IAT THE SIGN OF THE PIANO LAMP

The morning after Christmas Eve is the worst morning-after there is.

The very house suffers the headache that follows a prolonged spree.

Remorse stalks at large; remorse for the things one gave—and did not

give—and got.

Everybody must act a general glee which can be felt only specifically, if at all. Everybody must exclaim about everything Oh! and Ah! and How Sweet of You! and Isn't it Perfectly Dear! The very THING I Wanted! and How DID you EVER Guess it?

Christmas morning in the town of Carthage is a day when most of the people keep close at home, for Christmas is another passover. It is Santa Claus that passes over.

People in Carthage are not rich; the shops are not grandiose, and inter-family presents are apt to be trivial and futile—or worse yet, utile.

The Carthaginian mother generally finds that Father has credited the hat she got last fall, to this Christmas; the elder brothers receive warm under-things and the young ones brass-toed boots, mitts and mufflers. The girls may find something ornamental in their stockings, and their stockings may be silk or nearly—but then girls have to be foolishly diked up anyway, or they will never be married out. Dressing up daughters comes under the head of window-display or coupons, and is charged off to publicity.

Nearly everybody in Carthage—except Mrs. Ulysses S. G. Budlong—celebrates Christmas behind closed doors. People find it easier to rhapsodize when the collateral is not shown. It is amazing how far a Carthaginian can go on the most meager donation. The formula is usually:"We had Such a lovely Christmas at our house. What did I get? Oh, so many things I can't reMember!"

But Mrs. Ulysses S. G. Budlong does not celebrate her Christmasses behind closed doors—or rather she did not: a strange change came over her this last Christmas. She used to open her doors wide—metaphorically, that is; for there was a storm-door with a spring on it to keep the cold draught out of the hall.

As regular as Christmas itself was the oh-quite-informal reception Mrs. Budlong gave to mitigate the ineffable stupidity of Christmas afternoon: that dolorous period when one meditates the ancient platitude that anticipation is better than realization; and suddenly understands why it is blesseder to give than to receive: because one does not have to wear what one gives away.

On Christmas Mrs. U. S. G. Budlong took all the gifts she had gleaned, and piled them on and around the baby grand piano in the back parlor. The re was a piano lamp there, one of those illuminated umbrellas—about as large and as useful as a date-palm tree.

Along about that time in the afternoon when the Christmas dinner becomes a matter of hopeless remorse, Mrs. Budlong's neighbors were expected to drop in and view the loot under the lamp. It looked like hospitality, but it felt like hostility. She passed her neighbors under the yoke and gloated over her guests, while seeming to overgloat her gifts.

But she got the gifts. The re was no question of that. By hook or by crook she saw to it that the bazaar under the piano lamp always groaned.

One of the chief engines for keeping up the display was the display itself. Everybody who knew Mrs. Budlong—and not to know Mrs. Budlong was to argue oneself unknown—knew that he or she would be invited to this Christmas triumph. And being invited rather implied being represented in the tribute.

Hence ensued a curious rivalry in Carthage. People vied with each other in giving Mrs. Budlong presents; not that they loved Mrs. Budlong more, but that they loved comparisons less.

The rivalry had grown to ridiculous proportions. But of course Mrs. Budlong did not care how ridiculous it grew; for it could hardly have escaped her shrewd eyes how largely it advantaged her that people should give her presents in order to show other people that some people needn't think they could show off before other people without having other people show that they could show off, too, as well as other people could. The pyschology must be correct, for it is incoherent.

Mrs. Budlong herself was never known to break any of the commandments, but in her back parlor her neighbors made flitters of the one against coveting thy neighbor's and-so-forth and so-on.

It was when Mr. and Mrs. County Road Supervisor Detwiller were walking home from one of these occasions, that Mr. Detwiller was saying:"We ll, ain't Mizzes Budlong the niftiest little gift-getter that ever held up a train? How on earth did We happen to get stung?"

"I don't know, Roscoe. It's one of those things you can't get out of without getting out of town too. Here we've been and gone and skimped our own children to buy something that would show up good in Mrs. Budlong's back parlor, and when I laid eyes on it in all that clutter—why, if it didn't look like something the cat brought in, I'll eat it!"

Mr. Detwiller had only one consolation—and he grinned over it:

"We ll, there's no use cryin'over spilt gifts. But did you see how she stuck old Widower Clute for that Japanese porcelain vace—I notice she called it vahs?"

"Porcelain?"sniffed Mrs. Detwiller."Paper musshay!"

"We ll, getting even a paper—what you said—from old Clute is equal to extracting solid gold from anybody else. He's the stingiest man in sev'n states. He don't care any more for a two dollar bill than he does for his right eye. I bet she gave him ether before he let go."

"Oh, she works all the old bachelors and widowers that way,"said Mrs. Detwiller, with a mixture of contempt and awe."Invites'em to a dinner party or two around Christmas marketing time, and begins to talk about how pretty the shops are and how tempting everything she wants is; says she saw a nimitation bronze clock at Strouther and Streckfuss's that it almost broke her heart to leave there. But o'course she couldn't afford to buy those kind of things for herself now when she's got to remember all her dear friends, and she runs on and on and the old batch growls,'Stung again!'and goes to Strouther and Streckfuss's and tells Mr. Streckfuss to send Mrs. Budlong that blamed bronze clock she was admiring. And that's how she gets things. I could do it myself if I'd a mind to."

Mr. Detwiller felt that there was more envy than truth in this last remark, and he was rash enough to speak up for justice:"You could if you'd a mind to? Yep. If you'd a mind to! That's what somebody said about Shakespeare's plays.'I could a wrote'em myself if I'd a mind to,'says he, and somebody else said,'Yes, if you'd a mind to,'he says. And that's about it. Any body could do what Mizzes Budlong does if they had the mind to; but the thing is, she's got the mind to. She goes after the gifts—and gits'em. She don't almost git'em, and she ain't goin'to git'em. She gits'em. And what gits me is how she gits'em."

"Roscoe Detwiller, if you're goin'to praise that woman in the presence of your own lawful wife, I'll never speak to you the longest day I live.""Who's praisin'her? I was just sayin'—"

"Why, Roscoe Detwiller, you did, too! And I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself."

"Say, what ails you? Why, I was roastin'her to beat the band."

"And to think that on Christmas day of all days I should live to hear my own husband that I've loved and cherished and worked my fingers to the bone and never got any thanks and other women keepin'two and three hired girls, and after him denyin'his own children things to get expensive presents for a shameless creature like that Budlong woman—"

All over Carthage on Christmas afternoons couples were similarly at loggerheads over Mrs. Budlong's annual triumph.

Now of course Mrs. Budlong did not get all those presents without giving presents. Not in Carthage! It might have been possible to bamboozle these people one Christmas, but never another. Mrs. Budlong gave heaps of presents. Christmas was an industry with her, an Ambition; Christmas was her career. It had long ago lost its religious significance for her, as for nearly everybody else in Carthage. Even Mr. Frankenstein (the Pantatorium magnate) is one of the most ardent advertisers of Christmas bargains, while Isidore Strouther and Esau Streckfuss are"almost persuaded"every December. They might be entirely persuaded if it were not for the scenes they witness in their aisles during the last weeks of Yuletide and the aftermath of trying to collect from the Gentile husbands during Billtide.

Mrs. Budlong's Christmas presents were of two sorts: those she made herself and those she made her husband pay for. He was the typical husband who never fails to settle his wife's bills, so long as he may raise a row about them till his wife cries and looks like an expensive luxury which only a really successful man could afford. Then he subsides until the first of the next month.

II