New Ulm review., 1914-12-30
they say we'd have to waltz"

they say we'd have to waltz"
"Mebbe only a week or two, mebb.
longer" Helder's voice came out of tn.
dark, .'They couldn't tell me-
Ellen's' mother stood fastening up 9
fallen tinsel walnut.
Lets leave the tree right where
it is" she said. Even with it here We
won't have enough Christmas to hurt
anything
On that morning Of the day before
Christmas Mary Chavah woke early
while it was yet dark. With closed
eyes she lay in the grip Of dream that
was undissipated by her waking. In
the dream she had seen little town
lying in a hollow, lighted and peopled,
but without foundation.
1T isn't born yet" they told her who
looked with her, "and. the people are
not yet born.'' .
Who is the mother?' she had asked,
as it everything must be born of wo-
man.
"You", they had answered.
On which the town had swelled and
rounded and swung in hallow of
cloud, globed and shining, like the
world.
You, they had kept on saying.
The sense that she must bear and
mother the thing had grasped her with
all the sickening force of dream fear.
And when the dream slipped into the
remembrance of what the day would
bring her the grotesque terror hardly
lessened, and she woke to a sense of
oppression and coming calamity such
as not even her night of decision to
take the child had brought to her, a
weight as of physical faintness and
sickness.
Il feel as if something was going to
happen" she said over and over.
She was wholly ignorant that in that
week just passed the word had been
liberated and had run round Old Trail
Town in the happiest open secrecy:
Coming way from Idaho with a
tag on Christmas eve. We thought
it everybody could call that night
just run into Mary's, you know, like it
was any other night and take in little
something to eat-no presents, you
know-oh, of course no presents!- Just
supper in basket. We'd all have to
eat somewhere. It won't be any
Christmas celebration, of course-oh,
no, not with the paper signed ard all!
but just for us to kind of meet and
be there when he gets off the train
from Idaho.''
Just like it was any other night y
That was the part that abated suspi-
cion. Indeed, that had been the very
theory on which the nonobse1vance of
Christmas had been based-the day
was to be treated like any other day
And, obviously, on any other day such
a simple plan as this for the welcom-
ing of little stranger from Idaho
would have gone forward as matter
of course. Why deny him this merely
because the night of his arrival CHANGED
to be Christmas eve? When Christ
mas was to be treated exactly as any
other day?
If in the heart of Mis- Abby Wins
low, where the plan had originated, it
had originated side by side with the
thought that the point of the plan was
the incidence of Christmas eve she
kept her belief secret. The open argu-
ment was unassailable, and she con-
tented herself with that. Even Sim
con Buck, confronted with it, was 81.
lent.
"Goin' back on the paper, are you, -
he had at first said, "and hev cele-
bratiOn"
celebration of what?" Mis- Wins
low demanded; celebration of that
little boy getting here all alone, way
from Idaho. And we'd celebrate that
any other night, wouldn't we? OF
course we would. Our paper signing
don't call for us to give everybody
the cold shoulder as know of, lust
because it's Christmas or Christmas
eve, either
No." Simeon owned, "of course it
don't. Of course it don't"
As for Abel Ames, he accepted the
proposal with an alacrity which he
was put to it to conceal
$50 do" he said heartily, $50 do.
! guess we can 60 ahead just like it
was a plain day O. the week, can't
we?"
"Hetty,"' he said to his wife whom
that noon he went through the house