He had come the year before. They had come now by the way of Antwerp, and had landed in Philadelphia. But the Schiller had made so short a run that, when they arrived, Hans Bergmann was not in Philadelphia to meet them. Of course the Frau Bergmann should have waited in Philadelphia as Hans Bergmann had bidden her. But, on the hint of a voluble woman who spoke pure Bohemian, whom she met on the pier—who knew just where he boarded in New York—she took her charge to New York, to find that he had left that boarding-house three months before. Still, eager to spend Christmas with him, she had hurried to Boston to ask his uncle where he was. She had arrived in Boston, with the snow-storm, the day before Christmas itself, having made an accidental detour by Bridgeport and Westfield. Happily for her, the boy Asaph had led her to uncle Karl’s lodgings just as uncle Karl was leaving them forever on his way to Chicago.
Happily for Hans Bergmann, uncle Karl had the wit to pile them all into a carriage and to send them to a friend of his at the Boylston station, bidding him keep them under lock and key.
Then to Hans Bergmann uncle Karl telegraphed: “Find your wife at Burr street, number 40, Boylston station.”
Then Hans Bergmann, who had been bullying every police station in New York to know where his family was, had taken the early train and had spent his Christmas in ploughing through snow-drifts to Boston.
And so it was, that, at nine on Christmas night, I saw the children in a Christmas party, not quite as well arranged, but quite as happy, as any I saw that day.
And all this came about because a kind Asaph Sheafe forgot himself on Christmas eve, and showed Frau Bergmann the way to East Canton street.
As it happened, I saw the diamond necklace that John Gilder gave his bride that night.
But it did not give so much pleasure as Asaph Sheafe’s Christmas present to the Bergmanns did.
And yet he never knew he gave it.