By the Christmas Fire Part 7

One whose heart the holy forms Of young imagination have kept pure.

Where others see a finished world, he sees all things as manifestations of a free power.

Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind, Expression ever varying.

This ebbing and flowing mind with its ever-changing expression is the charm of early childhood. It is the charm of all genius as well. Turn to Sh.e.l.ley's "Skylark." The student of Child Psychology never found more images chasing one another through the mind. The fancies follow one another as rapidly as if Sh.e.l.ley had been only four years old. Frank's father would have been troubled at the lack of business-like grasp of the subject. What was the skylark like? It was

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

Then again, it was

Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight.

It was

Like a poet hidden In the light of thought.

It was like a high-born maiden, like a rose, like a glow-worm, like vernal showers. The mind wanders off and sees visions of purple evenings and golden lightnings and white dawns and rain-awakened flowers. These were but hints of the reality of feeling, for

All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpa.s.s.

We know of religion--or at least we have often been told--that it is found in the purest form in the heart of a child, and that it consists in nurture and development of this early grace through all the years that may be allotted. The same thing is true of all that concerns the ideal life. The artist, the reformer, the inventor, the poet, the man of pure science, the really fruitful and original man of affairs,--these are the incorrigibles. They refuse to accept the hard-and-fast rules that are laid down for them. They insist upon finding time and room for activities that are not conceived of as tasks, but as the glorious play of their own faculties. They are full of a great, joyous impulse, and their work is but the expression of this impulse. They somehow have time for the unexpected. They see that which

Gives to seas and sunset skies The unspent beauty of surprise.

The world is in their eyes ever fresh and sparkling. Life is full of possibilities. They see no reason to give up the habit of wonder. They never outgrow the need of asking questions, though the final answers do not come.

When to a person of this temper you repeat the hard maxims of workaday wisdom, he escapes from you with the smiling audacity of a truant boy.

He is one who has awakened right early on a wonderful morning. There is a spectacle to be seen by those who have eyes for it. He is not willing out of respect for you to miss it. He hears the music, and he follows it. It is the music of the

Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.

V

Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Times have changed," said old Scrooge, as he sat by my fireside on Christmas Eve. "The Christmas Carol" had been read, as our custom was, and the children had gone to bed, so that only Scrooge and I remained to watch the dying embers.

"Times have changed, and I am not appreciated as I was in the middle of the last century. People don't seem to be having so good a time. You remember the Christmas when I was converted? What larks! Up to that time I had been 'a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, sc.r.a.ping, clutching, covetous old sinner.' Those were the very words that described me. Then the Christmas Spirit took possession of me and--presto! change! All at once I became a new creature. I began to hurry about, giving all sorts of things to all sorts of people. You remember how I scattered turkeys over the neighborhood, shouting, 'Here's the turkey! h.e.l.lo! Whoop! How are you! Merry Christmas!' And then I sat down and chuckled over my generosity till I cried. I was having the time of my life. You see, I hadn't been used to that sort of thing, and it went to my head.

"And how grateful everybody was! They took everything in the spirit in which it was offered, and asked no questions. Everywhere there was an outstretched hand and a fervent G.o.d-bless-you for every gift. n.o.body twitted me about the past. I was all at once elevated to the position of an earthly Providence.

"Talk of fun! Was there ever such a practical joke as to scare Bob Cratchit within an inch of his life and then raise his salary before he could say Jack Robinson! You should have seen him jump! How the little Cratchits shouted for joy! And when the thing was written up, all Anglo-Saxondom was smiling through its tears and saying: 'That's just like us. G.o.d bless us, every one.'

"But it's different now. Something has got into the Christmas Spirit.

Doing good doesn't seem such a jolly thing as it once was, and you can't carry it off with a whoop and h.e.l.lo. People are getting critical. In these days a charitable s.h.i.+lling doesn't go so far as it used to, and doesn't buy nearly so many G.o.d-bless-you's. You complain of the rise in the price of the necessaries of life. It isn't a circ.u.mstance to the increase in the cost of luxuries like benevolence. Almost every one looks forward to the time when he can afford to be generous. And when he is generous he likes to feel generous, and to have other people sympathize with him. It's only human nature. A man can't be thinking about himself all the time; he gets that tired feeling that your scientific people in these days call altruism. It is an inability to concentrate his mind on his own concerns. In spite of himself his thoughts wander off to other people's affairs, and he has an impulse to do them good. Now in my day it was the easiest thing in the world to do good. The only thing necessary was to feel good-natured, and there you were! Nowadays, the way of the benefactor is hard. It's so difficult that I understand you actually have Schools of Philanthropy."

Scrooge shrugged his shoulders and seemed to shrivel at the thought of these horrible inst.i.tutions.

"Just fancy," he continued, "how I should have felt on that blessed Christmas night, if, instead of starting off as an amateur angel, feeling my wings growing every moment, I had been compelled to prepare for an entrance examination. I suppose I should have been put with the backward pupils whose early education had been neglected, and should have had to learn the A B C's of charity. School of Philanthropy! Ugh!

And in the holidays, too!

"I have been visiting some elderly gentlemen who have had something of my experience with the Spirit of Christmas. Like me, they were converted somewhat late in life. They never were in as bad a way as I was, for I did business, you may remember, in a narrow street with quite sordid surroundings, while they were financiers in a large way. Yet I suppose that they, too, were 'squeezing, wrenching, grasping, sc.r.a.ping, clutching, covetous old sinners,' though n.o.body had the courage to tell them so. Then they got tired of clutching, and their hearts warmed and their hands relaxed and they began to give. Never was such giving known before. It was a perfect deluge of beneficence. A mere catalogue of the gifts would make a Christmas carol of itself.

"But would you believe it, they never have got the fun out of it that I got when I filled the cab full of turkeys and set out for Camden town.

The old Christmas feeling seems to have been chilled. The public has grown critical. Instead of dancing for joy, it looks suspiciously at the gifts and asks: 'Where did they get them?' It has been so impressed by the germ theory of disease that it foolishly fears that even money may be tainted. It's a preposterous situation. Generosity is a drug on the market, and grat.i.tude can't be had at any reasonable price."

"Yes," I said, "you are quite right, public sentiment has changed.

Grat.i.tude is not so easily won as it was in your day, and it takes longer to transform a clutching, covetous old sinner into a serviceable philanthropist. But I do not think, Scrooge, that the Christmas Spirit has really vanished. He is only a little chastened and subdued by the Spirit of Democracy."

"I don't see what Democracy has to do with it," said Scrooge. "I'm sure that n.o.body ever accused me of being an aristocrat. What I am troubled about is the decay of grat.i.tude. If I give a poor fellow a s.h.i.+lling, I ought to be allowed the satisfaction of having him remove his hat and say, 'Thank'ee, sir,' and he ought to say it as if he meant it. The heartiness of his thanksgiving is half the fun. It makes one feel good all over."

"But," I answered, "if the fellow happens to have a good memory he may recall the fact that yesterday you took two s.h.i.+llings from him, and he may think that the proper response to your sudden act of generosity is, 'Where's that other s.h.i.+lling?' That's what the Spirit of Democracy puts him up to. It's not so polite, but you must admit that it goes right to the point."

"I don't like it," said Scrooge.

"I thought you wouldn't. There are a great many people who don't like it. It's a twitting on facts that takes away a good deal of the pleasure of being generous."

"I should say it did," grumbled Scrooge. "It makes you feel mean just when you are most sensitive. Just think how I should have felt if, when I gave Bob Cratchit a dig in the waistcoat and told him that I had raised his salary, he had taken the opportunity to ask for back pay. It would have been most inopportune."

"You owed it to him, didn't you?"

"Yes, I suppose I did, if you choose to put it that way. But Bob wouldn't have put it that way; he wouldn't take such liberties. He took what I gave him; and when I gave him more than he expected, he was all the happier, and so was I. That's what made it all seem so nice and Christmasy. We were not thinking about rights and duties; it was all free grace."

"Now, Scrooge, you are getting at the point. There is no concealing the fact that the Spirit of Democracy makes himself unpleasant sometimes. He breaks up the old pleasant relations existing not only between the Lords and the Commons, but between you and Bob Cratchit. Man is naturally a superst.i.tious creature, and is p.r.o.ne to wors.h.i.+p the first thing that comes in his way. When a poor fellow sees a person who is better off than himself, he jumps to the conclusion that he is a better man, and bows down before him, as before a wonder-working Providence. When this Providence smiles upon him, he is glad, and receives the bounty with devout thankfulness. It is what the old theologians used to call 'an uncovenanted mercy.'

"All this is very pleasant to one who can sign himself by the grace of G.o.d king, or president of a coal company, or some such thing as that.

The gratification extends to all the minor grades of greatness as well.