Neighborhood Stories

ke Christmas, said Calliope

most time, “I wish’t I knew someb

surprised-on-purpose, the way she does, “ain’t there enoug

as tree for,” I says back at

mean by that difference

here is a difference, somewhere. I’d kind o

Mis’ Sykes ask’ me. “They’re going to spen

ristmas up in a c

e Marsh!” she

hrow their idees in folks’s faces and watch folks jump back. So I tried to ta

hear,” she says. “Why don’t you go in on your ward, Calliope

hristmas off into w

hildren. I’ve been stringing the pop-corn and cutting the paper for it whenever I got an odd minute. The Holcombs, they’re going to have one too—and Mis’ Uppers and Mis’ Merrim

,” I told her. And I went off down the street. What I wanted{3} to say w

cold—and no more. The moon was getting along so’s about the night of the twenty-fifth it was going to loom up big and gold and warm over the fields on the flats, whe

nd say “Oh, that’s so, there’s the moon,” and go right on thinking about something else. Here in the village that December everything was getting ready, deliberate, for a full-moon Christmas, like long

ave Christmas trees. And I looked along to the houses, most of ’em lying right there on Daphne Street, where they were going to have ’em—I could s

r much of any Christmas. Of course, as Mis’ Sykes had said, the poor and the neglected are always with us—yet; but

eant by having a Chr

he Market Square, I come on five or six children, kicking around in the snow. It was ’most dar

ecause it’s on the Market Square that carnivals and some little c

he says, “we was just playing we’s

This is where they always bring ’em to sel

big enough for everybody in town to have one. Most of the fellows is going to ha

ere on Daphne Street,” I says, just to please the children and make a little talk with ’em,

ly claps

at be fun? With pop-corn strings a

hanging all gold and quiet, like it didn’t think it amounted to much, right over th

t on selling ’em after dark. And they stood ’em around here and put a little light in each o

again, “but one that the folks in th

arket Square again toward the moon hangin

be lit up,” says I, for not much of any reason—only to keep the talk going with the children

t—but all the time something in me kept on saying something, all hurried and as if it meant it. And little ends of ideas, and little jagged edges of other ideas, and p

ps the livery-stable and sings bass to nearly ev

ng about this till that minute, “Ben—you getting up a

er his shoulder, and he give it a shif

they can do it. Some has got to sing to churches earlier in the evening and they donno’

{8} about the folks that’d be glad to list

es up to music consider’ble, Chr

-carol singers together and a-caroling, and I’ll undertake that there sha’n’t not

up, all jol

l get ’em,” he says, and gives his bells a hunch that made ’em ring all up and down Daphne Street—that the moon was looking down at just as i

ever managed any k

y good, but that the other part is the kind you have always bought and that you’d better save it and stick it back on. But then they’s the other kind of revolution that backs away from something that’s always been and looks at it a little farther off than it ever see it befor

k before Christmas. I got my plans and my ideas and my notions all pla

I couldn’t see ’em. I went first to the store-keepers, seeing Christmas always seems to hinge and hang on what they say and do.

he country trade. The little overhead track that took the bundles had broke down just at the wrong minute, and old rich Mis’ Wiswell’s felt soles had got stuck half-wa

be willing to shut up shop on

a pretty good night for trade, you

people’ll give presents to people. And if the stores ain’t open Christmas

t would shut he’d shut, and be glad of it. Abigail Arnold done the same about her home bakery, and th

no more idee of business than so many cats. No, sir. I don’t betra

ilas, head and heart, finally says, all right, he could keep open if he wanted to, and enjoy himself, and they’d all sh

for a good while, you can’t really blame people for feeling that it’s been the way it ought to be. Feelings seems made that way. Our superintendent has b

, and he was practising on his cornet. He can make a bugle call real nice—you can often hear it, going up and down Daphne Street in the morning, and when I’m down doing my trading I alw

is our Sunday-school Christ

emember not to try to cross it over the ot

twenty-five dollar

ing to do t

y numbers already,” says he, pleased. “And a trimmed tree, and a

of ’em on Christmas Eve, when you’d think we’d{13} all sort of draw together instead of setting apart, in cliques. Land,” I says ou

mus, shocked. “They ain’t no ne

ots. Well, now,” I says, “do you honestly think we’ve all chose the best way to go at Christmas

nd me. And all of a sudden, while I was trying my best to ma

ng up and down the street, I always kind of feel like it was announcing something. To my notion,” I says, “it could announce Christmas to this

very day. Ain’t it funny how big things work out by homely means—by homely means? Sole because the choir-leader in one choir had resigned because the bass in that choir was the bass in that choir, and so they didn’t have anybody ther

, same as breathing and one-two other public utilities, and nothing dividing anybody from anybody. And I be

families. Land, land, I kept saying to myself them days, we all of us act like we was studying kindergarten

pens that you live in any town whatever in the civilized

from Mis’ Timothy Toplady and the Holco

us lots of back-aching work—b

ld. Remember,” I couldn’t help adding, “you like to be with the children a whol

ink it’ll work? I don’t see ho

it one year, as I can see. That can’t

it out just like the other si

u crazy-headed? What’s your idee? Ain’t{16} thi

ve, “not all of ’em. Not w

ings like this,” she told me.

to be its guardians. All Christmas needs is for us to

e says, ’most like a wail. “

urned on her. I

they all know, that nothing on earth can take away the Christmas feeling and the Christmas joy as long as you want it to be there. But if it’s

inued to sha

heir privilege. But as for me, I shall trim my{17} little tree here by our own fi

ave you give up your fireside end of things fo

say. But she give me to understand that her mind run right

ve to thirty times in my life, and yet I can’t seem to remember them no more than I can remember whether i

-board makes a shadow for the arc-light, trying to get used to the idea of what we were doing—used to it in my throat. But there wasn’t much time to spend that way,{18} being there were things to

would be a Christmas tree without, because so many, many folks has set up stringing it nights of Christmas week, after the children was in bed, and has kept it, careful, in a box, so’s it’d do for next year. We had all that from the churches—Methodist and P

and the dark back streets and the streets down on the flats. Some of ’em had Christmas trees waiting at home—the load had been there on the Market Square, just like we had let it be there for years without seeing that the Market Square had any other Christmas uses—and a

Eddie Newhaven and Arthur Mills and Lily Dorron and Sarah

“What you down here fo

ered all

he big

just to keep on a-talki

y they answered. It was E

of us’s!”

r when they get to saying “mine”

from the bottom branch to the tip-top little cone, the big old tree came alight, just like it knew what it was all about and like it had come out of the ground long ago for this reason—only we’d never kno

against the stars like it knew well enough that it was one of ’em, whether we knew it or not. An

celebration, and your little celebration, and their little celebration,{21} private, that was costing each o

with everybody’s barn-yard lanterns tied on the end of ’em, and they run out in a line down to the tree, and they took hold of hands and danced around it, singing to their voices’ to

laughed, and they sung it again for him, and some more songs that had come out of the old country that a little bit of it was living inside everybody that was there. And while they were singing, it came to me

nrolls the f

s shall

English blo

their a

to teach. And that’s all of us. And it felt to me as if now we were only just beginn

ide the choirs of all the churches, that I guess had never sung together in their lives before, thou

ight, ho

tunes. All up and down Daphne Street it must of sounded, only there was hardly anybody far off to hear it, the most of ’e

s if it was another name for what Christmas was—“Nearer, my God, to thee,” and “Lead, Kindly Light,” and some more. And after a bar or two of the first one, the voices all around beg

rowd struck it up unbeknownst to himself, or whether the song begun to sing itself; but it come from somewhere, strong and clear and real—a

nd crowning

on goal—is

2

Square they took it up, and folks that couldn’t sing, and me that can’t sing a note except when there’s nobody around

e the bass in the other choir was the bass in the other choir. And it was like the Way Things Are had suddenly spoke for a m

omb on to a box in front of

the first annual outdoor Christmas-tr

e what Eppleby’s words{25} was the signal for. And out on the little flagstaff balcony of the Town Hall Jerry Bemus stepped with his bugle, and he blew it shrill and clear, so that it sounded al

that used to say it was war. And the same minute the big tree went out, all stil

kes. I was feeling so glorified over, that I never thought of its being strange that she was t

d to come,” she says,

myself, “the child

nd see Silas sitting in there all sole alone—the only lit store in

front gate when I was ’most asleep. It was like the whole town was being sung to by something that didn’t show. And when