The Project Gutenberg eBook, By the Christmas Fire, by Samuel McChord
Crothers

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Title: By the Christmas Fire

Author: Samuel McChord Crothers

Release Date: March 31, 2007 [eBook #20953]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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BY THE CHRISTMAS FIRE

by

SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS

[Illustration]

Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
MCMXII

Copyright, 1908, by Samuel Mcchord Crothers
All Rights Reserved
Published November 1908

To O. L. F.

A CHEERFUL FIRE-WORSHIPER

Contents

I. THE BAYONET-POKER 1

II. ON BEING A DOCTRINAIRE 43

III. CHRISTMAS AND THE LITERATURE OF DISILLUSION 97

IV. THE IGNOMINY OF BEING GROWN-UP 131

V. CHRISTMAS AND THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 191

"Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy" appeared originally in
_Everybody's Magazine_, the four other essays in the _Atlantic
Monthly_. Acknowledgments are due to the editors of these
periodicals for permission to reprint them here.

I

The Bayonet-Poker

[Illustration]

As I sit by my Christmas fire I now and then give it a poke with a
bayonet. It is an old-fashioned British bayonet which has seen worse
days. I picked it up in a little shop in Birmingham for two shillings. I
was attracted to it as I am to all reformed characters. The hardened old
sinner, having had enough of war, was a candidate for a peaceful
position. I was glad to have a hand in his reformation.

To transform a sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled
smith, but to change a bayonet into