Living in a shoe!
Aha! (Heads disappear.)
Well, I'll get in, and make the children warm.
Tucked in their beds, they're always safe from harm.
And in their dreams, perhaps, such gifts will rise
As wakeful, wretched poverty denies.
(Disappears behind shoe.)
Enter cautiously, R., Santa Claus; his fabled dress is hidden by a long domino, or "waterproof;" he has, swung about his neck, a tin kitchen, on which he grinds an imaginary accompaniment to his song.
Santa. "You'd scarce expect one of my age"—
For gray hair is the symbol of the sage—