she took to sitting
down on dolls wherever she found them--French dolls, or any kind--she
hated the sight of them so; and by Thanksgiving she was crazy, and
just slammed her presents across the room.

By that time people didn't carry presents around nicely any more. They
flung them over the fence, or through the window, or anything; and,
instead of running their tongues out and taking great pains to write
"For dear Papa," or "Mamma," or "Brother," or "Sister," or "Susie," or
"Sammie," or "Billie," or "Bobbie," or "Jimmie," or "Jennie," or
whoever it was, and troubling to get the spelling right, and then
signing their names, and "Xmas, 18--," they used to write in the
gift-books, "Take it, you horrid old thing!" and then go and bang it
against the front door. Nearly everybody had built barns to hold their
presents, but pretty soon the barns overflowed, and then they used to
let them lie out in the rain, or anywhere. Sometimes the police used
to come and tell them to shovel their presents off the sidewalk, or
they would arrest them.

"I thought you said everybody had gone to the poor-house," interrupted
the little girl.

"They did go, at first," said her papa; "but after a while the
poor-houses got so full that they had to send the people back to their
own houses. They tried to cry, when they got back, but they couldn't
make the least sound."

"Why couldn't they?"

"Because they had lost their voices, saying 'Merry Christmas' so much.
Did I tell you how it was on the Fourth of July?"

"No; how was it?" And the little girl nestled closer, in expectation of
something uncommon.

Well, the night before, the boys stayed up to celebrate, as they
always do, and fell asleep before twelve o'clock, as usual, expecting
to be wakened by the bells and cannon. But it was nearly eight o'clock
before the first boy in the United States woke up, and then he found
out what the trouble was. As soon as he could get his clothes on he
ran out of the house and smashed a big cannon-torpedo down on the
pavement; but it didn't make any more noise than a damp wad of paper;
and after he tried about twenty or thirty more, he began to pick them
up and look at them. Every single torpedo was a big raisin! Then he
just streaked it up-stairs, and examined his fire-crackers and
toy-pistol and two-dollar collection of fireworks, and found that they
were nothing but sugar and candy painted up t