Mute admiration.
By Raymond Potter.
“If you please ma’am, here is Miss Annie’s sweetheart,” and hand over to mamma a gingerbread man for her little girl.[6]
Other jokes of the same kind are played with so-called “hearts,” large and luscious pieces of march-pane moulded into the familiar shape supposed to resemble the organ that is supposed to be the seat of human affection. These are exchanged among the young people much as valentines, with us, are exchanged on February 14th.
“Of course,” says the authority I have already quoted, a lady of Holland birth who speaks of what she herself has seen and experienced, “most girls like having such an innocent heart sent to them, and it is funny to see the mysterious look with which one tells another:
“‘I had a large heart sent to me last night. I cannot possibly think who sent it.’”
Here and there in the streets you will see groups of boys and girls clustered around a linen-draper’s shop. For it is the linen drapers who especially love to display in their windows a life-like image of Saint Nicholas, ruddy-faced, white-bearded, crowned with his mitre and clad in his bright red robe lined with soft white fur, bearing a crozier in his hand, and mounted on a fiery white horse. Behind him stands his negro servant Jan, or John.
On December 5th, the eve of the saint’s feast, he is said to ride over the roofs of the houses, dropping candies into the wide chimneys. And indeed, in houses where children believe this, their faith is rewarded by the fact that candies and other goodies do stream down into the great open hearths and are gathered in by eager little people who have been singing the saint’s praises all through the evening.
In many households, moreover, the saint actually presents himself to the eyes of his worshippers and admirers. A knock is heard at the door; it is opened, and amid the breathless silence of the children, Santa Klaus, in flesh and blood, and in all the glory of scarlet robe and bejewelled mitre, steps into the room. He is closely followed by his servant Jan, who bears a basket containing all sorts of presents for the good children, and all sorts of unpleasant reminders for the bad ones.
