WAITS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3015, 27 December 1911, Page 67

WAITS.

By Somnslens.

There was once a time, long, long, ago, when you tried to keep awake all Christmas Eve, in order to find out whether Santa Claus really was Santa Clause or, as you strongly suspected, one of your revered parents. In spite of all your efforts you always somehow dropped off just as the critical hour drew near, though you very often contrived to wake again when it was only justf light enough to count the knobs and bulges of the long stocking that had been mysteriously filled during your unwilling into dreamland. Now, the position is -reversed. The only Christmas gift you crave from Santa Claus or anyone else is a deep, refreshing, blessed holiday sleep, but even this poor boon is denied you, and you are kept awake, like criminals in China, by a set of tyrants whose weapons are made of sounding brass, and whose avowed object is the elevation of your soul by the gentle art of music, and by the suggestions of peace and goodwill contained in hymn tunes that you are presumed to have learnt at your mother's knee. If their hearts are not as cold and hard as the keys of their cornets, perhaps a recital of my sufferings at their hands — and lungs—last Christmas may incline them to mercy in the future. It happened to have been the first Christmas that I had spent in a town for some considerable time, and after a busy week I tumbled into bed late on Christmas Eve, desiring and expecting nothing better than the sleep of the just and dutydoing. I did not get it. Somewhere about 3 a.m. 1 realised vaguely that something was calling me back from the City of Sleep—where my sojourns are as a rule all too short —and my returning consciousness grasped the fact that there were sounds resembling music filling my ears. "Whatever —" I murmured sleepily, '' oh, waits! Confounded nuisance! Won't get anything out of me, anyway. Hope they'll move on soon." Move on! They stayed at my gate and played over a succession of hymns, some of them several times, until by the time I was broad awake the birds were singing gaily outside my window, and making almost as much noise as their human rivals. These latter presently, however, began to sound further away, and, exhausted nature reasserting herself, I was just beginning to doze off in spite of the birds when a sudden blare informed me for the seventeenth time that "Shepherds watched their flocks by night," a matter which did not interest me in the least at that moment. This was evidently a second instalment of tormentors, for in their—very brief—intervals for rest I could hear the strains of No. 1 company floating down from some distant hillside. Half-past 4 found me staring wild-eyed at the opposite wall and wondering whether that old revolver in the lumber cupboard, the only firearm in the house, would do more execution to myself or to a bandsman if. I used it. My murderous designs must in some way have communicated themselves to those outside the fence, for presently a blessed silence supervened, and turning over on myside I began to drift away to dreamland. I was gently floating—floating—through nothingness when "Hark the he-erald angels si-ing !" brought me back to earth with a jerk. sang I will not say. It was nothing that the angels would have, anyway. Then somewhere about 6 o'clock some church bells began to ring, and as spasmodic burst of mebly still continued to be wafted in my direction, though • now from a respectable distance, I gave it up as a bad job. I rose and dressed and left my house and wandered into the cheerless street with a vague hope at the back of my mind that in some secluded spot I might find a straggling bandsman unprotected by his fellows. But just when I would "have. liked to come across one there were none to be found.