window
presented to the passers-by! Bunches of crisp light green celery leaning
up against heaps of brown, pink-eyed potatoes and honest red onions;
fiery-looking peppers side by side with golden oranges and yellow
lemons; hard, smooth, shining cranberries trying to look as though they
were sweet; great fat pumpkins; piles of green and piles of rosy apples;
bunches of fragrant thyme; and more turkeys, some with and some without
their feathered coats, but all, as I said before, with gay ribbons
around their necks. Dear me! if Santa Claus could have only looked into
that window and peeped into that shop, how pleased he would have been,
and how he would have laughed! And he certainly would have taken Mr.
Onosander Golong for a long-lost brother, for never before did mortal
man so strongly resemble the children's old Christmas friend. Snow-white
hair, long snow-white beard, twinkling blue eyes, round, fat, red,
good-natured face, a fur cap on his head, bunches of holly berries
pinned here and there on his shaggy jacket, and a laugh--good gracious!
such a loud, hearty, mirth-provoking laugh, that the very people on the
street, hearing it, began to smile, and feel that Christmas was here
indeed. And I tell you Mr. Onosander Golong was busy that day, and so
were all the men and boys employed by him. Turkeys and other things that
had been ordered the evening before, turkeys and other things that had
been ordered early that morning, and turkeys and other things being
ordered all the time, were to be packed away in huge baskets, and sent
to their respective destinations. But he wasn't so busy but that he
stopped a moment from his work to give a piece of meat to a poor dog
that had trotted hopefully into the shop (having evidently translated
the name "Golong" over the door into "Come in"), and was asking for it
with his eyes. And as he rose from patting the dog, he saw two children
standing before him, also asking for something with their eyes. They
were poorly dressed children, but the girl had a sweet, bright face, and
the boy was as jolly-looking a little fellow as you could find anywhere.
His cheeks were as round, if not as red, as Mr. Golong's, and his merry
black eyes actually danced in his head. Now if there was one place in
Mr. Onosander Golong's heart softer than the rest, it was the place he
kept for children; and so when he saw these two looking up in his
face--the boy with boyish boldness, and the girl with girlish
shy