The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-24

the floor in front of it and worship the dangling cloth. because you know how different 1t will look tomorrow.
 And then at last you tumble in bed and try to sleep. but the laughter floating up from the rooms below. the incessant roar of the cannon crack CTS in the distance and the golden sheaf of a bursting sky-rocket that is seen @ through the shutters are all too exciting to allow one to slumber. and you lie there with eyes half shut watching the shadow of your clothes on the chair dance on the wall, and slowly get dinner and more vague as the fire dies down, until with a little snap the last flame goes out and all at once the room is teeming with op- pressive dark.
 The noises down stairs, have ceased and you heard the older people 80 to their rooms. The tick of the hallway clock, before unnoticed, all at once makes itself sharply heard and then little odd noises break the stiffness. A mouse scampering across the floor makes little creeps go up and down your back and in trying to see him you strain your eyes at the fire place and look and look and look until the little tired eyelfds close.
 Glory of Rising.
 In just about half 6 minute. 1t seems. somebody throws open the door and shouts Merry Christmas" and your anger at being aroused is gone like Hash and you sit bolt upright in the gray dawn and gaze at that wonderous fireplace. Could anyone ever have imagined it? That multi coloFed glory Is there. you can see even in the dim light, Sweep Stakes" sprawled In slanty Nletters along its side: see the green varnish on tho iron tires and the red rims about the sides, and it's exactly like the one you showed mother in the store window last week, and you wonder how santa came to have such exquisite taste. But inside the wagon. are books, unin- teresting books that private school teachers and aunts send and ask you the very next day if you have read, and to tell the truth you had for gotten all about the old fool books while you were yanktng the wagon around the street showing it to ey- eryone you know. But up above the wagon, hanging from the mantle is the stocking with the big gold corne- copia with the little girls face past ed on 1t and the big orange just un- der it, and then a little further down is a.-box and you know 1t has some- thing nice fin 1t, but when it's opened it's just some fool game like tau- thors' and you immediately hand if to sister who is putting her doll through ealysthenics course glorying in the opening and shutting of the eyes.
 And just below the box of "authorsa is an apple and you sink your little white teeth into 1t and hold 1t by them with the juice running from the cor <F 7nNafh vEFaf rrnn fNTc again into the precious stocking and stick your finger in the open and un- protected end of banana, and then in you go again and silently sing praises to the uncle who had sense enough to A send. you a baseball, even at Christmas time and as 1t rolls off under. the bed with the apple you go into the stock ing again and pull, out a pair of nit tens that you know you can tolerate because it's cold outside. So you stuff them in your coat pocket and go back \ in the stocking again and, oh unutter. able Joyi Down in the tip. so far down you have to stocking drawn up to and crumpled around your shoulder, Is that most priceless thing, a knife. Not tho Barlow knife" as grand-dad Insists on calling it, or a "clasp knife" as | the teacher says it, nor even a pocket knife" as mother says. but real just l so Knife with two fotades, ana thanH Heaven, they are both truly blades. fol l one is not the much -dispised file blade 1 you have seen other boys have, anC have pitied them therefor.
 Then as you trundle the wagon ou | across the floor you see that top en l zine was hidden by the wheels on thu other side and you Immediately spir the wheels around and push 1t along
 the floor while you fight of your broth l or from the "spress" wagon. AnC then "clumpety-clump." you lower thu 1 wagon down the stairs in front of you filled with an holy joy that comes bu
 to little children at Christmas
 All day . Wednesday the crowds