The Story of a Christmas Card.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14250, 22 December 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Story of a Christmas Card.

®T was not Christmas at all; it was a bright day of early June in the country, the sky as blue as could be, the earth a riot of colour and sweet scents, all tuned to the music of a thrush's song. In the tiniest of gabled houses an artist had made his home; rents were lower out here, and, though this may only have been his fancy, ho said lie could always paint better in the fresh country air than in town. Indoors by the open window that overlooked the garden, the aitist was showing some designs for Christmas cards to a friend, who was a prominent member, a worshipful something or other, of the Wellmeaning but Wearisome Order of Objectors, and the latter was giving his opinion on the work. # " Now take this one," said the Objector, picking up a dainty sketch of a little cottage half hidden in roses, such as one can still see in many an English village within a motor drive, if not a stone's-tlirow, of London itself. "What on earth has a rosecovered cottage to do with Christmas. 1 y the time the card is wanted we shall bo either ankle-deep in mud, or the ground will be covered with snow, and we shall be skating. You unpractical artist fellows are all the same; you have no sense of the fitness of things, and that's why you never get on." It was quite true that the artist had not got very far on the road to wealth as yet, but he "had not the air of a man who spent much time in vain regrets, and even now lie did not wem so cast down by the Objector's criticism as ho ought to have been. In fact, he smiled as he took the little picture that held all the sunshine of the clay in it, and laid it, along with a dozen others, in his portfolio, to be submitted to a firm of colour printers famous all over Europe for their Christmas cards. And when the sketches were considered in due course by three grave business men, the picture of that rose-hung cottage in a country lane was chosen first of all, but that may have been because the Objector was not abfe to give his advice. He longed to point out the folly of the choice, but for once in his life he was tongue-tied, and could only look on in voiceless disapproval. Later on ho was permitted to follow the fortunes of that little card a step further. He was looking over the shoulder of the mannot a poet, only a useful fellow with a knack of verse-— wrote quatrains for the cards, now merry, now sentimental, as seemed to him good. And as the Objector watched, the man took up his pen, and on a slip of paper pasted under the little picture he wrote: —

Tho' summer's fled and roses dead Their sweetness lives; So memory kind to my heart's mind The absent gives. Tho' parted we by land and sea, Friend speaks to friend; From Jar away this Christmas Day Greeting I send! Well, it was not at all what the Objector would have written; why in the world could not the man have put a sensible, straightforward wish, such as " A Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year?" Machinos bad clanked long, many tons of paper, many hundredweights of colour, and miles of ribbon had been used before the Objector happened to have his attention directed again to Christmas cards, and then as he was passing along a busy West End thoroughfare his eye fell on some displayed in a window. Up went his nose in the air, and the superior smile came with all its wonted alacrity to his lips. " It's perfectly ridiculous to see Christmas cards in November; one gets sick and tired of them long before the time." Yet, somehow, lie found himself following two girls, who with their mother were asking for cards. " Women could always find time to waste on things no sensible man would do," he thought, as lie hung about and watched them choosing cards with as much care as he himself might have bestowed on proaspectuses and balance-sheets. "Now, I just send round to the stationer's, and have a plate engraved, with ' the compliments of the season' or something really suitable; I order two hundred and fifty, my clerk sends them out, and the thing is done directly. That's the way to manage." \ ,

" Oh, do look! here's the sweetest little cottage," and the Objector turned to Bee a girlish face smiling over that very picture ho had so scorned. He heard the verse described as pretty,. and he learnt— he told himself there was really no harm in listening the card was,to. be sent to a certain "George," who was in New Zealand. He had a nephew George, and the young man was in New Zealand too, doing very well with a farm. At lost, after much discussion, the weighty decisions bad been made, and the cards were b'eing packed. " This is always a very busy week, I expect," said the elder woman with the kindly eye, as the assistant made up the parcel. " Yes, madam, everyone - seems to Want cards for the colonial mails; we sell more every year." »'■ So that was why Christmas cards were displayed in November, and why women were - at. such pains to buy them. " There was a little paragraph in the papers a few days later, saying that the outward mails for Australia and New Zealand had never been so heavy in the corresponding week of any previous year, but the Objector did not pay any attention to that, it was hardly the sort of thing that interested him. Christmas Eve in New Zealand! Without anything that the British mind associates with the season, a feeling of Christmas crops up in the heart, and in a lonely farm out in the bush two young Englishmen were going to keep Christmas in the best fashion they could. * One of tnem had just come back from a ten-mile ride 'to the nearest poEt office to fetch their letters. The mail was a big one for them, and George llamlin tossed the bag down on the table as lie came in. George Faber stretched out his hand towards it.

"No! no! not till to-morrow; those are the Christmas letters, remember," and with a laugh Hamlin:hung the bag up on a nail. Fuber gave in, and laughed too; it was all part of the play, and a few hours did not matter. There were a . hundred things to see to. and in the doing neither of the men had time to think more about the 'letterbag. The next morning, at an unconscionably early hour, the Objector was startled to hear two doors crash open at the same moment. He saw two figures in pyjamas standing on the threshold, he heard two glad shouts of " Merry Christmas," as two brown hands gripped each other hard, and it was thus he knew that Christmas Day had begun. From the vantage-ground of the unseen lie watched the breakfast, a simple feast, garnished with much laughter, and when it was over he went with his hosts to the verandah. " Now for the letters!" and Hamlin, unlocking the bag, rapidly sorted its contents into two piles, of which his own was by far the larger. "Got any cards? The mater always sends me one, not instead of a letter, you know, but.just as a sort of extra special because it's Christmas;" and then suddenly Hamlin pounced on another envelope, and eagerly tore it open. The Objector saw him smile—there was something very sweet in his smile—and for quite a minute lie stared hard at the little picture in his hand. Then he passed it to Faber. " Makes one feel a bit homesick," he said. " It reminds me of a cottage we used to see hist year up above Goring. Yes, of course, it's from Rhoda; Blie says in her letter she chose it because it reminded her too. Have you got any?" / ,

" No," said Faber soberly, " these pack* of sentiment don't come my way " f w get a card, of course, from my uncle • l about five weeks from now," he added - 2 a twinkle in his eye; and pddonly®S»t jector realised how uncomfortable i a £ chair can be. ' • ■ "Rare lot of good that'll be," iliM ffil-''. lin scornfully. % " Poor old chap, he has beett^i^n'' 1 good to me, but anything like that i3 r « out of his line," and all Faher's l o ffi could not keep a shade of disappoint out of his voice. 1 p . mime °fc " He ought to be out here for a bit to human!" said Hamlin so viciously tW <l Objector wished he had not timed hi« * to New Zealand for Christmas. jUj 'J?* he remembered that he -v.d ' not had 1 choice in the matter, an- «ith tKUfftejjWr > ly legitimate ground for complaint he iT gan to feel more himself. ° 8 ' A fog hung over the city, and the «£ trie lights peered through the murk 0 th November morning as the Objector gteJ*' into a cab and gave the addresii of *£? turner in Bond-street, where in due time hi was deposited. , i, " Christmas cards, sir?' said the > arbiter of the correct thing in stationerf, "Would you like to see our exclusive designs in wi. ■ vate greetings?" ■■ 1 No," replied the Objector, in « EtrtmwU hesitating way, "I want something m, , J human, I think." ( And then there passed before his em such a procession of pictures that at ; w ho lost himself in the maze of exquisite colour. What dainty designs! What per. feet printing! He had never seen anything like it. He felt owed the man a «rudi» for never having shown him such beauty before. , , - / "I'd no idea—" he began, and then nid. denly bethought him of the engraved plate that had saved a personal visit to the ft*, tioner. Somehow it did not seem alto, gether free from disadvantages now, Then the words on the cards claimed his attention ; he read quite a dozen of them before he could make up his mind which to take. At last ho made choice of two cards, and w»j driven on to the city. His own room looked very comfortable and inviting aft«? the fog outside: there were the pileti of 'neatly arranged letters lying on hie table, and a clerk followed him in, secretly wondering ■what could have made him half an how late. The Objector took off his hat and coat, hung them up, and then sitting down athis table, drew out before his clerk's astonished eyes two Christmas cards. Yen, ho' was perfectly satisfied with his choice now that ho looked at them again; they even .gained bv beinf seen apart from ill'the others thai) had been strewn on the counter. Taking up his pen, he addressed the two envelopes in his somewhat slow, careful handwriting, slipped in the cards, and fastened them down. He took out Lis stamp case, and put a stamp on each, doing it all 1 so deliberately that one would almost have said it was a labour of love, and then he handed the two envelopes to the. clerk. J "For the New Zealand mail," lie said ia a sliame-faced way; "you've no idea, Benson, how tliev feel about a Christmas .card out there."—D. F. Madeley. ! rc„"