The Butler weekly times. (Butler, Mo.) 1881-1918, 1899-12-21
Let Old Santa Claus Alone.
Kansas City Times.

Claus and his reindeer are to be seen
in the advertisements of every news
paper. In a day or SO the down
town breezes will be fragrant with
the crisp perfumes of fir trees and the
windows will be brave with wreaths
of evergreen and holly.
Boys and girls see all these things
and rejoice Even the littlest of tod
dlers of them all know what they
mean. The season of all seasons has
in some mysterious way rolled round
again.
But once again a certain cruel ma
terialism is asserting itself. impelling
fathers and mothers here and there
to steal away the poetry of Christ
mas from their children; to insist on
a prosaic precocity in the nursery;
to deliberat ely confute the charming
fictions that have peopleo che woods
with gnomes and the sunlight with
bands of elfin dancers. In their folly
these iconoclasts say over and over
again:
.'There is no Santa Claus" And
they excuse themselves by the argu-
ment that 1.-The child is father to the
man." and to countenance at all the
romances of fairyland and Christmas
is to foster credulity and hamper the
growth of budding common sense.
o, heartless folly! Tear away,
then, the realism that casts glamor
over the play house. Will not the
little miss realize soon enough that
the cherished doll she hugs SO tender
ly to her bosom is only stuffed with
sawdust? And this common sense
that we are to be SO careful of, what
has it to offer the little people i'll re-
turn for the delights it filches away?
1t would, perhaps, teach young AM
ercia that dragging one foot to steer
a flying sled means a reckless and in
excusable waste of shoe leather: that
kneeling to compass a shot at the
marble ring is ruination to knicker-
bockers; that there is no real reason
why a lad should submit himself to
the painful tingle an interrupted base
ball sets up in boyish hands. Nine
tenths OF the sports of the playground
would surely go down before common
sense. 1t would be so much more
profitable" for a boy to be coming
his books, or girl learning to bake
and sweep.
But would it? Would our nation
be stronger or better if all our boys
and girls were to eschew childhood
altogether and become at once but
men and women of smaller growth?
When the good Lord has "a mighty
river to make, it never starts in as
dancing broOklet, rOmping
along through green woods and flow
cry fields? At the very outset it tolls
at turning mill wheels and bearing
the burdens of commerce? The risky
colt would make a stronger, better
horse if he were taken from the past
ure directly he could walk and hitch
ed up with old Dobbin to a cart or
pillow? Preposterous? OF course it
is. A colt should be a colt and the
more he frisks and jumps and gallops
about the field the bigger he will be
and the more useful when the days OF
his horsehood shall come, as come
they will and all too soon. And
child should be left child.
All! This world will be full enough
of seriousness for him in the time to
come. And common sense will bud
and grow in its season in the broad
ening brain-if the seed be lacking
then all the heartless parental fore
ing in the world will not make tit
tie of difference. The rough harrow
of experience cultivates common
sense. as farmer cultivates his corn,
over and over again, as the years
go by But there are other qualities
that a man or a woman should have
that this narrowing is very apt to
tear up altogether, unless they are
exceptionally desp-rooted-poetry
and imagination. These are the
qualities that bring the harvests OF
beauty and happiness into the WORLD.
These are the earliest and tenderest
blooms in the garden OF the mind.
And the materialists who are so ca
ger for common sense and so opposed
TO the FAIRIES and to Santa Claus are
working to tear them up. A gloomy
old forest this world would be with