nothing better than
a penny, there was need of sharp denial. How you lingered before the
horehound jar! Coltsfoot, too, was but a penny to the stick and
pleased the palate. Or one could do worse than licorice. But finally
you settled on a grab-bag. You roused an old woman from her knitting
behind the stove and demanded that a choice of grab-bags be placed
before you. Then, like the bearded phrenologist at the side-show of
the circus, you put your fingers on them to read their humps. Perhaps
an all-day sucker lodged inside--a glassy or an agate--marbles best
for pugging--or a brass ring with a ruby.

Through the year these bags sufficed, but the Christmas stocking was a
deeper and finer mystery. In the upper leg were handkerchiefs from
grand-mother--whose thoughts ran prudentially on noses--mittens and a
cap--useful presents of duller purpose--things that were due you
anyway and would have come in the course of time. But down in the
darker meshes of the stocking, when you had turned the corner of the
heel, there were the sweet extras of life--a mouth-organ, a baseball,
a compass and a watch.

Some folk have a Christmas tree instead of hanging their stockings,
but this is the preference of older folk rather than the preference of
children. Such persons wish to observe a child's enjoyment, and this
is denied them if the stocking is opened in the dawn. Under a pretense
of instruction they sit in an absurd posture under the tree; but they
do no more than read the rules and are blind to the obscurer uses of
the toys. As they find occasion, the children run off and play in a
quieter room with some old and broken toy.

Who can interpret the desires of children? They are a race apart from
us. At times, for a moment, we bring them to attention; then there is
a scurry of feet and they are gone. Although they seem to sit at table
with us, they are beyond a frontier that we cannot pass. Their words
are ours, but applied to foreign uses. If we try to follow their
truant thoughts, like the lame man of the story we limp behind a
shooting star. We bestow on them a blind condescension, not knowing
how their imagination outclimbs our own. And we cramp them with our
barren learning.

I assert, therefore, that it is better to find one's presents in the
dawn, when there is freedom. In all the city, wherever there are
lights, children have taken a start upon the day. Then, although the
toys are strange, there is adventure in prying at th