Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-12-22

slept again He thought that he must be in Heaven, in
which he had never being clever, believed.
Finally feelings of shame and curiosity took him out
of bed and into his shabby clothes He slipped out self
consciously and to his utter amazement upon the
town of toymakers of which Santa Claus President.
He had eaten unwisely of the luscious fruits of
reality and had then drunk deeply of the icy waters of
hard fact. But here was a very real unhealthy which
suited him perfection He longer clever; he
hungry. If only he might never be sent away! Ii
only he could make himself useful that he could live
in this sunny white industrious place until The Jour-
nal" printed three lines of obituary notice.
He asked eagerly where he might find Santa Claus,
and found him hard at work upon his directory of chill
dren. He put his humbly enough. He liter
airy man, he said forgetting for moment that he
merely dramatst. Was there not something that he
could do to prove his gratitude and his way Santa
Claus beamed upon him. at SO happens" he said,
"that our poet has written himself out. Do you think
that you literary enough to undertake the important
poetical work of motto writing for crackers Con
rad Lilywhte quoted from OF the notices OF his
plays that had been written by his friends and the bar
gain sealed
When he left the bedside of Santa Claus he carried
with him the directory of children and the map of the
earth He had been chosen to act Santa Clauss
derstudy because he had been man of the world.
V/HEN at last he lowered over the vast unwicldy
w mass of houses that stood for New York,-hav-
ing played Santa Claus everywhere ese,-he found HIM
self in somewhat excited state OF mind For the frst
time in his life he to enter the houses of the three
classes of which he had writenthe rich and lelSured
whom he had always drawn careless creatures devoid
of mothery love, health affection and ordinary inte-
gence the middle class to whom he had always referred
snobbish and unpatriotc ignorant and self indugent
and the poor who always according to him, thrift
less unwashed and drunken. He first descended upon
the roofs of the houses of the Bowery He was too tat
to go down the cmneys into the bedrooms OF the chill
dren; but that did matter Santa Claus himself never
went down the chimney: he simply walked through the
wallS-an easy feat especially when many OF them
jerry-bult This strange and convenient gift he
had injected like microbe, into Lilywhitc, who used
it with confidence.
And at he he
series of Shocks and discovered for himself how stacy
and machine made all his characters had been how false
and theatrical all his drawings of women and men, He
found all the signs of squalor and starvation and drunk
and brutality, of course, many of the rabbit
that passed for houses in this drab and hotrd
district but in just many he came upon clean bed
rooms and tidy beds upon whose pillows lay well brushed
little heads filled with joyful expectation Not stock
ing in these but darned to perfection and not one
that he did not fill to bursting
And then, with a feeling of shame upon him, he
made the tour of the prosperous suburbs, OF the
places round about 2OOth-st He came upon company
promoters who might have passed easily for gentlemen
who not bit like the gross creatures with cheap
ewery and huge noses they had always been drawn
by him. He upon brokers who were not sitting IN
their shrtsleeves in the kitchen drinking deeply from
the bottle; Nonconformist ministers who were not
reading Boccacco to the editors of Socialist papers,
actors and who not untdy and undressed
sitting chaos of harpns and sporting papers, gram
aphone records and cheap magazines, dirty packs OF
cards and the ends of Virginia cigarettes If anything
the houses of these Woodworking, economical exem-
plary people more scrupuously well run and less
Bohemian than those of police inspectors and members
of vigilance committees. They even had card trays on
the hall stands and spittoons in the smoking
Novelists and musicians palmsts and clerks, stock
brokers and insurance agents, Journalists theaer man.
ayers critics. billiard players muSc-hal artists lawyers
real estate agents. cloth merchants and publishers
ALL he found to his understandable surprise, utterly
unlike the people he had always imagined them to be-
from close study of the plays of his brother dramat1sts
The men were honest good fellows, who loved their
homes and children, and the women healthy and house