“And yet you don’t want another?” asked the Poet, reproachfully.
“Indeed I do,” returned the Idiot, “but I can’t afford to own so much literary property any more than I can afford to possess Mr. Brief’s automobile—and this is precisely what I am driving at. So many people nowadays present us at Christmas with objects we can’t afford to own, that we cannot possibly repay, and overwhelm us with luxuries when we are starving for our necessities, so that Christmas, instead of bringing happiness with it, brings trial and tribulation. I know of a case last year where a very generous-hearted individual sent a set of Ruskin, superbly bound in full calf that would have set the Bibliomaniac here crazy with joy, to a widow who had just pawned her wedding-ring to buy a Christmas turkey for her children. A bundle of kindling-wood would have been far more welcome than a Carnegie library at that moment, and yet here was a generous soul who was ready to spend a good hundred dollars to make the recipient happy. Do you suppose the lady looked upon that sumptuous Ruskin with anything but misery in her heart?”
“Oh, well, she could have pawned that instead of her wedding-ring,” sniffed the Bibliomaniac.
“She couldn’t for two reasons,” said the Idiot. “In the first place, her sensibilities were such that she could not have pawned a present just received, and, in the second place, she lived in the town of Hohokus on the Nepperhan, and there isn’t a pawnshop within a radius of fifty miles of her home. Besides, it’s easier to sneak into a pawnshop with a wedding-ring for your collateral than to drive up with a van big enough to hold a complete set of Ruskin bound in full calf. It takes nerve and experience to do that with a cool and careless mien, and, whatever you may have in that respect, Mr. Bib, there are few refined widows in reduced circumstances who are similarly gifted. Then take the case of my friend Billups—some sharp of a tailor got out a judgment against Billups for ninety-eight dollars for a bill he couldn’t pay on the fifteenth of December. Billups got his name in the papers, and received enough notoriety to fill him with ambition to go on the stage, and it nearly killed him, and what do you suppose his friends did when Christmas came around? Did they pay off that judgment and relieve him of the odium of having his name chalked up on the public slate? Not they. They sent him forty dollars’ worth of golf-clubs, sixteen dollars’ worth of cuff-buttons, eight ten-dollar umbrellas, a half-dozen silver match-boxes, a cigar-cutter, and about two hundred dollars’ worth of other trash that he’s got to pay storage-room for. And on top of that, in order to keep up his end, Billups has had to hang up a lot of tradesmen for the match-cases and cigar-cutters and umbrellas and trash he’s sent to his generous friends in return for their generosity.”
“Oh, rot,” interrupted the Bibliomaniac. “What an idiot your friend Billups must be. Why didn’t he send the presents he received to others, and so saved his money to pay his debts with?”
“Well, I guess he didn’t think of that,” said the Idiot. “We haven’t all got the science of Christmas-giving down as fine as you have, Mr. Bib. But that is a valuable suggestion of yours and I’ll put it down among the things that can be done in the plan I am formulating for the painless Christmas.”
“We can’t relieve one another’s necessities unless we know what they are, can we?” asked Mr. Whitechoker.
“We can if we adopt my cash system,” said the Idiot. “For instance, I know that I need a dozen pairs of new socks. Modesty would prevent my announcing this fact to the world, and as long as I wear shoes you’d never find it out, but if, when Christmas came, you gave me twenty-five dollars instead of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs in words of one syllable, you would relieve my necessities and so earn my everlasting gratitude. Dr. Capsule here wouldn’t acknowledge to you or to me that his suspenders are held together in three places with safety-pins, and will so continue to be until these prosperous times moderate; but if we were to present him with nine dollars and sixty-eight cents on Christmas morning, we should discern a look of gratitude in his eye on that suspender account that would be missing if we were to hand him out a seven-dollar gold-mounted shaving-mug instead. We should have shown our generous spirit on his behalf, which is all a Christmas present ever does, whether it is a diamond tiara or a chain of sausages, and at the same time have relieved his anxieties about his braces. His gratitude would be double-barrelled, and his happiness a surer shot. Give us the money, say I, and let us relieve our necessities first, and then if there is anything left over we can buy some memorial of the day with the balance.”
“Well, I think it’s a pretty good plan,” said Mrs. Pedagog. “It would save a lot of waste, anyhow. But it isn’t possible for all of us to do it, Mr. Idiot. I, for instance, haven’t any money to give you.”
“You could give me something better,” said the Idiot. “I wouldn’t accept any money from you for a Christmas present.”