THE SECOND CHRISTMAS MEGAPACK

      Edited by Robert Reginald and Mary Wickizer Burgess

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2012 by Wildside Press LLC

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      INTRODUCTION, by Robert Reginald

      Christmas—the very word conjures up memories, for many of us, of the most wondrous childhood holiday of all—filled with the glitter of colorfully-wrapped presents, family visits, carols, photographs, decorating the tree, attendance at church to celebrate the birth of the Christ child, and tummy-stuffing dinners tucked with treats seen at no other time of the year.

      Christmas.

      But the yule holiday has been celebrated for at least two centuries in North America, and our writers have been producing memorable stories about this unique day for almost as long.

      Here are twenty-nine Christmas stories old and new, tales to delight, to entrance, to beguile, even sadden a whole new generation of readers. From C. C. MacApp’s view of a Christmas future to Jacob A. Riis’s gut-wrenching portraits of the holiday in the 1890s slums of New York to William J. Locke’s reenactment of the tale of the Three Wise Men, we experience every possible facet of this most precious day of the year.

      So sit back and relive your memories once again, as recreated through the eyes of some of the finest writers of their time.

      Christmas!

      THE BLOSSOMING ROD, by Mary Stewart Cutting

      I.

      Mr. Langshaw had vaguely felt unusual preparations for a Christmas gift to him this year; he was always being asked for “change” to pay the children for services rendered.

      It might have seemed a pity that calculation as to dollars and cents entered so much into the Christmas festivities of the family, if it were not that it entered so largely into the scheme of living that it was naturally interwoven with every dearest hope and fancy; the overcoming of its limitations gave a zest to life. Langshaw himself, stopping now, as was his daily habit, to look at the display made by the sporting-goods shop on his way home the Friday afternoon before Christmas Monday, wondered, as his hand touched the ten-dollar bill in his pocket—a debt unexpectedly paid him that day—if the time had actually arrived at last when he might become the possessor of the trout-rod that stood in the corner of the window; reduced, as the ticket proclaimed, from fifteen dollars to ten.

      The inspiration was the more welcome because the moment before his mind had been idly yet disquietingly filled with the shortcomings of George, his eldest child, and only son, aged ten, who didn’t seem to show that sense of responsibility which his position and advanced years called for—even evading his duties to his fond mother when he should be constituting himself her protector. He was worried as to the way George would turn out when he grew up.

      This particular trout-rod, however, had an attraction for Langshaw of long standing. He had examined it carefully more than once when in the shop with his neighbor, Wickersham; it wasn’t a fifty-dollar rod, of course, but it seemed in some ways as good as if it were—it was expensive enough for him! He had spoken of it once to his wife, with a craving for her usual sympathy, only to meet with a surprise that seemed carelessly disapproving.

      “Why, you have that old one of your father’s and the bass-rod already; I can’t see why you should want another. You always say you can’t get off to go fishing as it is.”

      He couldn’t explain that to have this particular split bamboo would be almost as good as going on a fishing trip; with it in his hand he could feel himself between green meadows, the line swirling down the rushing brook. But later Clytie had gone back to the subject with pondering consideration.

      “Ten dollars seems an awful price for a rod! I’m sure I could buy the same thing for much less uptown; wouldn’t you like me to see about it some day?”

      “Great Scott! Never think of such a thing!” he had replied in horror. “I could get much cheaper ones myself! If I ever have the money I’ll do the buying—you hear?”

      “—Hello, Langshaw! Looking at that rod again? Why don’t you blow yourself to a Christmas present? Haven’t you got the nerve?”

      “That’s what I don’t know!” called Langshaw with a wave of the hand as Wickersham passed by. Yet, even as he spoke he felt he did know—his mind was joyously, adventurously made up to have “the nerve”; he had a right, for once in the twelve years of his married life, to buy himself a Christmas present that he really wanted, in distinction to the gift that family affection prompted, and held dear as such, but which had no relation to his needs or desires. Children and friends were provided for; his wife’s winter suit—a present by her transforming imagination—already in the house; the Christmas turkey for the janitor of the children’s school subscribed to—sometimes he had wished himself the janitor!—and all the small demands that drain the purse at the festal season carefully counted up and allowed for. There was no lien on this unexpected sum just received. The reel and the line, and the flies and such, would have to wait until another time, to be sure; but no one could realize what it would be to him to come home and find that blessed rod there. He had a wild impulse to go in and buy it that moment, but such haste seemed too slighting to the dignity of that occasion, which should allow the sweets of anticipation—though no one knew better than he the danger of delay where money was concerned: it melted like snow in the pocket. Extra funds always seemed to bring an extra demand.

      The last time there was ten dollars to spare there had been a letter from Langshaw’s mother, saying that his sister Ella, whose husband was unfortunately out of a position, had developed flat-foot; and a pair of suitable shoes, costing nine-fifty, had been prescribed by the physician. Was it possible for her dear boy to send the money? Ella was so depressed.

      The ten dollars had, of course, gone to Ella. Both Langshaw and his wife had an unsympathetic feeling that if they developed flat-foot now they would have to go without appropriate shoes.

      “You look quite gay!” said his wife as she greeted him on his return, her pretty oval face, with its large dark eyes and dark curly locks, held up to be kissed. “Has anything nice happened?”

      “You look gay, too!” he evaded laughingly, as his arms lingered round her. Clytie was always a satisfactory person for a wife. “What’s this pink stuff on your hair—popcorn?”

      “Oh, goodness! Baby has been so bad, she has been throwing it round everywhere,” she answered, running ahead of him upstairs to a room that presented a scene of brilliant disorder.

      On the bed was a large box of tinselled Christmas-tree decorations and another of pink-and-white popcorn—the flotsam and jetsam of which strewed the counterpane and the floor to its farthest corners, mingled with scraps of glittering paper, an acreage of which surrounded a table in the centre of the room that was adorned with mucilage pot and scissors. A large feathered hat, a blue silk dress, and a flowered skirt were on the rug, near which a very plump child of three, with straggling yellow hair, was trying to get a piece of gilt paper off her shoe. She looked up with roguish blue eyes to say rapidly:

      “Fardie doesn’t know what baby goin’ agive ’m for Kissemus!”

      “Hello! This looks like the real thing,” said Langshaw, stepping over the debris; “but what are all these clothes on the floor for?”

      “Oh, Mary was dressing up and just dropped those things when she went to the village with Viney, though I called her twice to come back and pick them up,” said the mother, sweeping the garments out of the way. “It’s so tiresome of her! Oh, I know you stand up for everything Mary does, Joe Langshaw; but she is the hardest child to manage!”

      Her tone insensibly conveyed a pride in the difficulty of dealing with her elder daughter, aged six.

      “But did you ever see anything like Baby? She can keep a secret as well as any one! It does look