The Ordway new era., 1920-12-24


| have tried both kinds, and so l know.
A city Christmas has all the tin and
tinsel, and that is all. By the time
you get as old and feel as young as
am, you find most of the plate worn
on.
Honestly, boys (and glrls), l don't
think Santa Claus himself ever feels
very much at home except on rural
route He has mighty poor job in
big town, with. fiues instead of Chin
neys, and everything. And 1t is hard
to see where he gets room to turn
sleigh and eight reindeer around, tiny
reindeer though they may be. He'll be
pretty certain to bump into n hydrant
or tip over on curb.
And with twenty families all using
one fue (and. what is worse, soft
coal Hue at that how in the world
is the most experienced Santa going
| to find which is Browns and which is
Smiths, and where the Greens live?
Even If he dared rap and ask (Which
no Santa Claus is ever supposed to
do) nobody could tell him. For per-
| haps the Browns and the Smiths have
never met" and the Greens might
| live across the hall for month be-
fore anybody thought to inquire their
name.
For that is one thing you don't get
much of in the city-neighbors. Some
| times when the woman across the
road keeps running in just when your
mother is canning, or baking, or treat
| ing a shirt-bosom kindly but firmly
with flat-iron, your mother may al
most wish that they weren't quite so
| plentiful in the country-but she
wouldn't. She would miss them, just
the same as you would miss having
the same boys to play with year after
year.
For in the city you are always get
ting fresh lot OF playmates-and
sometimes they are a mighty fresh
lot, too. OF course there are some
good kids, also; but it always seems
that just when you get to liking some
fellow up the street or across the alley,
| the landlord boosts the rent and his
| folks have to move. and You never see
| him again. He may move only from
one side of the city to the other, hut
| it might as well be to another state.
1t is five or ten or twenty miles
miles of houses. no, miles of flats. and
streetcar tracks, and railroads, and
factories-and you never see him again
or any of his folks.
The boys you know this Christmas
probably won't be around at all next
Christmas. if you live in the city. That
is funny thing about city folks:
they are always going somewhere and
never getting anywhere. Why. even
if the landlord didn't raise the rent
October / or May l or whenever the
lease expires, they might move any
way! People who live in flats instead
of homes are always looking for some
thing better and getting something
worse. They have the most wonderful
collection of rent receipts, but not
foot of ground, not n roof or rafter,
they can call their own.
Now, don't know what you think,
but think that every family ought to
have a house of Its own, house 1t
lives in year after year. That is. of
course unless the father has some
sort of job that makes it necessary for
him to move to some other town every
other year or so. But 1t is great
thing to live in n home, not just
house. and that is about the best place,
and the only place. to have Christ
mas, real. sure-enough, honest-to-
goodness Christmas.
Most of you boys who live on the
farm and In the small town have that
kind of home, and ! wonder If you
know how lucky you aref Wouldn't
you hate to wake up Christmas morn
ing and look at the ceiling and realize
that someone else owned II, and then
get up and go out in the front yard
and realize that someone else owned
that, too-why. you'd get so after
awhile that. everything you saw. you
would wonder who owned 1t
tell you, boys, it's a great satisfac-
tIon to have a back yard and to know
it's yours, and that you can invite
people into II, or invite people to stay
out of 1t, just as you please. Why. thar
is what brought the Pilgrim Fathers
to Amerlca-they wanted a spot they
could call their own. ! don't say that
1t was exactly a back yard they want
ed. but what they wanted was some
place they could play ball and no
landlord of king could come along
and tell them to stop because they
might break some of the royal win
dows. You know old King George did
come along and try to make them stop
i and you know what happened to the
royal windows. Zaml
And then there is this matter of
snow. You know some people don't
think It is much OF Christmas with
out snow. Now. | know quite a lot
about snow because I've been nc-
quainted with lot of 1t. have
tramped through II up in the Hudson
Bay country, and I've wallowed around
| in II in the summertime on top of the
RncLv mountains And 1 Manf To tell