she said, "Let us cable over and tell her how
much we think of her," though she had never seen her. And it was no
sooner said than done. In came a man with a writing-pad, and while we
drank our coffee this message sped under the great stormy sea to the
far-away country where the day was shading into evening already though
the sun was scarce two hours high in Washington:

THE WHITE HOUSE.

_Mrs. Riis, Ribe, Denmark_:

Your son is breakfasting with us. We send you our
love and sympathy.

THEODORE AND EDITH ROOSEVELT

For, you see, the house with the holly in the hall was the White House,
and my host was the President of the United States. I have to tell it to
you, or you might easily fall into the same error I came near falling
into. I had to pinch myself to make sure the President was not Santa
Claus himself. I felt that he had in that moment given me the very
greatest Christmas gift any man ever received: my little mother's life.
For really what ailed her was that she was very old, and I know that
when she got the President's dispatch she must have become immediately
ten years younger and got right out of bed. Don't you know mothers are
that way when any one makes much of their boys? I think Santa Claus must
have brought them all in the beginning--the mothers, I mean.

I would just give anything to see what happened in that old town that is
full of blessed memories to me, when the telegraph ticked off that
message. I will warrant the town hurried out, burgomaster, bishop,
beadle and all, to do honor to my gentle old mother. No Santa Claus, eh?
What was that, then, that spanned two oceans with a breath of love and
cheer, I should like to know. Tell me that!

After the coffee we sat together in the President's office for a little
while while he signed commissions, each and every one of which was just
Santa Claus's gift to a grown-up boy who had been good in the year that
was going; and before we parted the President had lifted with so many
strokes of his pen clouds of sorrow and want that weighed heavily on
homes I knew of to which Santa Claus had had hard work finding his way
that Christmas.

It seemed to me as I went out of the door, where the big policeman
touched his hat and wished me a Merry Christmas, that the sun never
shone so brightly in May as it did then. I quite expected to see the
crocuses and t