Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 13, Number 306, Decatur, Adams County, 22 December 1915 — Page 2

From My Narrow MEg Little Window fc d THE HOOSIER OBSERVER O' JI STAR-GAZING AND-HONSWOGGLING

STAR-GAZING AND —HONSWOGGLING.” I didn’t stop to reason why I did It until I was on my way home. I seldom do! And then the star shine, the gleam of the electrics on the sleet-covered pavement, the lights from the homes mellowing the darkness of the twilight. the fragrance that was wafted up from my bruising grip on the evergreen tree under my arm "got” me. 1 realized that 1 had done it to “honswoggle” myself! • « v • I am using that word "honswoggle,” premeditatively, shamelessly, brazenly. in plain sight of our highbrow edition of Crabb's English Synonyms and the Pure English as She is Writ. A few years ago I would have taken a shee of pale pink paper Rud a fine gold pen and set myself down to a de luxe bird's-eye-maple desk and after burning incense of travailing endeavor on the altar of the Muse for several hours, might have written, according to my high school rhetoric's rules: "I endeavored to acquire by achieving a series of delicate and pleasant illusions, the state of mind that would allow me to raise my being above the mundane annoyances and bask in the ethereal sublimities or imagination.” Now I would click off on my typewriter in the jerk of a lamb’s tail the same thought: “I ‘honswoggled’ myself.” Probably that metamorphosis is the real reason why I need “honswoggling” myself. * ♦ ♦ * Now, you will wonder how I went about “honswogglifig” myself. I bought a Christmas tree to take home and trim. In one of our little exchanges last week I was amused to read that a Ladies’ Aid society was going to “hold” a Christmas .. Now I am not going to “hold” my

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tree, the Christmas rush being straining enough, but I am going to have it just the same. No one else at home wanted a tree. The house girl objects to the dropping needles and the melting wax from the candles; the youngest child in tho family is two years past the Santa Claus age, doesn’t even make a pretense of hanging up his stockings, and would rather have the money spent on electrical appliances and mechanical things than trees; ond the others, including even myself, have well founded objections to a tree. But I couldn’t bear to have last year’s Christmas —the first in my life of its kind —with just the simple, matter of fact giving of gifts, without a bit of illusion, repeated. We need a little “honswogglong,” a little deluding of ourselves into the spirit land of illusions and the return to the pleasant fancies of childhood. • * • • So I bought the tree on the spur of the moment —true to the unbridled call of Fancy. I left it on the porch and later brought it in and we trimmed it. We had lots of fun and we did it a whole week before Christmas. At first it was just a little difficult to get the honswoggle complete, and more than once I thought, “W’hat’s the use. anyhow!” The glitter and tinzle seemed so silly and cheap; the pink and white pop corn which we strung was tough and glucosy;>the chocolate Santa Clauses with their grim, long faces, and prim hands folded sedately across their flat stomachs made us laugh, they were so unlike the fat. jovial Santa Clauses we had always known; and the pink and white marshmallow soldiers soldiered on their jobs; but up there in the top of the tree, was the real, old Star of Bethlehem, the real symbol. By-and-bye the illusions returned and it seemed much like old Christmasses. especially when the candles were

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lighted and the other lights in the ' room were turned off, and we could I imagine that after all Santa had done it and not we. But the real spirit returned when a little neighbor girl came over. Sh<? still “believes” in Santa and seeing the tree she gasped: “O, Santa Claus has been here already!” Os course this year we didn't need to-have a bit of secrecy about our trio since none of us “believed,” so we sort of forgot and blurted out: “Why, no, he hasn’t come yet. Why?” “You have your tree,” the little girl said, and then we got wise and began "honswoggling” ourselves, too, without, of course, really telling lies. “Yes,” 1 said, “I guess he left it on the porch, but we brought it in and trimmed It ourselves.” “Why,” she said, "I didn't know you could trim them yourselves. I thought Santa Claus always did it.” “Well,” I said, “he iix ually does, but we trimmed ours •dk selves, this year, because we had the things left over.” That was rather a stagger at "honswoggle” wasn’t it? But then you see we had nearly forgotten in the two years that elapsed since we had the last tree and the children that believe in Santa Claus. But before she left we had nearly gotten back. I trust that we said nothing to destroy her belief in the good old Santa and that she will preserve it for many years to come, and be perfectly happy in it. • • * • Do you know 1 believe that everyone would be happy if he simply could keep the illusions, the lovely dreams and fancies, the ideal visions of childhood. Every little sorrow or big one, too. that 1 have had, and every bit of melancholy feeling I can trace to the destroying of some illusion, to the fact that things are not as 1 supposed they were. Just as soon as I can adjust myself to the change, and create another illusion, I find that my spirits rise again, and I can go on with the same old joy. This thing of being happy and contented, is after all a sort of “honswoggling” oneself into the illusion that things are better than they are What satisfaction is there in the simple fact that things are things or in “possession” of things—except what is absolutely necessary to comfort. Wealth and material things are nothing except for what they stand, for the illusion with which you can surround them. When I w’as little I was just as happy pretending that I was a rich princess and dressing up in make-believe silks and satins and plume? as I would be if I were really wearing them now.

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The morning-glory ladies that I dressed in silky pale blue morning-glory blossom skirts and morning-glory top hats and paraded about in a make-be ■lieve palace were more beautiful to me than the real thing could be today. I don’t think I enjoyed my real little d'«hes and stove and doll furniture any more than I did the play house wo girls made in the woods where slicks and grape vines divided the rooms and we imagined that the stumps and logs and moss were chairs and stoves and furniture; and the chips dishes. The walk to Monmouth ona snowy, icy morning, when the thaw set in and made rushing little rivulets across the road, through little crystal caverns and down crystal mountains, was a time and sight to delight the heart of myself and brother and a trip through the Alps could not have brought more pleasure. We deluded ourselves into believing in fairies and to shorten the way, we would imagine for what we would ask if a fairy came out from behind the stump at the next cross road and gave us three wishes. We carried a stick that we called a “magic wand” and played it tuned anything we touched into whatever we wished. The way was a very short one when we played “make believe.” And we never noticed the cold and wet frozen bumfts in the road. Washing dishes was never much of a task to me if I made believe. I would froth the suds into a billowy ocean and then put in the dishes. Some were tugs and some were ships and some just little row boats, and the knives and forks and spoons were passengers. The dirty boats I cleansed and got ready for a sail and so on and so on, and had just as much fun as could be, and didn’t slight my work, either. • * * * Toe often when we grow older we lose the illusion and romance of life and stern realities become difficult problems. We take things for just what they are. In fact "pigs is pigs” and Chocolate Santa Clauses are just chocolate. We can’t seem to look higher than that. Hence we lose much of the joy of living. * * * * The emerging from the illusions of childhood into the stern reality of life, I think, is often a time of heart-break-ing and tragedy until you get readjusted. If you have lived in a world of lovely visions where everybody was good and pure and true —except for the wicked giants aqd Blue Beards that you read about but never knew or saw, the transition to the reality

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of life, where you find those bad people really living among you, when you thought they were all good, is a shock that one finds difficult to sur-, vive. It is like the first heart-break-ing shock when you realized that Santa Claus is gone forever. Still, if you can readjust yourself, and keep on believing that maybe things are a little better than they seem, and try to bring them up to the ideal vision, a great part of the childhood joy may return. • * * * Os course there is a form of makebelieve that is childish and wrongful, too. There may be that persistent “believing"/ to thtw and people in-

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consistent with common sense and w’e may honswoggle ourselves into being honswoggled by some one else. I know of a good man ■who believes in universal brotherhood and good in man, who kept a “guest room” for tramps and awoke one morning to find that one had taken unceremonious departure with his horse. I know of a good woman whom we wanted to help •Mid who wanted to help us, but who scrubbed the floor finish from the strip around the rugs. You all know of some one in whom you have believed against great odds who may have thought you were conniving and winking at their badness when you were only trying to have faith in them for

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their uplift. I have known of people, Micawber-like, and cheerful against odds, who waited for something good to turn up, when they should have been digging in the ground with teeth and toe-nail trying to turn up something good. There is a faith and belief in good, too. that must be backed by works and plain facts. But then, I am glad I have got my Christmas tree, and what it stands for, and while I do not expect to “hold” my tree, I expect what it symbolises to hold me and my illusions of simple joys and pleasures through rffrinV mM* to come. ■'-* •

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