At about the end of November it was our custom, my sister's, Lucette's and mine, to make out a list of the things we desired most. Everybody in the two families prepared surprises for us, and the mystery surrounding these gifts was our most exquisite pleasure during the last days of the year. Between parents, grandmother and aunts there occurred, to excite my curiosity still further, conversations full of mysterious hints, and whisperings that were hastily discontinued as soon as I appeared.
Between Lucette and me it became a real guessing game. As in the play of “Words with a double meaning,” we had the right to ask certain pointed questions,—for example we asked the most ridiculous ones, such as: “Has it hair like an animal?”
And the answers went something after this fashion:
What your father is to give you (a dressing-case made of leather) had hair, but it has none now, except on some portion of its interior (brushes), and that is false. Your mamma's present (a fur muff) still has some hair. What your aunt is to give you (a lamp) will help you to see the hair on the others better; but, let me see, yes, I am sure that that has none.
In the December twilights, in that hour between daylight and darkness, we would sit upon our low stools before the wood-fire, and continue our series of questions from day to day. We grew ever more eager and excited until the 31st, and in the evening of that momentous day the mysteries were revealed.
That day the presents for the two families, wrapped, tied and labeled, were piled upon tables in a room closed against Lucette and me. At eight o'clock the doors were thrown open and we filed in, the elders going first, and each one of us sought for his own gift among the heap of white parcels. For me the moment of entry was an exceedingly joyous one, and until I was twelve or thirteen years of age, I could not refrain from jumping and leaping like a kid long before it came time for us to cross the threshold.
We had supper at eleven, and when the clock in the dining room struck the midnight hour, tranquilly, in harmony with the sound of its calm stroke, we separated in the first moments of those New Years that are now buried under the ashes of many succeeding ones. And on those evenings I fell asleep with all my gifts in my room near me. I even kept the favorite ones upon my bed. The following morning I always waked earlier than usual so that I might re-examine them; they cast a spell of enchantment over that winter morning, the first one of a new year.
Once there was, among my presents, a large illustrated book treating of the antediluvian world.
Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the mysteries of prehistoric creations. I knew something about those terrible creatures that in geologic times shook the primitive forests with their heavy tread; for a long time the thought of them disquieted me. I found them all in my book pictured in their proper habitat, surrounded by great brakes, and standing under a leaden sky.
The antediluvian world already haunted my imagination and became the constant subject of my dreams; often I concentrated my whole mind upon it, and endeavored to picture to myself one of its gigantic landscapes that seemed ever enveloped in a sinister and gloomy twilight with a background filled in with great moving shadows. Then when the vision thus created took on a seeming reality I felt an inexpressible sadness that was like an exhalation of the soul,—as soon as the emotion passed the dream-structure vanished.