The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-13
SOME TIMELY REMARKS
 BY THE HOTEL CLERK
Christmas Comes But Once Year. Which Is Plenty
By ERWIN S. COBB.

cine dropper so many drops per day and compromising his food for him according to a prescription on Christmas day his devoted parents and his dotng aunts and uncles sit him down at a grooming board-I think I've heard the phrase grooming board used in this connection somewhere?-and they fill him with tur- key and stuffing and cranberres and mince meat pie and plum pudding and nuts and candy and things until his eyes bulge out like two Yale locks and his tummy pushes him over backward and sits on him. So then he is put to bed and has horrible dream in which he sees a tall man coming with a black bag and wakes up and finds this dream come true because the doctor is arriving with q medicine case. It's a week before Ethelbert is normal again.
 Then among the grown-ups there's the quaint Christmas custom that has come down from the Danes or the Siwashes or somebody called getting stewcd A man starts out Christmas morning with the best intentions in the world. But he takes an egg nog and then another egg nog and then another egg nog and then some more egg nogs and after a while he decides that so much egg isn't good for hini as a steady diet and ne Legins cutting down the egg part and .pcreas- ing the nog of plain xxx stuk And eventually the earth becomes void and without form and darkness covers the face of the earth and he starts home in a vehicle which looked like g cab when he got into it but turns out to be a merry go round almost immediate ly and the next morning he wakes up dise store and taste in his mouth like a garage"
 You speak feeingly said the house detective suspiciously. You muster been there yourself"
 Well. I do recall one Christmas when a friend sent me a set of ancielt his tories for a present, bound in red leath- with tan collars aond cuffs said the hotel clerk "They were very superior and elevating books, that made a great show on center table and were fine for pressing autumn leaves or holding a door ajar Naturally I was very much pleased with them and in undertaking to live up to their classical character I may have gone trifle too far re- call taking beaker of Falernian with an old Greek friend of mine named Jsadore Bacchus and shortly thereafter we were joined by his uncle from Germany, delightful old gentleman with whiskers, J. had split of sack and a pony of malm- sey drawn from the butt and what with jest and qub and quotations from the old poets. like Virgil and Horace and Bill Nye, we made quite an evening of it.
 q remember that going through The park on the way home a savage rhodo- oendron made an unprovol1ed attack upon me and while endeavorng to elude the i.l- furiated creature l fell over bench and was painfully bruised. Also that when I awoke the following day, which I did so in the course of time, d conviction came to me almost at once that l mast have eaten something the night before which disagreed with me and carried the disagreement to the point of openly uuarreing about it.''
 "You had hangover that's wot WIZ the matter with you,' said the House Detective, knowingly.
 "Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that, said the hotel clerk, "but I suppose a bookkeeper would have been warrant | cd in calling it the amount brought for I ward"