The bells of Christmas clamor in the gale, but I am old, and life is flat and stale. I’d give my hoard for just one thrill of joy, such as I knew when, as a little boy, I proudly went and showed my youthful mates my Christmas gift—a pair of shining skates! For those cheap skates I’d give my motor cars, my works of art, my Cuba-made cigars, my stocks and bonds, my hunters and my hounds, my stately mansion and my terraced grounds, if, having them, I once again might know the joy I knew so long, so long ago!
THE WAY OF A MAN
BEFORE MARRIAGE
He carried flowers and diamond rings to please that dazzling belle, and caramels and other things that damsels love so well. He’d sit for hours upon a chair and hold her on his knees; he blew his money here and there, as though it grew on trees. “If I had half what you are worth,” he used to say, “my sweet, I’d put a shawlstrap round the earth and lay it at your feet.”
He had no other thought, it seemed, than just to cheer her heart; and everything of which she dreamed, he purchased in the mart.
“When we are spliced,” he used to say, “you’ll have all you desire—a gold mine or a load of hay, a dachshund or a lyre. My one great aim will be to make your life a thing of joy, so haste and to the altar take your little Clarence boy.”
And so she thought she drew a peach when they were wed in June. Alas! how oft for plums we reach, and only get a prune!