakers laboring past us under a huge jute bag of waste paper and office junk. Jim took him by the arm, signed for him to deposit the bag on the floor. And when he had done so, Jim took his hand and shook it warmly.

“A merry Christmas,” cried Jim. “To you and yours.”

When the elevator came, there was barely room for the two of us, but Jim stood back and said to all the strangers packed like fingers in a fist, “a merry Christmas, everybody.”

And while one or two mumbled a reply, the rest of them just shoved back to make room for us.

At the main floor, we let everybody out ahead of us which sort of slowed things up, since Jim and I were nearest the elevator door. But beaming with Christmas kindness, Jim drew in his chest and smiled them all out. Then he seized the operator’s hand.

“A merry, merry Christmas, brother,” said Jim.

And the elevator man returned the shake most heartily until he had to withdraw his hand from Jim’s in response to the angry buzzing of the signal calling him back aloft.

Full of Charity

In the lobby, Jim lingered, smiling and nodding to friend and stranger alike, and went over to the little newsboy and bought both our paper and its evening contemporary, so full of charity was he; and walked away without waiting for his change from 10 cents.

The street was filled with that intense purpose and hustle characteristic of Christmas, and we strolled along exchanging shy and friendly glances with all and sundry. At Christmas there is just a faint suspicion in our minds that all our fellow men are not rogues. And that suspicion struggles in our faces.

At the corner, a Salvation Army lass jingled her bell beside a kettle on a tripod and both Jim and I dropped a coin in the kettle. An old lady paused at the corner crossing in hesitation before the whirling Christmas traffic, and Jim very gallantly offered his arm to help her across.

At the far corner, he got into conversation with an elderly newsboy of his acquaintance and I saw him shaking hands heartily and buying another newspaper.

Coming back, he took the hand of a little girl whose mother was laden with parcels and escorted her safely over.

“Ha,” said Jim, rejoining me. “When you really let yourself go, it’s astonishing how warm you can feel towards all the world.”

“Don’t catch cold,” I warned him, “from using up all your heat.”

“You’re a terrible old Scrooge,” cried Jim, slapping me on the back. “Come on, loosen up, let your heartstrings slack.”

Up the street towards the parking lot we walked, with Jim fairly bulging with goodwill and I trying to see how many people I could smile at in one block. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that most of the ones I smiled at turned around after they had passed, with a puzzled air.

I smiled at one man before I realized he had had a drop too much and he charged through the traffic to seize me by the coat front and address me as a long lost friend, though I am sure we had never laid eyes on each other before. He would not let go. He wanted me to come with him to a place he knew where there was a grand old party going on. When Jim drew near, he included Jim in both the invitation and the clutch on the coat front and the more we argued that we had to get home, the more loud and vociferous did our friend become.

“Aw, home,” he scoffed, “who wants to go home on Christmas? What’s the matter with the world? What are men coming to? Where’s the good old-fashioned Christmas…”

“Come on,” said Jim peremptorily, taking my sleeve.

“No, you don’t,” maudled the stranger, seizing both Jim’s sleeve and my coat front in a dying grasp.

Jim lifted his foot and brought it down smartly on the gentleman’s toe.

“Ow,” he wailed, releasing us.

And we were quickly lost to him in the crowd.

“That was a shame,” said Jimmie, his face recovering the Christmas expression, “but it’s the only way to handle those drunks.”

Only Play-Acting

When we reached the parking lot, Jim went over to the little shanty where the watchman sits and while I got the car started, I could see Jim dispensing the hearty Christmas spirit by shaking the crusty old watchman’s hand. In fact, so surprised was that bad-tempered old man that he even came out of the shanty and stood to wave us good-by when Jim got in the car.

“Ah, well,” said Jim happily, “most men are pretty good guys when you cut through the crust. Now, that old skinflint…”

“Jim,” I said sadly, “I’m afraid this spirit of Christmas is only play-acting with you. It’s like dressing up at Hallowe’en. Only, instead of putting on a false face, you put on a false front.”

“If we only half tried,” retorted Jim, “we could keep up the Christmas spirit right through the year.”

“And would we ever be sick of one another,” I exclaimed.

Along the lake shore, a chauffeur-driven car passed us at a lively speed and just as it did so oncoming traffic forced it to brake suddenly and cut in ahead of me. Not often do professional chauffeurs get themselves in jams. But when they do, they are more helpless than ordinary drivers. This bird simply swerved ahead of me. I tooted my horn furiously, in warning. But he had to cut in or get smacked from in front by oncoming cars. So cut in he did. And sure enough, I bumped him.

It was a good sharp bump. But nothing broke. Nothing was damaged except all our feelings.

The chauffeur steered slowly off to the side of the road, I after him. He got out and walked with great dignity back to look at his back bumper. He was a huge fellow, stately wide skirted greatcoat. And it has always been my custom, on account of my own small size, to be very fearless with extra large men.

“You great big chump,” I declared in a loud, angry voice.

He halted, straightened up, took two strides and glared in the window at me.

“You big ape,” I repeated furiously. “Don’t you know better than to cut in like that? At your age. And professional chauffeur.”

“Who is an ape?” he inquired in a dainty little way, twisting his lips up into a curious imitation of a smile, but his eyes were like ice.

“You’re an ape,” I said, “you’re a fathead, you’re a chump, whizzing along and suddenly cutting fair in front…”

“Did I hear you call me an ape?” repeated the chauffeur, again twisting up his lips in that queer grimace.

“Yes,” suddenly bellowed Jim beside me, “you big baboon, go on about your business or your mistress will be wearing out her fat finger ringing for you. Beat it.”

The chauffeur ducked down to look in at Jimmie and then all of a sudden started around the end of the car.

Jimmie saw him coming and quickly opened the car door and got out to meet him. No words were spoken. The two of them squared off, their feet wide apart, and began sparring.

Whack! Right in the eye. And Jim went flat on his back.

Ex-Champ Opposition

The chauffeur continued to circle and spar but Jim just sat up.

I hurriedly got out and tried to help Jim to his feet but he preferred to sit for a moment.

“Why, you… you…” I said, “at Christmas, a fine thing, hitting a man in the eye on Christmas, giving him a black eye…”

“Nobody’s going to call me an ape,” said big fellow, reaching down and helping me lift Jim up.

“A fine thing,” I continued, “hitting a man on Christmas…”

“Besides,” said the chauffeur, “I’m an ex-champion boxer, and an ex-policeman, and nobody is going to call me an ape.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I repeated firmly, but not standing up very tall for, fear he would remember who it was that called him an ape.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he said, dusting Jimmie off in a hazy sort of way, but still looking very hot in the cheekbones, “but if anybody calls me an ape, I just don’t like it. And I did it before I knew what I was doing. And anyway…”

Then he stopped and looked at us for a minute and wheeled and slammed into his car and drove off with that professional chauffeur style.

“Oh, oh,” said Jim, holding one hand over his eye.

“A black eye for Christmas,” I sympathized, as I eased him up into the car seat.

“What did you call him an ape for?” demanded Jimmie angrily. “If you had devoted your efforts to stopping your car instead of blowing your horn at him, you never would have bumped him.”

“Nobody is going to cut in like that on me,” I declared, resuming my seat behind the wheel.

“It was you who called him an ape,” accused Jim. “You called him a fathead and a chump.”

“Okay, then,” I inquired, “what did you have to horn in with calling him a baboon?”

“I wasn’t going to see him hit any friend of mine,” cried Jim. “Besides, how could I see how big he was? He was on your side.”

So we nagged until we reached Jim’s house, all lighted up for Santa Claus.

“Aw, Jim, “I said, as he backed out of the car, “look, old-timer, a merry Christmas.”

“The same to you,” said Jim; holding out one hand to me and covering his darkening eye with the other.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 21, 1935.

“Nineteen-fifty,” muttered Jimmie Frise. “Twenty-one, twenty-four fifty, twenty-six.”

“What’s this?” I asked.

“My Christmas list,” growled Jim, concentrating on a slip of paper. “Twenty-seven fifty, thirty-one forty, thirty-five. How horrible.¹“

“Horrible what?” I inquired.

“How horrible,” said Jim, angrily, “to be rating my loved ones and friends according to their price. Behold me, in the name of Christmas, pricing my love and my affection.”

“Don’t be silly,” I laughed.

“It’s tragic,” declared Jim. “That’s what it is. Just tragic. We make a list, carefully, we set down all the names of those from whom we expect presents. We go over it, pruning with the utmost exactness all names that might not return a gift. Then we set opposite each name a price. Big prices for our immediate family, and getting smaller and smaller as we go down the list. Memory comes to our aid, as we recall what each one gave us last Christmas. We estimate the cost and value of that gift, and set it down as a working basis on our own list for this year.”

“Nothing,” I said, “is more embarrassing than to receive a Christmas gift from somebody you did not send one to.”

“How horrible,” cried Jimmie. “How unutterably horrible.”

“Nonsense, Jim,” I explained. “It’s a convention. I can’t think of any more sensible way of handling the Christmas giving than the way we do it.”

“We should set apart ten per cent, of our Christmas funds,” said Jim, “for giving anonymous gifts to people from whom we have no earthly expectation of receiving anything. Then it wouldn’t be so wicked, this cold-blooded exchange business.”

“I’m afraid this is a practical age, Jimmie,” I demurred. “And mystical things don’t happen.”

“I believe,” stated Jim slowly, “that there is some strange thing happens to all human hearts at Christmas. And I think it happens outside of all human control. Nothing makes me a true believer more than the strange miracle that occurs every Christmas to every sort and condition of men.”

“You’re romancing,” I smiled.

Jim stood up and put on his coat.

“Let’s go out,” said Jim, “and prove it. Have you the afternoon? I tell you what we do. We’ll fill the car tank. We’ll drive down here to the lakeshore highway. At all the corners of the city streets leading into it, there are two or three or more men, hitch-hikers.”

“Ah?” I said, getting up.

“Young chaps, with suit cases and white silk scarves,” said Jim, “and gleaming smiles, thumbing their way home to some country town or village for Christmas. Older men, shabby, trying to get home for Christmas. Bums, too. Bur Bums with nothing to redeem them in any man’s eyes. Where are they heading, at Christmas?”

“Aha,” I agreed.

“I show you,” said Jim. “We’ll pick up a bum. An oldish bum. A life-long flop of a man. A man without a single attractive or appealing thing about him. And we’ll drive him where he is going, even if it takes all night.”

“What if he’s heading for Vancouver?” I asked,

“Be reasonable,” huffed Jim. “We’ll pick up this derelict, and we’ll deliver him home. Not to the middle of some town. Not to a cross roads somewhere. But right to his door. And we’ll so befriend him. He’ll have to invite us in. We’ll get into his house some way.”

“And you’ll show me this miracle?” I laughed.

“I’ll show you this miracle,” grinned Jim. “At random, deliberately picking every gamble against us, I’ll show you this miracle.”

“Probably,” I snickered, as we went down the elevator, “they’ll kick him out and sock us for bringing him home.”

“Probably,” said Jim.

“Or else, it will be some dumb little cottage, in some dumb little village,” I surmised, “and some dowdy old lady ill say to him ‘Hello, George,’ and she’ll offer us a cup of tea.”

“Probably,” agreed Jim, heading out into the gray day and the threat of sleet.

“Because,” I pointed out, “if you have a loafer in the family, you are never surprised to see him when he turns up.”

“I’ll show you,” said Jim.

And we had the tank filled with gas, and Jim borrowed a couple of rugs from a friend’s car, and we set out for the lakeshore highway.

Down the highway swept a wintry wind with sleet in it, and under the concrete bastions of the subways leading down from the city huddles of men stood, young and old, well dressed and shabby, with bags and bundles, signalling in the old fashion, and watching eagerly the outbound cars for a lift.

“Some miracle you’ll show me,” I said, as we coasted past the first corner and saw no one to fit our bill. “The only miracle will be Jim Frise giving some dull cluck a free ride home.”

Jim coasted past the second subway. Five men stood there. But none were old, and none were ragged, and none looked like derelicts.

“We only have about three more spots where the hitch-hikers stand,” I remonstrated. “And then we’ll be outside the city.”

“Keep watch,” said Jim. “It’ll happen. Around Christmas, it always does.”

“Heh, heh,” said I.

We passed two of the remaining city streets touching on the highway. At one, a boy stood. At the other, two young chaps with those paper shopping bags. The last point was the Humber. And as, through the murk and wind, we came in sight of this last hope, there was no one at all waiting there.

“Ho, hum,” said I.

“We’ll go a little way out,” said Jim. And drove on past the Humber and through the suburban villages westward, until we passed the golf clubs and before us stretched a lonely road, with shut cars snoring along, heads down homeward.

“So much for miracles,” I said. “Where do we turn around?”

“We don’t turn around,” replied Jim. And I looked ahead, where his eyes were fastened, and saw a figure trudging by the side of the pavement.

Jim slowed as we drew near to it. It was, by the legs, an old man, for they were bent, and they picked themselves up and put themselves down the way the legs of old men do. He had no overcoat, but a leather windbreaker, and a heavy gray muffler high about his neck and ears. A battered fedora was drawn low.

“Maybe,” said Jim, “he is only going up the road to the next farm. But something tells me not.”

And with a last shove on the gas, he ran the car alongside.

“Mmmmm,” said I.

For the face that turned up to us as we paused, was an unattractive face, the eyes were small and gray and cold in their expression, with red rims. The face was withered, and out of it stood a beaked nose. The mouth, hidden by a ragged white moustache, seemed only to be a slit.

After Long Absence

 ‘Lift?” I called, winding down the window. “Thank you,” said the old man. I reached back and opened the door for him and he got in back.

“Going far?” asked Jim.

“Far enough,” said the old man.

“How far can we take you?” Jim requested.

“How far are you going?” the old man retorted. No smile broke the stoniness of his face. His bleak eyes regarded us levelly.

“We are not going any place in particular,” said Jim. “We’re out scouting around for some Christmas trees, so one way is as good as another.”

The old man studied us in silence. I nudged Jim on the leg.

“Going out Guelph way?” the old chap asked finally.

“Sure,” said Jim. “I was just thinking about Guelph or somewhere even beyond there.”

“Stratford?” inquired the old man.

“Stratford would be great,” said Jim. “Are you going to Stratford?”

“The other side of Stratford,” said the old man, leaning back on the cushions, and loosening his muffler around his neck.

I twisted around in the seat to chat with him, but he was looking out the car window with that far away expression or lack of expression you see in people looking out train windows. He did not turn to face me. I saw his ancient boots, his patched trousers. His hands were knuckled and harsh.”

“Have you come far?” I asked.

“Province of New Brunswick,” he answered, without turning from the window.

“Hitch hiked?”

“Yes.”

I nudged Jim again. I was smiling to myself. Miracles. What a stuffy old stager was for the manifestation of miracles. Between Clappison’s Corners and Guelph, I got from him that he had not much luck at hitch hiking. That he had stood four days at Toronto’s corners but finally had started on foot for Stratford.

When we reached Guelph, he sat up and stared with great interest at the streets, the people, the busy pre-Christmas scene.

“You’ve been away from Ontario a long time?” I asked.

“Since 1920,” said he.

“You were born up here?”

“Born and raised and spent all my life in Mannering,” said he.

“Is that the name of the village you’re going to?”

“That’s it. The other side of Stratford. I’ll soon be there.”

“We’ll be delighted to take you there,” said Jim. “One place as good as another to us.”

And the old chap relaxed on the cushions and continued his endless blind staring out at the winter fields and drab little villages.

Through Stratford, he sat up and twisted, this way and that, eagerly scanning the streets, stores. But when we stopped for a red light, he sat back and sank his head on his breast, as if to prevent the people crossing from seeing him in the car.

“Mmm, mmmm,” said I, this time giving Jim a pinch and a sly nod in the mirror.

Back To the Old Village

Mannering, which, of course, is not its true name, nor anything like it, is a few miles beyond Stratford, and neither will I say northwest or southwest. But in a few minutes we came to the village of Mannering, just a wide place on a second-class highway, with painted cottages and old and somewhat faded red brick and yellow brick mansions, and a street of shops and cottages and two banks and one motion picture theatre.

“Which house?” asked Jim, as we started into the village asphalt.

“Just drop me anywhere,” said the old chap, his voice husky.

“Not at all, not at all,” cried Jim, heartily. “We’ll set you down right by your door.”

“Right through,” said the old chap in a low voice; and, turning, I saw he was almost crouched down in the back, yet stealing eager looks over the rim of the windows at the passing scene. It was growing dusk. Snow had begun. The houses seemed cuddled down, and soft lights were glowing in a few of the windows.

After we passed through the store section, the old chap sat up and leaned forward to watch ahead.

“On the left,” he said, clearing his throat. “A white house. Second past this church.”

But second past the church, when Jim slowed down, there was no white house. There was brown house. A two-storey frame house, painted brown. And about it, every sign of neglect. The lawn all high-grown with weeds. It was dark. A pane of glass was broken in one of the downstairs windows.

Jim and I both felt the hands grip the cushion of our seat back.

“Vacant,” said Jim, cheerfully. “Well, a couple of inquiries…”

“No, no,” gasped the old chap, “just drop me off outside the village a bit.”

“Miracles, miracles,” I said casually.

Jim turned the car around on the gravel. He drove slowly back to the store section, where the lights were bright and colored bulbs were festooned from store to store. In front of a little restaurant and candy store he stopped.

“Come in,” he said firmly. “And we’ll have a cup of coffee and a bite to eat.”

The old man, bending his joints, got off the cushions and slowly stepped out of the car.

I got out and Jim and I started to escort the old fellow into the candy store. His head was bent. His hands, as they fumbled with his old gray muffler, were shaking.

A man standing in the doorway next the candy shop. festooned with boots and shoes and goloshes, suddenly stepped forward.

“Ed,” he cried at our old man. “Ed.”

The old man straightened and stared with his curiously bleak eyes at the stranger.

“You’re Ed Stout,” accused the stranger, his eyes bulging, his mouth wide in a wild grin.

Clamor and Bedlam

“Hey,” roared the stranger to the wide world, to the street of Mannering, to the men and women and boys and girls busily coming and going along the street now sparkling with new falling snow. “Hey, here’s Ed Stout!”

And as if a thunderclap had sounded, as if we had driven our fist into a hornets’ nest, as if we had set fire to Mannering, there rose such a clamor and bedlam. “Ed Stout, Ed Stout,” they shouted and squealed and yelled, and men in coon coats and men in smooth coats shouldered us aside to touch Ed Stout, and women, yammering, pushed sideways past us to seize Ed Stout’s hands, and children pushed and shoved underneath the throng, to stand and stagger and stare at Ed Stout, and from stores people came running, wiping their hands on white aprons, and above the mob, the first stranger stood roaring for somebody to run and tell the Stout boys, any of them, any one will do, that Ed Stout is home. And in less than two minutes a bell was ringing in a church or a fire hall, and cars came rushing and slithering down the street; and farmers driving teams; and the crowd grew and grew and the big stranger led Ed Stout inside the shoe store, and up and down and whirling around the store front, the mob, with faces gleaming and eyes shining and mouths jabbering “Ed Stout, Ed Stout is home, Ed Stout, Ed Stout.”

“Miracle,” said Jim, pulling me out to lean against our car.

“What the heck is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “But anyway, Ed Stout is home.”

And while the mob was at its height, and two handsome men in their forties arrived in a big dark car and thrust their way into the store with everybody making way for them when they saw who they were, the tall stranger who had first seen Ed Stout came through the mob and beckoned to us.

“Come in, gentlemen,” he cried.

“But what is it?” we asked.

“It’s Ed Stout,” said he, “home!”

“But what’s the excitement?”

“Ed Stout.” said the stranger, is the greatest man this country ever grew. The greatest sport, the greatest friend any man ever had, and the greatest soldier. He came home from the war. He quarrelled with his young sons, who were too young to go to war at that time. You know the age?”

“Yes, yes.”

“He quarreled with his family and disappeared,” said the stranger, his face like a high priest’s. “And they and we and everybody all over this country have been looking for him for twenty years.”

“We’re glad we picked him up,” I confessed. “I guess we ought to go in and shake hands with him before we go.”

“The boys took him home out the back way,” said the stranger. “But I was to bring you a message from them to come up right now and have dinner with them at the Big House.”

“Big House?”

“The Stout boys’ house; we call it the Big House,” explained the stranger.

So we went.

But Jim says this part is sacred.

---

Editor’s Notes: This story appeared in The Best of Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise (1977).

1. Jim’s total of $35 dollars would be about $795 in 2025. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 15, 1934.

“The trouble is,” said Jim, “that you make up your mind to be sensible about Christmas and then, along about the last week, a sort of gush takes hold of you.”

“I know the thing,” I admitted.

“A sort of emotion or something,” went on Jimmie. “And even although you have got your children’s presents hid up in the closet shelf you go up and look at them and think they are not enough.”

That’s it,” I rued.

“So you rush out, three days before Christmas,” said Jim, “and buy them a lot more stuff.”

“It’s part of the institution of Christmas,” I said.

“Look here, Jimmie,” I suddenly said. “You’re an artist. Why don’t you sit down in the evenings and paint a dozen or so landscapes? There isn’t a friend or relation of yours, near enough to require a Christmas gift, that wouldn’t give his eye teeth for an original painting by you. To be framed. It’s a swell idea. If I had talent like you that’s how I’d solve my Christmas problem.”

“You should talk,” said Jim. “Why don’t you compose some beautiful little moral sentiment, something characteristic, like:

“‘The man who can smile

is the man that’s worth while.’

“You know. the sort of thing,” cried Jim eagerly. “And then have it hand-lettered on art paper and send it around to all your relations and friends. They could frame it. How proud they’d be to have a motto like that, all from you, on their wall!”

“Don’t be silly, Jim,” I said.

“All right; don’t you be silly, suggesting I paint a lot of landscapes,” said he. “Artists aren’t like that. They can’t work wholesale. They’ve got to suffer over their work.”

“It seems a great pity,” I said, “that two ingenious fellows like us can’t make something that would do for Christmas presents. Women are lucky. They can knit things and crochet things. They could easily give jars of preserves or pickles to their friends for Christmas. You know. Done up in pretty bottles, with scarlet ribbon around the neck?”

“A jar of ginger marmalade,” said Jim, “would be just as nice a Christmas present as a necktie.”

“But what can we do?” I begged. “What can a man make that would pass for a Christmas present?”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” mused Jimmie. “Not a thing. Men are pretty helpless.”

“I used to be good at manual training,” I suggested. “I once carved a kind of box. I guess I could turn out some nice carved book-ends made of mahogany. That isn’t a bad idea.”

“Or hammered brass and copper,” cried Jim. “Remember that fellow with the whiskers we saw at the Exhibition, hammering out bracelets and ash trays and all sorts of little things? He worked like lightning. There wouldn’t be a bad idea. Let’s get some metal and some hammers. We’ve got a few days left. I bet we could turn out a couple of dozen objects of art before Christmas.”

A High Resolve

“I’m not much on hammering,” I said, “I hammer typewriter keys all day long. I wouldn’t want to hammer brass all night.”

“That’s my feeling about wood carving,” agreed Jim. “After scratching away with a pen all day I wouldn’t want to go scratching away with a chisel.”

“We ought to think up something we could both work at,” I said. “We could turn out a lot more stuff if we worked together on it, like manufacturing. How about batik¹, you know -staining silk with pictures?”

“Too messy and too arty,” said Jim. “How about – er – how about…” I suggested.

“I’ve got it,” shouted Jimmie. “Pottery. Pottery, of course!”

“That’s it!”

“You remember that old fellow at the Exhibition?” went on Jim ecstatically. “A wheel whirring around? A gob of mud? And he holds a kitchen knife and some curly bits of tin against the mud whizzing around? And lo, a pot!”

“Jim, you’ve hit it,” I applauded him. “We’ve seen vases and jugs with gorgeous rich reds and maroons and blues. With just big simple patterns of leaves on them. Gorgeous things.”

“I don’t think I’d have any trouble painting on the patterns,” said Jim. “Where could we get quickly some dope on how to prepare the clay and the glaze?”

“Encyclopaedia,” I stated. “It will give the whole business.”

So we dashed down to The Star library and not only did we find all about pottery in the encyclopaedia but there were books of clippings on pottery and a couple of little volumes on the art of pottery and its history. In fifteen minutes of judicious reading Jimmie and I had mastered the fundamentals of the art and craft of pottery.

“It’s amazing,” Jim declared. “Those ancient Greeks, living three thousand years ago! Making pottery as lovely as that. Why, it’s more artistic than the stuff we can buy to-day! You’d think the Greeks, three thousand years ago, were more artistic than the people of Ontario to-day!”

“That’s what they say,” I informed him.

“But it’s ridiculous,” cried Jim. “Look at these lovely colored plates.”

And we studied the old Greek, Etruscan, Roman vases, bottles, bowls and jugs portrayed in the encyclopaedia.

“Why,” rasped Jim, “in three thousand years we should have advanced a million miles ahead of this instead of falling behind it!”

“Maybe,” I ventured, “you and I will start a revival; and with our pottery, lightly conceived as a Christmas gift to our small circle of friends, revolutionize the art world. Let us start where the Greeks left off!”

“If the Greeks could do this stuff so can we,” announced Jim.

We read how they took clay and kneaded it, and then spun the ball of clay on the wheel, and shaped the pot and painted a design on it, and baked it in an oven.

“It’s a cinch,” said Jim. “We can turn out fifty pots in three weeks. Littie pots for our casual acquaintances. Big pots for our dear friends and relations.”

“And all,” I added, “bearing the unmistakable character of the artists who created them.”

From the Humber riverbank north of Weston we got two bushel baskets of reddish clay. From a store on Richmond street we got a kind of powder to dust on over the colors that Jim was to paint on the pots. That would melt into a glaze. From an old tricycle that one of my boys had worn out we fashioned a potters’ wheel. We made a round disc of wood from the top of an apple barrel and fastened it with wire to the tricycle wheel. By reaching under and turning the pedal the wheel revolved beautifully, fast or slow, just as we required it.

We set up a bench in Jimmie’s cellar and went to work. It was absurdly simple. All you do is moisten the clay and make a ball of it, which you flatten out and curl up the edges as the wheel revolves.

The first two pots we had the clay too thin. Jim was doing the pioneer work, moulding the pot, and I was turning the pedal. But I got a little fast and suddenly the clay flew out in several directions, splattering Jim and me with mud.

“Not so fast!” commanded Jim.

“Make the dough a little thicker,” I retorted.

Which he did. And we got the pot nicely. moulded up into a sort of fruit bowl when suddenly it left the wheel with a jerk, flew up in the air and crashed into the fruit shelf, upsetting two jars, one of peaches and one of pickled onions, which broke on the floor.

“Not so fast,” repeated Jim.

So we slowly fashioned a nice little fruit bowl. It was our firstborn.

“Boy,” I said, as I turned the wheel, and it was a little tiresome, “there’s the first Frise Etruscan masterpiece.”

“I think,” said Jim, “we’ll paint a simple design in low color, a kind of landscape, with a blue lake and green islands.”

“Why not put a Birdseye Center scene on it?” I asked. “Old Archie chasing Pigskin Peters, in his red and white striped sweater, around the bowl.”

“That’s not art,” warned Jim, sternly.

“It’s art to me,” I said wistfully. “I wish I had a bowl like that.”

“No, sir, a Canadian, scene, like a Group of Seven picture,” said Jim, “gray limbs and cream-colored rocks and a yellow sky. That’s art.”

“You’re the artist,” I said. “I’m just the wheel turner.

“In regular manufacturing,” said Jim, “we should turn out a whole raft of pots first. Then paint them all. Then powder them. Then bake them.”

“All right,” I said, although I had a little sciatica in the arm.

So we turned out we eleven pots, some large, some small, some high, some low, some fancy shaped, and the last one Jim worked the two little handles on the side. As I turned the wheel Jim’s nimble fingers moulded the gob of clay by depressing here, filling out there.

When it came to painting them Jim did a beautiful thing on the first one. and he liked it so much he decided to go ahead and powder it and bake it in the oven, just to celebrate the first work of art.

The scene was lovely. The rocks were a kind of sour cream color, the trees had scabby limbs of a color like an elephant’s skin, the few dying leaves were like old cigar butts strung on wires, and the sky was like Roquefort cheese. It was a masterpiece of Canadian art.

“It’s a knockout,” I cried.

Jim had the kitchen oven heating all the time and it was piping hot. The encyclopaedia said the heat had to be intense.

Placing the pot on a cake tin, Jim slid it into the oven.

“Now it has to bake several hours, the encyclopaedia said,” announced Jim. We got our coats on and went for a walk. In an hour we came back. We proceeded down cellar to our humble studio which some day great critics and art lovers might buy for the nation as a shrine.

“Ach!” cried Jimmie.

The ten other pots had all sagged down until they were just ten reddish looking pancakes on the table. Some of them leaned sideways, others had just sat right down their bases.

“Aw,” said I.

“Let’s see how the first one is coming anyway,” said Jim, leading upstairs again to the kitchen. The gas oven was fairly pushing heat. There was a smell of burning paint, a bright, interesting smell of something baking.

Jim took a dish-towel and opened the oven door.

We both stooped down and stared in astonishment.

The pot was gone.

“Has anybody taken it?” I demanded.

Jim twitched the cake tin out.

“No,” said he hollowly.

In the pan was a pile of dry red sand.

We went down cellar in silence. Jim wandered about, patting the remaining jars of peaches and pickled onions. Then he gathered up the shapeless pancakes of clay and dropped them heavily back into the bushel basket.

“The reason the Greeks,” said Jim, “made such beautiful pots was that there were no stores where they could buy them.”

“Art flourishes,” I added, “where there are no modern conveniences.”

“What are you going to give your wife for Christmas?” asked Jim.

“Oh, I guess another couple of suits of lingerie.”

“Same here,” said Jim.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. Batik is a dyeing technique using wax resist. The term is also used to describe patterned textiles created with that technique. Batik is made by drawing or stamping wax on a cloth to prevent colour absorption during the dyeing process. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 24, 1932.

“Jimmie,” I said to the artist, “we go around having goofy adventures. But we never do anybody good. We ought to do good. We ought to perform some deed of kindness.”

“The next issue is the Christmas issue,” said Jim Frise. “Couldn’t we think up some kindly thing to do and write about that?”

I bet you,” I said, “there isn’t a house in this city, no, not a house in this country, maybe in all the world, these days, that is not in need of some kindly act. Rich house, poor house.”

“We could go,” said Jim, “to any house in any street and we could knock on the door and say to the person that comes to the door, ‘Mister, is there anything we can do for you?’ And there would be something, some trouble, some need.”

“Let’s do that,” I cried.

“I like the country better,” said Jim. “We have all our adventures in the city. Let’s go down to the Union station to-day at noon. Let’s just walk down into the station and see what train is leaving next. We’ll get on that train without buying tickets.”

“This is good,” said I.

“And when the conductor comes along,” went on Jimmie, “we will ask him what stations he’s got. And he will name the stations. And the one we like the sound of best, that isn’t too far away from Toronto, we’ll buy tickets for.”

“Swell,” said I.

“Then we’ll get off at that station and hire a cutter¹,” said Jim. “I haven’t had a cutter ride for fifteen years. And in the cutter we will drive out into the country. And then we’ll call at a farmhouse, any old farmhouse. And we will go up to the door and ask them if there is anything we can do for them.”

“It’ll fill in an afternoon,” said I.

So we went down to the Union station and in the big waiting-room there was only one gate open. It was the train for Aston, Palmerston, Durham, leaving in three minutes.

We rushed up to the gate and told the gateman we would get our tickets on board as we had very important business and daren’t miss the train.

We got into the smoking end of a car and when the conductor came along we asked him what stations he had about thirty or forty miles out.

He recited them, Georgetown, Moorefield, Alma, Ethel, Maryvale, Elmwood, and the one we liked the best was Maryvale.

“Maryvale!” said Jimmie. “That’s the place.”

We took singles to Maryvale and settled down to a nice debate on Mr. Bennett² and the tariff with the other ten gentlemen in the smoking compartment.

“Maryvale,” droned the brakeman, just about the time we had solved the problems of Canada. And Jim and I were the only customers for a little station, three brick houses, seven frame houses, one store, one gas pump and a church, which was Maryvale, with not a living soul in sight, nestling in the snow of a gray and pleasant afternoon.

The station agent told us we could rent a cutter and a young man to drive it for us at the frame house next to the store.

“Eddie is his name,” said the agent.

“Anything We Can Do For You?”

Through the snow we walked to the store, while the three brick houses, the seven frame houses and the church looked politely at us, with never a human soul in sight, but soft smoke coming from all the chimneys.

Eddie was a silent young man in a ragged coon coat, who quickly hitched up a tall brown horse to an old cutter.

“Where do you wish to go?” asked Eddie.

“Out this road a piece,” said Jimmie, pointing to a snowy road that led over a hill between snake fences and cedar trees. We piled in beside Eddie, under horsey blankets, and away we went, with a jerk and a jolt, while the sleigh-bells jangled and we had all the white wide world to ourselves.

Eddie leaned out the driving side, silently.

“How far should we go?” I asked Jim.

“Let’s go a couple of miles before we start looking,” replied Jim. “Isn’t this swell?”

It was swell. We saw farmhouses and clustered barns in the valleys. Black and white collies ran out at us. Going between two walls of cedar trees we saw a rabbit skip across the road. Jangle, jangle went the sleigh-bells in the quiet and the clean air went right down into us.

Up a slow hill the horse plodded and the sleigh jerked and slewed. Out on a lonely hilltop we came. We approached a gray brick farmhouse with scalloped wooden trimmings on its gables and along its eaves.

Its buildings were burdened with snow. There were no tracks into its lane. Its doors were closed. Its blinds down. No animals stood steaming in its barnyards.

“Who lives there?” asked Jim, suddenly.

“Robinsons,” said Eddie.

“Robertson or Robinson?” asked Jim.

“I don’t know, everybody calls it Robinson,” said Eddie.

“Turn in here,” said Jim.

No windows moved as we jangled up the lane. No doors opened as we pulled up in the door yard.

“Wait for us,” said Jim to Eddie. And we stepped out into the snow.

We rapped on the back door. After a long moment the door opened.

An elderly man looked out at us, in his shirt-sleeves. He was in his sock feet and he held a newspaper in his hand. His face was lined, tired, and a film of silver stubble covered his chin and cheeks.

“Mr. Robinson?” asked Jim.

“Yes.”

“Could we speak to you a minute?”

The old man opened the door wider and let us pass into his kitchen. It smelled of sour milk. Of warmth, of sweetness and age and comfort.

Mr. Robinson shut the door, laid down his newspaper and stood while we stood.

“Well?” said he.

“Mr. Robinson,” said I, “is there anything we can do for you?”

He looked at us steadily. He looked at me and then he looked at Jim.

“How do you mean?” he asked, uncertainly.

“We’re from Toronto,” I explained. “We came out here to ask you if there was any thing we could do for you?”

There Was Something After All

He stared heavily at us.

“Do you know my brother in Toronto? Have you come from him?”

“No, we don’t know your brother and we don’t know you. We are just two men from Toronto, who decided to come out somewhere in the country and drive out to some house and ask if there was anything we could do.”

The old man did not ask us to sit down. He continued to stare at us, with long pauses between his words.

“Has that boy in the cutter been talking to you?” he demanded.

“Eddie?” said Jim. “No, we never saw Eddie before and we just picked him up at the village to take us for a drive. He hasn’t said ten words to us.”

“You don’t know my brother in Toronto? You never heard of me? And you come out here to see if you can help me? You must be crazy men.”

“No,” said Jim. “You see it’s nearly Christmas, and we thought we ought to be doing something for somebody.”

“I should think you would find plenty to do in the city,” said Mr. Robinson.

“Sure,” said Jim. “Every house in the city could find something to do. But we thought it would be a good idea to just go out anywhere in the country and drive along until we came to some place and then drop in, kind of, and ask if there was anything we could do. It was just an idea. We had an idea that everybody in the world needs somebody to do something for them. I guess we were wrong.”

“I guess you were,” said the old man. “Well, if you don’t mind, I was reading the paper.”

And he walked over to the kitchen door. and opened it. Jim and I walked out.

“Good-day, Mr. Robinson.”

“Good-day.”

We got outside.

“Well,” said Jim.

The kitchen door opened.

“Just a minute, gentlemen,” said the old man. He nodded his head for us to come back.

“Come back in for just a moment,” said Mr. Robinson.

We walked back and he shut the door, slowly, while he bent his head in thought.

“You aren’t police, are you?” asked Mr. Robinson.

“No, indeed,” said I. “Far from it.”

Mr. Robinson stood very still before us, watching us steadily.

“Do you know my daughter?” he asked, in a strange voice.

“No, sir,” we replied.

After looking at us until his old eyes began to waver in a curious fashion he said: “Please sit down, gentlemen.”

There were rocking-chairs in this kitchen, with heavy wool afghans on the backs.

“My wife,” said Mr. Robinson, sitting on the edge of his chair and leaning on the kitchen table, “is asleep upstairs. Would you mind if we talk low? My daughter,” and he tapped with his curved, coarse, old hand on the table pathetically, looking at it as he talked, “my daughter has been away for four months. She went to my brother’s in Toronto, because I sent her away. She was in trouble.”

“Help Us To Find Her”

Jimmie and I heard the clock ticking on the shelf, and we both looked at it. It was easier to look there than at the old man, beating his curved, calloused, old hand on the table.

“So she went to my brother’s, but she did not stay there. She has not been there for six weeks. They don’t know where she is. Nobody knows where she is. I thought maybe you had come about her?”

“No,” said Jim. One of us had to say something.

“My wife,” said Mr. Robinson, “isn’t well. This has been very hard on her. She just sits around. We don’t go to church any more. We don’t go to the village. We just sit here, you see.”

“Do you want your daughter back?” I asked.

“I sent her away and I think I was right,” said the old man. “It was the proper thing to do. My wife is not well. She sits all day staring before her, and while I ordered her not to write I know she has got no answers now for six weeks. My daughter has left my brother’s. We don’t know where she is.”

“There is a poem, Mr. Robinson,” I said. “It goes-

‘If I were damned of body and soul

I know whose love would make me whole,

Mother o’ mine!’

“And it’s a strange thing, Mr. Robinson, they never write any poems like that about fathers.”

“Please,” suddenly burst out the old man, putting his two heavy hands over his face, “please help us to find her! Just to find her!”

Jimmie and I got up very hastily and put our hands on the old man while Jim made faces at me for quoting poetry.

“We’ll find her,” we both said, and the other door creaked and in walked the loveliest old lady you ever beheld in your life, a little, narrow, old lady with a gray dress and the bent shoulders they get on the farms. Her eyes were wide and terrified, when she saw two strange men standing over her husband at the table.

“We’ll find her!” said Jimmie loudly, nodding at the dear old lady with a crooked smile and patting Mr. Robinson violently on the back.

Mr. Robinson had to stand up, so as to provide some place for the old lady to rest her head. We stood over toward the door, while the old lady trembled against the chest of the old man, who mumbled things down into her white hair and pawed her with his rough old hands.

He finally set her down in the chair and we all three went outside. He gave us his daughter’s name, which doesn’t matter since the name Robinson is only an invented name anyway. We took down, like regular newspapermen, the brother’s address and all particulars as to age, weight, color of hair, eyes, how clothed. The sleigh-bells jangled expectantly. Eddie got out and spread the blankets for us, and with much silent handshaking and head-wagging and sniffly smiles and pats on the back we climbed into the cutter and drove in a queer silence, as deep as Eddie’s, back to Maryvale, which isn’t the name of the place at all.

There was a train at five-twenty-eight. We had only thirty minutes to walk up and down the frosty platform until it came, while Jim kept exclaiming, “Well, well, well,” and I continued to blow my nose.

We did not go into the smoking compartment. There were too many nosey strangers there. We sat on the green plush seats and put our heads close together and planned. It is not every day that men can make a joke like this.

“Everybody in the world,” said Jimmie, as we came into the lights of the city, “everybody, rich and poor, has something they would like to tell us. I bet you that old man would have sat there forever and let his wife die before he would soften his heart enough to take her in his arms.”

So I got out my hankie again.

The finding of Maryvale Robinson, if you like that for a name, was very simple to two great sleuths like Jim and me. By doing the wrong thing you always come out right. That is one of the best rules to follow.

The Mystery of Life

We called, straight from the station, at the brother’s house.

He looked like a derby hat edition of his old brother in the country.

“No,” he said, suspiciously and narrowly, through the barely opened door of his narrow little house in the mean little street to which people are glad to move from the white and silent country; “no, she was here, but she left. She just took her suitcase and walked out one night. My wife was very kind to her, too. Very kind. But she just packed her suitcase and waltzed off.”

“Did she have any friends in the city?” we asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Mr. Robinson’s brother.

So Jim and I went down the street. “She’d look for a job,” said Jim. “She had no money. So what employment agencies are open at night? We’ll get the car and make the rounds of the employment agencies.”

The first employment agency had no record of a Maryvale Robinson. The next two were closed. The next one was open and the hard, cold woman at the desk said she had no Maryvale Robinson, but she had lots of Robertsons and Robinsons, but none by the name of Maryvale.

“She was a young girl,” said Jim, “with lovely blue eyes and a sort of gold-colored hair.”

Which was pure imagination.

“And she had on a brown coat and a brown hat and was carrying a suitcase.”

“A black suitcase?” inquired the hard cold woman.

“Yes, a black suitcase,” said Jim, which was a lie, because we had not been told what kind of a suitcase it was. But Jim said afterwards that he had a hunch.

“I have a girl like that,” said the hard, cold woman, “but she gave another name. We have not got her a situation yet, but I loaned her ten dollars on account. I will give you her address and you can see if it is she.”

We took the address and started.

“If an old alligator like that would lend a girl with a false name ten dollars,” said Jim, “that will be the girl we are looking for. This is all part of the mystery of life.”

We called at a tall, dark house. We waited in a dim front hall. Down the stairs came a little, white scared girl, holding the bannister.

“Are you Maryvale Robinson?” we asked.

“Yes, that is, no,” said she, and the story is over.

All but the way we found there was no train, so we piled Maryvale and her suitcase in the car and drove down and got the old alligator at the employment agency to come with us, just for the adventure of it, for she was a friend of Maryvale’s

When we got to the village of Maryvale late in the night, amid the white snow and the cedar trees shadowy along the snake fences, the old alligator who was in the back seat with the little girl suggested that we stop and telephone out to the farm.

“No,” said Jim. “I have a better idea.”

So we got Eddie to hitch up the cutter and the four of us piled into it, with Maryvale’s suitcase, and we let Jimmie, the old farmer, do the driving.

And when the sleigh-bells came jangling, jangling over the hill to the high country where the gray brick house is with the scalloped trimmings on the gables, we saw, as Jimmie knew we should see, a light spring up, late as it was, in the windows of the lonely house.

And as we turned into the lane we saw the light come downstairs, and when the cutter turned and stopped in the door yard the kitchen door flew open and an old man came staggering blindly out of the dark, feeling with his arms, hungrily…

As we drove back to the village for the car, in the bitter midnight, Jim said, “I guess you see a lot of this sort of thing?”

“I have no use for girls of that sort,” replied the old alligator in her coldest voice.

“Neither have I,” said I.

But Jim held his hands very primly with the reins.

And the old alligator and I rested our hands very delicately on our laps.

For all our hands were blessed with tears.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. A cutter is are a type of sleigh. Generally, sleighs accommodated larger groups, while cutters were sufficient for two people. ↩︎
2. R. B. Bennett was Prime Minister of Canada at the time. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 22, 1945.

“Watch that guy,” whispered Jimmie Frise.

I glanced around the street car and, observing Jim’s gaze, saw it fastened on a pleasant little elderly fellow opposite us

He had a cardboard box on his knees, which he held with both hands as if it contained the Holy Grail.

On his face was a sweet, faraway, tender look which he lifted above all the rest of us in the car, and his eyes twinkled and gleamed behind spectacles in an expression of intense anticipation.

“What about him?” I murmured to Jim.

“Watch,” said Jim quietly.

The car was fairly crowded but would be much more so at the next big transfer corner. I watched the little man.

He sat, lurching with the car, smiling to himself, a secret, proud smile. His eyes darted from side to side, unseeing, as he pictured something in his mind, something pretty nice.

Quietly, he bent down over the box on his knees. He seemed to be listening. His hands caressed the box.

Jim nudged me.

“So what?” I muttered to Jim.

“What do you suppose he’s got in that box?” demanded Jim softly. “Did you ever see so happy a man?”

“He’s been doing his Christmas shopping,” I suggested.

“Obviously,” agreed Jim, “but what has he got in that box?”

“Is this some new guessing game?” I inquired. “Riding in a street car and trying to guess what all the Christmas shoppers have got in their parcels?”

“He’s got half the people in the car watching him,” said Jim.

I glanced around. Sure enough, everybody who could see the little man appeared to be watching him.

Men with newspapers suspended before them were covertly observing him over the tops of their newspapers. Ladies, with that casual way they have, were fastening the little man with the corners of their eyes.

So I joined the party. I shifted my seat slightly to see around a man standing in the way.

With the fixed, faraway smile on his face, the little fellow let his gleaming eyes wander along the advertisement cards up along the car ceiling. Then, with a sudden recollection of his secret, he drew the box closer on his lap, bent slightly down, and shook the box ever so lightly.

Whatever response came from the box, the little man fairly glowed with joy. I glanced around, and saw that everyone watching him was nearly frantic with curiosity. They shifted their positions in an irritated fashion, and those immediately beside him leaned closer to him as if to try to overhear what he heard; or to peek.

“It wouldn’t be a pup?” I suggested to Jim.

“Box too small,” said Jim. “Might be a kitten.”

“He’d have air holes for a kitten,” I submitted. “Anyway, if it was a kitten, we could hear it meowing when the car stops.”

After a couple more blocks, the little man, cuddling the box close, leaned down and very cautiously raised one corner of the lid and peered within.

Then, lowering the lid, he lifted his radiant face in the same faraway expression and wrapped his hands around the box in a gesture of supreme possession.

Of All the Nerve!

“Darn it,” said Jimmie, “I wish we knew what was in there!”

“It’s none of our business, Jim.” I responded.

But the man sitting next to the little fellow couldn’t stand it any longer either. Leaning close, he spoke. The little man smiled happily at the questioner but did not open his lips. He just shook his head.

The baffled neighbor glanced around at the rest of us as much as to say, “Well, I did my best.”

Before we travelled another block, the little man, overcome with his own curiosity, bent down again, cautiously lifted another corner of the box lid and took a long, lingering peep in through the opening.

By this time, a regular fever of curiosity was in possession of the street car. Those standing began to shift down to the middle of the car in the hope of getting a closer look at the mystery. In fact, they shut off Jim’s and my vision of the little man, so we got up and gave our seats to a couple of ladies who moved down; and this enabled us to stand where we could keep the little man in view.

Oblivious to the excitement and curiosity he was inspiring, he let his absent gaze wander for an instant but immediately it returned to the box on his knees and he seemed to quiver with an inward delight.

“Why doesn’t somebody,” gritted Jim beside me “ask him straight out? A man shouldn’t be allowed to create all this curiosity.”

“It’s his business, Jim,” I asserted, leaning out so as not to lose sight of him. “Just look at this guy butting in in front of me. Of all the nerve!”

“Push him over,” ordered Jim.

I tapped the interloper on the shoulder.

“Pardon me,” I said, “but you pushed right in front of me.”

“It’s a crowded car,” replied the interloper.

“Yes, but you don’t have to jam right in front of me,” I insisted.

He reluctantly moved to one side, affording me a view under his elbow.

“Of all the vulgar curiosity,” I muttered to Jim. “Bulging in like that!”

“It’s the Christmas rush, you know,” reminded Jim. “Look! He’s peeping again!”

The little man was hunched down, lifting the box lid and taking another long, fascinated peep within the box.

The people beside him, behind him, in front of him, fairly coiled around in their desire to see what was in the box.

He restored the lid, patted the box tenderly and resumed his flushed and excited gazing at space.

“Aw, for Pete’s sake,” exclaimed Jim under his breath, “why doesn’t somebody do something about it? Just standing there!”

A lady standing over him hanging to at strap – I had seen her sitting farther down the car only a moment before – leaned down and spoke smilingly to the little man.

He smiled bashfully up at her and said:

“Four!”

The lady leaned down and said something more, but the little man simply shook his head, beamed and cuddled the box more closely.

“Four what?” Jim passed the question.

And from both directions, “Four what?” was eagerly passed to the lady who had done, the interrogation.

“He just said four,” the lady announced to us all generally. “He didn’t say four what.”

“Ask him four what?” called Jimmie.

“Ask him yourself,” retorted the lady, but not relinquishing her place directly over the little man.

“Maybe he’s hard of hearing,” suggested the gentleman who had crowded so vulgarly in front of me.

“Here,” said Jim, “let me in there! I’ll ask him.”

The car had stopped at the big transfer point and a heavy Christmas crowd was shoving from the front end. Jim got in next to the little man. Putting on his best salesman smile, Jim leaned down and said very distinctly:

“You’ve got a surprise there, eh?”

“Four,” replied, the little man gently beaming.

“Four what?” Jim said more loudly.

“Yes, SIR,” agreed the little man enthusiastically. “Beauties!”

The Christmas crowd was making it tough for Jim, shoving.

“I say,” cried Jim, leaning low, “what are they? Four WHAT?”

“Only two bits each,” replied the little man agreeably. “Two bits. It’s a bargain.”

“WHAT are they?” persisted Jim, though several newcomers had jammed their way this far down the car and weren’t aware of the mystery that had all the rest of us in its grip. They shoved Jim rather roughly.

“Don’t mention it,” replied the little man amiably. “It’s a pleasure, I’m sure.”

Jim was shoved three seats back.

And for about six blocks, I lost my view, and Jim, tall as he is, could not crane far enough to see the little man either.

But by the time enough people had got off the car to allow us to resume our vigil, even the newcomers had been caught in the spell, and very grudgingly indeed they made room for me to peer under their elbows, and for Jim to stand tip-toe to look over their shoulders.

But there, lost in his happy maze of anticipation, was our little friend in the very act of lifting the box lid again for another wonderful peep at whatever was inside.

Long and craftily he gazed into the open corner. And when he replaced the lid, it was a starry gaze he listed, to turn and look out the car window to see where he was.

“Has anybody found out what he’s got?” Jim inquired those who had been lucky enough to stand close for the past few blocks.

Everybody shook their heads and ventured various opinions.

“It’s something alive,” decreed a lady with her arms full of Christmas parcels.” I heard him sort of whistling at it.”

“A canary, I bet you,” suggested another.

“No, canaries come in small wooden cages when you buy them,” announced another.

“I don’t think it’s anything alive,” asserted a third. “I think it’s some kind of toy he’s taking home to his grandson. Maybe an airplane.”

The little man was entirely indifferent to all this conversation right in his face. His hands enfolded in the box lovingly and he smiled inscrutably and happily at the coat front of the gentleman leaning right over him.

“I don’t think anybody,” declared Jim warmly, “has any right to create all this disturbance. Especially at this season of the year.”

“I suppose,” I said bitterly, “we should pile on top of him and rip the cover off the box and satisfy our curiosity.”

“If he’d only keep still,” protested Jim, “and not keep peeping all the time! If he’d only not look so excited!”

“My dear Jim,” I scoffed, “has it come to this, in cities, that nobody can have any private thoughts any more? Must we all wear dead pans? Even at Christmas time, can’t a man look happy and eager? This gentleman is taking something home to his little grandson. He is very delighted with his purchase. Maybe it’s a doll…”

When the Lid Came Off

“He said there were four,” corrected Jim.

“Maybe it’s four dolls,” I suggested, “for his little granddaughter.”

“He said they were two bits each,” pointed out Jimmie. “You can’t get dolls for two bits.”

“Jim,” I announced, “I’m prepared to move back to the far end of the car and forget it. I never saw such an exhibition of nosey idle curiosity in my…”

But I was cut short, because the little man was again bending slowly over, and with a delicate finger lifting one corner of the box for another peek.

We all surged close. We shoved, elbowed and shouldered one another for a closer look.

He raised the corner of the box lid about a quarter of an inch and then, lifting the box, put his eye to the hole and seemed transfixed by what he beheld. His hands shook. He heaved a sigh. And then, lowering the box and replacing the lid, gazed ecstatically from face to face of us all glaring above him.

“CANARY?” suddenly yelled the lady with all the parcels.

“Pardon me!” cried the little man.” I didn’t think! Of course you may have my seat. I’m terribly sorry…I…”

And as he scrambled to his feet, the lid of the box popped off and slid to one side, out leaped four white mice so fast and so twinkling, they seemed to vanish like blobs of quicksilver.

In an instant, the car was a screaming madhouse. Ladies shrieked and men yelled encouragement at them. One mouse appeared on a lady’s shoulder and powdered its nose. The lady, perfectly upright, fell perfectly horizontal, with three men easing her down. The little man had darted after his pets and on hands and knees shoved and dived amid the ankles of passengers all retreating in the two possible directions.

The car came to a stop. The doors slid open and there was a wild stampede for the exit, ladies fairly vaulting over the backs of those ahead, gasping and giving small squeaks or screams, while gentlemen soothed and shouted courage to them, at the same time assisting them out the car doors.

In a matter of 20 seconds, the car was empty, save for the little man and about five of the more valiant of the men, including Jim and me, who were forming ourselves into a posse to round up the mice.

“Shut the doors!” we commanded the motorman.

“What’s cookin’?” he called.

“White mice got loose,” shouted one of the posse.

“You’d think it was lions or tigers,” called the motorman.

“Hold everything, and they can get back on again,” commanded Jim.

“Who, the mice?” called the motorman.

“No, the passengers,” said Jim.

“To heck with that!” retorted the motorman, starting the car. “I’ve got a schedule to meet. If people want to get off my car, they can.”

So while the car made the next few blocks, the little man with his posse rounded up three of the four. Jim caught two in his hat. Another of the posse lapped his mitt over another. And after he had searched all over for the fourth, and had almost decided it had got off with the passengers, maybe in some lady’s hat, the motorman sang out:

“Aw, here’s the little darling up here! Right on my window sill.”

So the little man went up and snapped it into the cardboard box.

And we all shook hands with him, all flushed and beaming.

“It’ll be a great surprise,” he cried happily.

“It sure will,” we all agreed, slapping him on the back.

And we all got off at our corners.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 19, 1942.

“Well sir,” said Jimmie Frise, “I never felt less like Christmas in my life.”

“Maybe this is the way our folks felt,” I submitted, “on the fourth war Christmas in the last war, when we were over there.”

“Fourth Christmas!” exclaimed Jim. “Is this the fourth war Christmas?”

“Thirty-nine was the first,” I reminded him. “This war has been a lot longer than you think.”

“The counterpart of this Christmas, then, “figured Jim, “was Christmas, 1917.”

“And a pretty grim one it must have been,” I recalled. “The Germans were still lodged solid in France. We had staged a couple of battles, like Vimy and Passchendaele – how small they seem now. On a front of a couple of miles, we hammered and raged, and advanced a mile. In a whole battle.”

“We were proud of those battles,” declared Jim.

“Yet on Christmas, 1917, which was the fourth Christmas, like this one,” I said, “it looked as if the war might go on forever.”

“I wonder if we dare hope,” sighed Jim, “that next Christmas will be like Christmas, 1918?”

“Well, if those of us who want the war to end,” I proposed, “will work and fight harder than those who don’t want it to end, it might well be over by next Christmas.”

“Those who don’t want it to end?” demanded Jimmie hotly.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “We must not overlook the fact that there is a pretty powerful element, all over the world, in all countries, who will look with regret on the war’s end.”

“What monsters!” scoffed Jim. “Surely…”

“Oh, they’re not really monsters.” I explained. “They don’t consciously want the war to keep on. They don’t deliberately plan to keep the war going. It is a passive thing in them, not active. But scattered and hidden though they be, in all countries, they are a power and a force to be reckoned with.”

“Fifth columnists,” muttered Jim.

“Not at all,” I countered. “For example, in all armies, everywhere, among the generals and big shots are a few who are having the time of their lives. They were insignificant squibs before the war, they have risen to be persons of great importance now. And they know in their hearts that the minute the war is over, they are going right back to obscurity. They look with dread on peace.”

“It can’t be,” Jim exclaimed.

“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “Then, consider all the people, in all countries, people of importance and power, who are afraid of what is coming after the war, socially, economically and industrially. Those people are mighty worried. It looks, right now, terribly unsettled to them. They are talking about it, this very hour, in clubs and board rooms, in offices and mansions, trying to see into the future, trying to organize their security. Do you imagine such people would not, in some quiet, unconscious way, try to prolong the war a little while until they can see a little farther?”

“Utter monsters,” declared Jim.

Winds of Opinion

“They didn’t get rich and powerful,” I pointed out, “by fretting about the mass of mankind. But besides them, there must be people, in all countries, who are definitely far better off than they ever were before, due to war industry. The minute the war ends, they feel, in their hearts, that they are going back to the weary, tricky, hazardous life of unemployment and insecurity. These are people drawn from all classes, professional, managerial, workers. To suppose that a number of such people does not exist is simply silly. And it is the job of all of us who want the war to end victoriously as soon as possible to be alert for them. Because, sooner or later, at some stage of the victory, circumstances might arise that would allow these people to gang up and actually interfere. Public opinion is a funny thing. It is like the breeze. Mostly it is a vagrant breeze, idly flowing this way and that. Often, it sets strongly in one direction, like a west wind or an east wind. Sometimes it blows a gale. But there are also little unexpected winds of opinion that blow -like, on a fine day, an east wind rises, and in no time, there is a thunderstorm. Or. on a pleasant summer day, suddenly a sharp gust sweeps up, and canoes and sailboats out on the shining water are upset, and tragedy stalks in our midst.”

“That is exactly,” agreed Jim, “like public opinion. Each part of the country has its different prevailing winds; like Ontario, Alberta, and so forth.”

“In this strong gale of war,” I concluded, “we’ve got to keep our eye skinned for the little currents of adverse wind that might deflect it. In the hearts and minds of people there are areas of high and low pressure, just the same as in the atmosphere, which make the winds of opinion.”

“People who would try to keep the war going, so much as by one hour, one minute,” said Jimmie, “are monsters.”

“The tragic part is,” I explained, “they are utterly unconscious of their influence. They believe themselves to be as true patriots as anybody. No man ever really knows what he is up to, any more than the wind knows where or why it is blowing.”

“I wish,” said Jimmie, “I knew how to celebrate Christmas this year. Should I have a Christmas tree? Should we decorate our houses?”

“Oh, I think so,” I offered. “After all, Christmas is the birthday of Jesus. In untroubled times, we forget all about that and make Christmas the high celebration not of Jesus’ birthday but of our own prosperity. We’re pretty humbled these days, so maybe if we keep in mind what Christmas really is, we can decorate our houses modestly and go ahead with as much of the spirit of Christmas as we can decently afford. This might be the chance to revive a whole lot of the forgotten and old-fashioned Christmas customs.”

“Like waits¹,” said Jim.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Each family could organize itself into a little choir and practise up a few carols and go and serenade its friends and neighbors.”

“Isn’t it a pity,” said Jim, “the modern family has no musical talent, like when we were kids. The radio and the phonograph finished that. But when I was a youngster, every home had one or two musicians amongst the kids. My first great possession in this world was a saxophone. Do you remember the saxophone craze around 1910?”

“I once owned a cornet,” I confessed.

“Well, well, well,” cheered Jimmie. “I had no idea we had musical interests in common.”

“I played in the school band,” I announced.

“And in Birdseye Center²,” stated Jim, “we had a very snappy little dance orchestra of five pieces. I played sax.”

“When I got home from the war,” I said, “my kid brother had been using my cornet as a bugle, playing soldier. It was wrecked.”

“I sold my sax,” related Jim, “to get enough money to come to Toronto and try to get a job as an artist.”

“It would be a nice thing,” I mused, “to be able to play some instrument. How changed the world is! Everything is specialized. We leave music to the professionals.”

“Wouldn’t it be fun,” said Jim, “if we could borrow a sax and a cornet off somebody and go around and serenade our friends Christmas Eve?”

“That is exactly the sort of thing we ought to do, this war Christmas,” I admitted. “We haven’t the right to celebrate it as usual, with the whole world in flames. What Christmas ought to be this year is the greatest religious festival in history. It should be a day of prayer and atonement. The churches should be filled. We should gather our families together not for a feast and a hullabaloo but for a conference and a discussion of the war, of ourselves and of the future. It should be a day of meetings, public and private, of men gathering humbly together to take stock of themselves and the world.”

“And I can’t think of anything,” declared Jimmie; “more fitting than that people like us should forget our proud and foolish ways and go out, as simple, honest men did centuries ago, to sing and play to one another the carols of Christmas.”

“I’m thinking of it,” I protested, “in a broad, general way.”

“And I’m trying,” asserted Jim, “to get down to brass tacks. How about you and me borrowing a couple of instruments and practising up? Maybe there are half a dozen others in our neighborhood who can play horns and things. We might get a regular community band going in time for Christmas.”

“You can’t find musical instruments these days for love or money,” I informed him. “They’re right off the market. And the only people who own them are using them professionally.”

“I saw a sax in a second-hand store window on York St., not three days ago,” declared Jim.

So at lunch hour, we strolled up York St. and looked in the second-hand store windows, and sure enough, not only did we find the sax Jimmie had spotted, but as we stood outside the window, we could hear the strains of a violin being played inside.

The second-hand dealer, when we opened the door, was sitting in a chair at the back of his congested and cluttered emporium, a fiddle under his chin and a sheet of music propped up. It was Brahms’ Lullaby he was playing. He nodded to us and went ahead to the bottom of the page. Then he laid the fiddle down reluctantly and came to meet us.

“Gentlemen?” he said.

“We were wondering,” asked Jim, “if we could rent that saxophone in your window?”

“Ah, it’s not for sale,” said the dealer, “or rent. It is being bought on the instalment plan by a young man who comes every night and practises here on it. He has only $12 to pay until it is his. Meantime, he and I have very pleasant concerts here, each evening.”

“So you’re interested in music?” I inquired.

“It is my life,” said the second-hand dealer. “My passion, my blood, my very existence. But I don’t play very good.”

“We,” said Jim, “were thinking of renting or borrowing a saxophone and a cornet to practise up for Christmas. We were going to serenade our friends and neighbors this Christmas, as an old-fashioned reminder of the lost spirit of Christmas and what it stands for.”

“That is a most delightful fancy,” said the dealer. “Especially this year, since all the regular musicians who go about playing cornets from door to door are more profitably engaged in war work.”

He reached in the window and handed Jimmie the saxophone.

“Please play a few bars,” he invited courteously.

“I haven’t had one of these in my hands,” said Jim bashfully, “for 30 years.”

But he hurriedly took off his gloves and cuddled the clumsy instrument and after a few hot blows on the mouthpiece, puffed out his cheeks and ran up the scale.

He did it fairly well, with only a few blurts and a couple of squawks.

“Good,” cried the dealer. “After 30 years that’s good. What do you play, mister?”

“I used to play a cornet,” I informed him modestly.

He went out through the back and came in with a very large and slightly battered instrument that looked like a cross between a cornet and a trumpet.

“A beautiful Yugoslavian instrument,” he said, “that my late wife used to play.”

I tried it. It was not the same key as Jim’s saxophone and it took some pretty fancy puckering on my part to sound Jim’s A.

Serenaders Practice

The dealer hurriedly picked up his violin and set the Brahms Lullaby up before all three of us.

“One, two…” he said, waving the fiddle bow.

But of course, you couldn’t expect much under such circumstances, and after a bar and a half of riot that caused a policeman to open the shop door and look in anxiously, the dealer rapped with his bow in the approved maestro manner.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I tell you what we do.”

For the sum of $1 each we could borrow the instruments for the afternoons, with the understanding that we could have full possession of them Christmas Eve and all day Christmas.

There were no cases for the instruments so we wrapped them in newspaper and carried them back to the office, entering by the freight door and up the freight elevator. Nobody noticed us smuggle them into our room. We shut the transom and the window and hastily unwrapped our prizes.

“Softly, now,” I warned.

“Do scales first,” suggested Jim.

But only an artist can play softly. And in less than 30 seconds, the first of the intruders were pushing in our door. And in two minutes, half the staff was crowded outside, until the assistant city editor arrived, with the managing editor’s compliments, and suggested that the paper storage vaults down in the basement might be a better place to work.

So that is where we are practising now, half an hour each afternoon, not counting a few bars of Brahms’ Lullaby up at the second-hand dealer’s each lunch hour and each evening as we return the instruments.

“John Peel³” is our most successful number so far, all except that high note.

But by Christmas Eve, we hope to have “Holy Night.”

And maybe it will be us outside your door.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. Christmas waits were bands of street musicians who formed during the holiday season to play carols around their community in hopes of raising money. ↩︎
2. In stories, they often said that Jim came from Birdseye Center, rather than give his actual birthplace (Township of Scugog). ↩︎
3. “Do you know John Peel?” is a famous Cumberland hunting song written around 1824 by John Woodcock Graves. ↩︎