The night was still, clear, and frosty—the earth was everywhere one carpet of snow, and looked just like the ghost of a dead world, wrapped in a white winding-sheet; the moon was full, round, and of a silvery brightness, and by her discreet silence afforded an example to the rising generation of young damsels, while the myriads of stars that multiplied as you gazed at them, seemed as though they were frozen into icicles, they looked so cold and sparkled with such a glorious lustre. The streets and roads leading from the city were all alive with sleighs filled with jovial souls, whose echoing laughter and cheerful songs mingled with a thousand merry bells, that jingled in harmonious dissonance, giving spirit to the horses and animation to the scene. In the licence of the season, hallowed by long custom, each of the sleighs saluted the other in passing with a “Happy New Year,” a merry jest, or mischievous gibe, exchanged from one gay party to another. All was life, motion, and merriment; and as old frost-bitten Winter, aroused from his trance by the rout and revelry around, raised his weather-beaten head to see what was passing, he felt his icy blood warming and coursing through his veins, and wished he could only overtake the laughing buxom Spring, that he might dance a jig with her, and be as frisky as the best of them. But as the old rogue could not bring this desirable matter about, he contented himself with calling for a jolly bumper of cocktail, and drinking a swinging draught to the health of the blessed St. Nicholas, and those who honour the memory of the president of good-fellows.
“THE EXCELLENT ST. NICHOLAS OVERHEARD THESE WICKED WOMEN.”
All this time the wicked women and their abettors lay under the malediction of the good saint, who caused them to be bewitched by an old lady from Salem. Mrs. Amos Shuttle could not sleep, because something had whispered in her apprehensive ear that her son, her only son, whom she had engaged to the daughter of Count Grenouille, in Paris, then about three years old, was actually at that moment crossing Kissing Bridge in company with little Susan Varian, and some others besides. Now Susan was the fairest little lady of all the land; she had a face and an eye just like the widow Wadman in Leslie’s charming picture; a face and an eye which no reasonable man under Heaven could resist, except my uncle Toby—beshrew him and his fortifications, I say! She was, moreover, a good little girl, and an accomplished little girl—but, alas! she had not mounted to the step in Jacob’s ladder of fashion which qualifies a person for the heaven of high ton, and Mrs. Shuttle had not been to Europe for nothing. She would rather have seen her son wedded to dissipation and profligacy than to Susan Varian; and the thought of his being out sleigh-riding with her was worse than the toothache. It kept her awake all the live-long night, and the only consolation she had was scolding poor Amos, because the sleigh-bells made such a noise.
As for Mrs. Hubblebubble and Mrs. Doubletrouble, they neither of them got a wink of sleep during a whole week for thinking of the beautiful French chairs and damask curtains Mrs. Shuttle had brought from Europe. They forthwith besieged their good men, leaving them no rest until they sent out orders to Paris for just such rich chairs and curtains as those of the thrice-happy Mrs. Shuttle, from whom they kept the affair a profound secret, each meaning to treat her to an agreeable surprise. In the meanwhile they could not rest for fear the vessel which was to bring these treasures might be lost on her passage. Such was the dreadful judgment inflicted on them by the good St. Nicholas.
The perplexities of Mrs. Shuttle increased daily. In the first place, do all she could, she could not make Amos a fine gentleman. This was a metamorphosis which Ovid would never have dreamed of. He would be telling the price of everything in his house, his furniture, his wines, and his dinners, insomuch that those who envied his prosperity, or perhaps only despised his pretensions, were wont to say, after eating his venison and drinking his old Madeira, “that he ought to have been a tavern-keeper, he knew so well how to make out a bill.” Mrs. Shuttle once overheard a speech of this kind, and the good St. Nicholas himself, who had brought it about, almost felt sorry for the mortification she endured on the occasion.
Scarcely had she got over this, when she was invited to a ball by Mrs. Hubblebubble, and the first thing she saw on entering the drawing-room was a suite of damask curtains and chairs, as much like her own as two peas, only the curtains had far handsomer fringe. Mrs. Shuttle came very near fainting away, but escaped for that time, determined to mortify this impudent creature by taking not the least notice of her finery. But St. Nicholas ordered it otherwise, so that she was at last obliged to acknowledge they were very elegant indeed. Nay, this was not the worst, for she overheard one lady whisper to another that Mrs. Hubblebubble’s curtains were much richer than Mrs. Shuttle’s.
“Oh, I daresay,” replied the other—“I daresay Mrs. Shuttle bought them second-hand, for her husband is as mean as pursley.”
This was too much. The unfortunate woman was taken suddenly ill—called her carriage, and went home, where it is supposed she would have died that evening had she not wrought upon Amos to promise her an entire new suite of French furniture for her drawing-room and parlour to boot, besides a new carriage. But for all this she could not close her eyes that night for thinking of the “second-hand curtains.”
Nor was the wicked Mrs. Doubletrouble a whit better off when her friend Mrs. Hubblebubble treated her to the agreeable surprise of the French window curtains and chairs. “It is too bad—too bad, I declare,” she said to herself; “but I’ll pay her off soon.” Accordingly she issued invitations for a grand ball and supper, at which both Mrs. Shuttle and Mrs. Hubblebubble were struck dumb at beholding a suite of curtains and a set of chairs exactly of the same pattern with theirs. The shock was terrible, and it is impossible to say what might have been the consequences, had not the two ladies all at once thought of uniting in abusing Mrs. Doubletrouble for her extravagance.