The young doctor rose, and only the sweetheart saw that he was nervous, restless, and pale. As best he could he told them what Christmas was and what it meant to the world; and he had scarcely finished when a hand beckoned to him from the door. Leaving one of his friends to distribute the presents, he went outside to discover that one vandal had come on ahead, drunk and boisterous. Promptly the doctor tied him to a tree, shouldered a Winchester, and himself took up a lonely vigil on the mountainside. Within, Christmas went on. When a name was called a child came forward silently, usually shoved to the front by some relative, took what was handed to it, and, dumb with delight, but too shy even to murmur a word of thanks, silently returned to its seat with the presents hugged to its breast—presents that were simple, but not to those mountain mites; colored pictures and illustrated books they were, red plush albums, simple games, fascinators and mittens for the girls; pocket-knives, balls, firecrackers, and horns, mittens, caps, and mufflers for the boys; a doll dressed in everything a doll should wear for each little girl, no one of whom had ever seen a doll before, except what was home-made from an old dress or apron tied in several knots to make the head and body. Twice only was the silence broken. One boy quite forgot himself when given a pocket-knife. He looked at it suspiciously and incredulously, turned it over in his hand, opened it and felt the edge of the blade, and, panting with excitement, cried: "Hit's a shore 'nough knife!"
And again when, to make sure that nobody had been left out, though all the presents were gone, the master of ceremonies asked if there was any other little boy or girl who had received nothing, there arose a bent, toothless old woman in a calico dress and baggy black coat, her gray hair straggling from under her black sunbonnet, and her hands gnarled and knotted from work and rheumatism. Simply as a child, she spoke:
"I hain't got nothin'."
Gravely the giver of the gifts asked her to come forward, and, nonplussed, searched the tree for the most glittering thing he could find. Then all the women pressed forward and then the men, until all the ornaments were gone, even the half-burned candles with their colored holders, which the men took eagerly and fastened in their coats, clasping the holders to their lapels or fastening the bent wire in their button-holes, and pieces of tinsel rope, which they threw over their shoulders—so that the tree stood at last just as it was when brought from the wild woods outside.
Straightway then the young doctor hurried the departure of the merry-makers from the Gap. Already the horses stood hitched, and, while the laprobes were being carried out, a mountaineer, who had brought along a sack of apples, lined up the men and boys, and at a given word started running down the road, pouring out the apples as he ran, while the men and boys scrambled for them, rolling and tussling in the snow. As the party moved away, the mountaineers waved their hands and shouted good-by to the doctor, too shy still to pay much heed to the other "furriners" in the wagon. The doctor looked back once with a grateful sigh of relief but no one in the wagon knew that there had been any danger that day. How great the danger had been not even the doctor knew then. For the coming vandals had got as far as the top of the Dividing Ridge, had there quarreled and fought among themselves, so that, as the party drove away, one invader was at that minute cursing his captors, who were setting him free, and high upon the ridge another lay dead in the snow.
In time there was a wedding at the Gap, and long afterward the doctor, riding by the little schoolhouse, stopped at the door, and from his horse shoved it open. The Christmas tree stood just as he had left it on Christmas Day, only, like the evergreens on the wall and over the windows, it, too, was brown, withered and dry. Gently he closed the door and rode on.
[FANNIE C. MACAULAY]
Mrs. Fannie Caldwell Macaulay ("Frances Little"), "the lady of the Decoration," was born at Shelbyville; Kentucky, November 22, 1863, the daughter of a jurist. She was educated at Science Hill Academy, Shelbyville, a noted school for girls. Miss Caldwell was married to James Macaulay of Liverpool, England, but her marriage proved unhappy. From 1899 to 1902 Mrs. Macaulay was a kindergarten teacher in Louisville, Kentucky; and from 1902 to 1907 she was engaged as supervisor of kindergarten work at Hiroshima, Japan. From Japan she wrote letters home which were so charming and clever that her niece, Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice, the Louisville novelist, insisted that she make them into a book. The result was The Lady of the Decoration (New York, 1906), for more than a year the most popular book in America. This little epistolary tale of heroic struggle for one's work and one's love, was read in all parts of the English-speaking world. It set the high-water mark, probably, for even the "six best sellers." Mrs. Macaulay's second book, Little Sister Snow (New York, 1909), was the tender love story of a young American and a Japanese girl. The lad sailed away to his American sweetheart, leaving "Little Sister Snow" blowing him kisses from her native shore. Mrs. Macaulay's latest story, The Lady and Sada San (New York, 1912), was published in London under the title of The Lady Married, which was clearer, as it is the sequel to The Lady of the Decoration. The Lady's husband, Jack, sails away to China in pursuit of his scientific duties, leaving her lonely in Kentucky. She decides to make another journey to Japan; and on the way over she falls in with a charming young American-Japanese girl, Sada San, whom she subsequently saves from a most cruel fate. She then finds her husband, ill and exhausted with his long trip, and returns with him to Kentucky. The descriptions of the countries through which she passes are very fine: the best writing the author has shown hitherto. The little volume was reported as the best selling book in America at Christmas time of 1912. Mrs. Macaulay has spent much of her life during the last several years in Japan, but her home is at Louisville. She is a prominent club woman, and a charming lecturer upon the beauties of Nippon.
Bibliography. The Bookman (June, 1906); Who's Who in America (1912-1913).