Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1874 — HIS TURN. [ARTICLE]

HIS TURN.

It was the afternoon of the 24th of December, and John, wrapped up in his new overcoat, was going down town with a hop and a jump to spend his last coppers for a Christmas present. He was six years old, and as he went along he tried to whistle “ Shoo. Fly,” like the big boys; and wondered to himself why Christmas didn’t come more than once a year, and if they’d ever get to coming oftener, and if they’d been going on just like this before he was born, as he dodged the mothers hurrying home with dolls’ heads peeping out of newspaper parcels, and fathers with fat turkeys by the legs, and market-women haggling over their poultry, and workmen carrying green Christmas-trees, and stopped to look into the gay shop-windows and at the crowd of good-humored buyers and sellers. He was bound for the silversmith’s himself to buy his mother a real silver thimble to save her gold one, and because he had smelted the other in the shovel over the dining-room fire, in order to turn it into plowshares and pruning-hooks, with the aid of a bowl of cold water, thinking she didn’t need two thimbles and a sewing-machine. He was going to put his purchase into her stocking; when she waked up in the morning wouldn’t she be surprised and laugh to find another silver thimble there, just where her toe ought to be! After he had bought his present the confusion of street-lamps and early twilight and the jostling, hurrying crowd bewildered him, and he struck out by mistake into a narrow alley, where he stopped, attracted by a ragged urchin who was gazing wistfully in at a baker’s holiday display of smoking loaves and tarts. “ I say, don’t you almost taste ’em?” said the urchin, capering first on one foot and then on the other, to keep himself warm. “ They aren’t anything to my mother’s tarts,” answered John, remembering the pantry at home. “ lou ain't hungry, I’ll bet!” “ No; but I’m going home to supper.” “ Wish I was!” “ Why don’t you go, then?” “ ’Cause there ain’t any to go to!” “No supper! Why, everybody has supper, -it’s Christmas Eve, you know!” “ Christmas Eve? What’s that? ” “ Why, don’t you know? “ The night before Christmas, When all through the house Not a creature was stirring, ? Not even a mouse,’ ........ quoted John, ' haltingly. “ When you hang up your stocking, and Santa Claus comes riding over the house-tops when you’re asleep, and puts presents in it! Christmas Eve, when the bells all ring, when—when — “ ‘ When shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground, The angel of the Lord came down, And glory shone around !’ Why, you know it, of course. Everybody knows it. It’s in the papers. It’s been ever since ever since —I was born. Last year I had a top and a drum and a horn of candy!” “ I say, where’d you get ’em?” asked the other, eagerly. “ Why, Santa Claus, he brought ’em. What did he bring you?” “Not a red! Where does he live? He’s the chap for my money!” “Oh! he lives way off somewhere, ’mong the Icebergs and things.” “Oh! I spose he’s an uncle of yourn. Jim, in our alley, had an uncle who brought him a guinea pig onct ” “ Don’t you know .'who Santa Claus is?” laughed John, not quite clear in his own mind about the matter, but anxious to enlighten the darkened mind of his a neighbor. “He isn’t my uncle any more than he’s yours or anybody’s.” , “He ain’t nothing to me, no way,” said the other. “ I ain’t never put my eyes on him.” “ Neither have I,” said John. “ Nobody sees him. He always comes after dark, when the children are in bed and i the lamps arg v out and nobody’s looking. | But always puts something into your ' slocking Christmas nights; doesn’t he?” i “ I dunno. 1 never found anything | there—but a hole.” / “Never tound anything in your stocking?” cried John. “ Perhaps you didn’t hang it up in the right place.” “ 1 never hung it up at all.” “O-h! Couldn't you reach? Why didn’t you get your mother to do it for you?” “ I ain’t got no mother. Nothing but a Granny Patch —who ain’t no granny of mine, neither—where I sleep in the garret.” “ Namother! How do you get along?” gasped John. “ Who tucks you into bed, and hears your prayers, and puts out the light for you, and gets your Sunday 1 clothes out of the drawer, and makes the ■ Christmas pudding?” “ I guess nobody makes any pudding ' for me, and I ain’t got any other clothes ! in the drawer.” “ My!” said John, beginning to doubt his ears. “ But you have the wishbone, I don’t you?” brightening, j "The what?” “ The wishbone out of the Christmas turkey. Don’t you know?” f “ Don’t have’ any turkey. I reckon I Christmas ain’t any different from most ■ any day. down in -this alley. I dunno i nothing about iu” “ How awful!” said John. “ I’m dreadfuUsorry. 1 thought there was enough ■*phristmas tet go all round. Perhaps,” thoughtfully—“ perhaps J’ve had more’n my share. I didn’t mean to.” A boy with no mother, and no '“ otbef

clothes,” who didn’t hang up his stocking, nor have any Christmas dinner, nor any golden drehm of Santa Claus, nor any Christmas promises—how did he contrive to live? “ But you’re going to hang up your stocking to-night, ain’t you?” asked John, not fully persuaded that he understood his own ears. “ Twouldn’t be no use unless they was wet," said the urchin. “ Any why, you’ll have a cake and some walnuts to-morrow. Everybody does, ’cause it’s Christmas, you know.” “ I guess Christmas dgn’t come down this way. I’m going to help the baker carry home his beans and bread to-mor-row, though; and he’s going to give me a loaf, and maybe he’ll throw in one of them tarts. Who knows? I say, I wish ’twas to-morrow now.” “And you ain’t going to have any Christmas but a loaf of bread? And no turkey, nor wishbone, and nothing in your stocking, and you’re going to wear your everyday clothes, and they’ve got—oh, dear! 1 should hate to be—l mean I’m dreadful sorry! I’ll tell you what I’ll do! You shall have a Christmas. I’ve had lots of ’em, and I guess it’s your turn now. You shall go and have my Christmas, and I’ll stay here and have yours and carry the baker’s loaves for him!” “ Oh! I wouldn’t be so durned mean!” said the urchin, ruefully. “ It ain’t mean to take Christmas presents, I tell you. Here,jyou just put on my overcoat—’cause there ain’t any other overcoat at home; and you run up to my home—you’ll know it by the fountain that doesn’t splash any more, in the yard; and you walk in at the end door—’cause maybe your feet’ll be snowy—l do; and tell my mother you’re going to have your turn, and you’re going to be me till after Christmas, and I’m going to be you; and,” taking the silver thimble out of his pocket gingerly, “and p’raps you’d better say I sent this. But then it wouldn’t be all your Christmas, would it? No; you may give it to her your own self, and I’ll carry the baker’s loaves, and ” “ I’m afraid it’ll seem wuss a-coming back afterward,” sighed the urchin. And just then John’s father and mother, who had begun to miss him and to worry because he stayed so late, suddenly pounced upon the two, chatting before the bakery window, and carried them both home to keep Christmas. And the urchin’s turn had come indeed; and he never failed of a holiday after that, thoughdie once said “ it seemed as if every day was Christmas since his turn had come.” — Mary N. Preseett, in N. Y. Indeyendent.