Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1896 — CHRISTMAS LONG AGO. [ARTICLE]

CHRISTMAS LONG AGO.

When All the Presents Had to Go Into the Christmas Stocking, Robert J. Burdette, in the Ladies’ Home Journal, tells in his humorous way how he remembers the Christmas of long ago: “Most of the Christmas presents in those days were designed by the manufacturer for the hanging -stocking. Anything too big to go into a stocking had to go over to somebody’s birthday. In any family where there was more than one child the old reliable ‘Noah’s Ark’ was always looked for. We hailed with acclamations of astonished recognition Noah and Mrs. Noah, Messrs, and Mmes. Shem, Ham and Japhet. There was no way of telling the men and women apart, they were exactly alike, but the elephant and giraffe you could distinguisn at a glance, on account of the spots on the giraffe. So also the dog and the cow, because the cow was always white and blue, while the dog was invariably plain blue. Within twenty-four hours after the tending on Ararat the baby would have all the paint sucked off Shem, Ham and the hired man, and the doctor would be sent for. “The red monkey climbing a red stick was another regular Christmas "visitor. He was highly esteemed as a light luncheon by the baby. It never seemed to

affect the infant unpleasantly—to htmeelf, that ia—although the cloudy symphony in red and blue about his innocent mouth was apt to make the beholder shiver. But it made the monkey look sick. Then there was a man on a box, with a major general's uniform, beating a drum. You turned a crank, the general lifted his sticks high in the air. and something in the box made a noise as much like a drum as a peal of thunder is like a piccolo. These things as toys were of no great value, but as practical and useful object lessons they were beyond all price, on the minus side.”