he
colder it was, the bigger fires he would have, and the louder the winds
roared around his chimney. There he sat and worked away all the year
round, making dolls, and soldiers, and Noah's arks, and witches, and
every other sort of toy you can think of. When Christmas Eve came he'd
harness up his reindeers, Dasher, and Prancer, and Vixen, and the rest
of them, and wrap himself up in furs, and light his big pipe, and cram
his sled full of the doll-babies and Noah's arks, and all the other toys
he'd been making, and off he'd go with a great shout and tremendous
ringing of sleigh-bells. Before morning he'd be up and down every
chimney in New Amsterdam, filling the stout grey yarn stockings with
toys, and apples, and ginger-bread, laughing and chuckling so all the
while, that the laughs and chuckles didn't get out of the air for a week
afterwards.

But the old house has gone to ruin, and Santa Claus doesn't live there
any longer. You see he married about forty years ago; his wife was a
Grundy, daughter of old Mrs. Grundy, of Fifth Avenue, of whom you've all
heard. She married him for his money, and couldn't put up with his plain
way of living and his careless jollity. He is such an easy-going, good
natured old soul, that she manages him without any trouble. So the first
thing she did was to make him change his name to St. Nicholas; then she
made him give up his old house, and move into town; then she sent away
the reindeers, for she didn't know what Ma _would_ say to such an
outlandish turn-out; then she threw away his pipe because it was vulgar,
and the first Christmas Eve that he went off and stayed out all night
she had hysterics, and declared she'd go home to her Ma, and get a
divorce if he ever did such a thing again. She'd have put a stop to his
giving away toys every year, too, only she thought it looked well, and
as it was, she wouldn't let him make them himself any more, but
compelled him to spend enormous sums in bringing them from Paris, and
Vienna, and Nuremberg.

So now Santa Claus is St. Nicholas, and lives in a brown stone house on
Fifth Avenue, a great deal handsomer than he can afford, and keeps a
carriage, not because he wants it, but because Mrs. Shoddy, next door,
keeps one; and loves, not to be jolly himself and to make everybody else
so, but to please his wife's mother. He has to give an awful pull, what
with his wife's extravagance, and the high prices of Parisian and
Viennese toys, to make both en