icize anything
right now, anyway, I'm so soaked and soused in contentment. I always
strive to admit all of New York's good points, and I've gotten a job
here largely to encourage the old town and help it along. But I do think
that in one respect New York is in the bush league, so to speak. Even
with such people as you to help, you can't get much Christmas out of it.
When I think of Homeburg to-day, I feel proud and haughty. You can beat
us on most everything else, but when it comes to Christmas, we can't
notice you. You don't compete.

Christmas in this town is only a feat. It's a race against time in two
heats. If you win the first one, you get your shopping done on the day
before. If you win the second, you get through Christmas Day, before
your patience and good spirits give out. Of course, New Yorkers, like
yourselves, who indulge in families and other old customs, have a mighty
good time out of it. Christmas with a family is great anywhere on earth.
But that isn't New York's fault. If you didn't have a family, you would
be dining out or going to some matinee or sitting around watching the
clock. That's where it is your solemn duty to envy Homeburg if you
never have done it before. And that's why I would be homesick to-day if
you had fed me four dinners, Mrs. Jim, and had been a whole covey, or
bevy, or flock, or constellation of angels--whichever is correct.

I don't mean to say that we get any more at Christmas than you do. We
enjoy and endure our presents, same as any one else. And we have just as
hard a time buying them. There aren't enough people in Homeburg to make
a Christmas jam, but we have our own line of troubles. The question in
Homeburg is not how to keep from spending so much money but how to spend
what we have. The storekeepers don't pamper us. In fact they are severe
with us. If we don't buy what they offer the first year, they store it
up, and we have to take it the next Christmas. When the Homeburg
storekeepers have had a bad season, it's up to us to go back the next
year and face the same old line of junk, knowing it will be there until
we give in and buy it. There are two Christmas gift edition copies of
Trilby still on sale in Homeburg, and Sam Green the druggist has had a
ten-dollar manicure set on sale for ten years now. He won't get another,
either. Says he was stung on the first one, and he's going to get his
money back before he goes in any deeper. It goes down about fifty cents
a year in