Christmas Every Day, and Other Stories Told for Children by W.D. Howells (illus. by Gina DiMarco).
Title: Christmas Every Day, and Other Stories Told for Children.
Author: W.D. Howells (illustrated by Gina DiMarco).
Genre: Literature, fiction, short stories, children's lit.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1892.
Summary: A collection of 5 short stories that a man tells his little daughter and sometimes other children. In Christmas Every Day, a little girl makes a wish it would be Christmas every day, but when the Fairy decides to grant her wish, the consequences are disastrous. In Turkeys Turning the Tables, the night after Thanksgiving, a little girl is visited by the ghosts of all the eaten turkeys, that have finally had enough of being the food, and decided to turn the tables. In The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, a little Pony Engine, dreaming of one day becoming a locomotive, decides to race across the country ahead of the Pacific Express, with with an unfortunate outcome. In The Pumpkin-Glory, a bad little pumpkin seed decides to grow up and become a Morning-Glory, but because of its strange shape, ends up being a jack-o-lantern instead. In Butterflyflutterby and Flutterbybutterfly, a fairy godmother bringing up a set of royal twins gets into trouble with many strange cleanliness laws she has instituted when a set of twins whom no one can tell apart comes to court her charges for marriage.
My rating: 7.5/10.
My review:
♥ “Very well, then, this little pig-Oh, what are you pounding me for?”
“Because you said little pig instead of little girl.”
“I should like to know what's the difference between a little pig and a little girl that wanted it Christmas every day!”
“Papa,” said the little girl, warningly, “if you don't go on, I'll give it to you!” And at this her papa darted off like lightning, and began to tell the story as fast as he could.
♥ She had a splendid Christmas all day. She ate so much candy that she did not want any breakfast; and the whole forenoon the presents kept pouring in that the expressman had not had time to deliver the night before; and she went round giving the presents she had got for other people, and came home and ate turkey and cranberry for dinner, and plum-pudding and nuts and raisins and oranges and more candy, and then went out and coasted, and came in with a stomach-ache, crying; and her papa said he would see if his house was turned into that sort of fool's paradise another year; and they had a light supper, and pretty early everybody went to bed cross.
♥ Well, the next day, it was just the same thing over again, but everybody getting crosser; and at the end of a week's time so many people had lost their tempers that you could pick up lost tempers anywhere; they perfectly strewed the ground. Even when people tried to recover their tempers they usually got somebody else's, and it made the most dreadful mix.
♥ After a while coal and potatoes began to be awfully scarce, so many had been wrapped up in tissue-paper to fool papas and mammas with. Turkeys got to be about a thousand dollars apiece-And they got to passing off almost anything for turkeys-half-grown humming-birds, and even rocs out of the Arabian Nights-the real turkeys were so scarce. And cranberries-well, they asked a diamond apiece for cranberries. All the woods and orchards were cut down for Christmas-trees, and where the woods and orchards used to be it looked just like a stubble-field, with the stumps. After a while they had to make Christmas-trees out of rags, and stuff them with bran, like old-fashioned dolls; but there were plenty of rags, because people got so poor, buying presents for one another, that they couldn't get any new clothes, and they just wore their old ones to tatters. They got so poor that everybody had to go to the poor-house, except the confectioners, and the fancy-store keepers, and the picture-book sellers, and the expressmen; and they all got so rich and proud that they would hardly wait upon a person when he came to buy. It was perfectly shameful!
Well, after it had gone on about three or four months, the little girl, whenever she came into the room in the morning and saw those great ugly, lumpy stockings dangling at the fire-place, and the disgusting presents around everywhere, used to just sit down and burst out crying. In six months she was perfectly exhausted; she couldn't even cry any more; she just lay on the lounge and rolled her eyes and panted. About the beginning of October she took to sitting down on dolls wherever she found them-French dolls, or any kind-she hated the sight of them so; and by Thanksgiving she was crazy, and just slammed her presents across the room.
By that time people didn't carry presents around nicely any more. They flung them over the fence, or through the window, or anything; and, instead of running their tongues out and taking great pains to write “For dear Papa,” or “Mamma,” or “Brother,” or “Sister,” or “Susie,” or “Sammie,” or “Billie,” or “Bobbie,” or “Jimmie,” or “Jennie,” or whoever it was, and troubling to get the spelling right, and then signing their names, and “Xmas, 18-,” they used to write in the gift-books, “Take it,[Pg 15] you horrid old thing!” and then go and bang it against the front door. Nearly everybody had built barns to hold their presents, but pretty soon the barns overflowed, and then they used to let them lie out in the rain, or anywhere. Sometimes the police used to come and tell them to shovel their presents off the sidewalk, or they would arrest them.
“I thought you said everybody had gone to the poor-house,” interrupted the little girl.
“They did go, at first,” said her papa; “but after a while the poor-houses got so full that they had to send the people back to their own houses. They tried to cry, when they got back, but they couldn't make the least sound.”
“Why couldn't they?”
“Because they had lost their voices, saying ‘Merry Christmas’ so much.”
♥ Well, there was the greatest rejoicing all over the country, and it extended clear up into Canada. The people met together everywhere, and kissed and cried for joy. The city carts went around and gathered up all the candy and raisins and nuts, and dumped them into the river; and it made the fish perfectly sick; and the whole United States, as far out as Alaska, was one blaze of bonfires, where the children were burning up their gift-books and presents of all kinds. They had the greatest time!
~~Christmas Every Day.
♥ “Now, father, stop!” and one of them said it made it seem as if the gobbler was walking about on the table, to hear so much about him, and it took her appetite all away; and that made the papas begin to ask the grandfather more and more about the turkey.
“Yes,” said the little girl, thoughtfully; “I know what papas are.”
“Yes, they're pretty much all alike.”
♥
Then the old gobbler, First Premium, clapped his wings, and said, “Come on, chick-chickledren!” and then they all seemed to be in her room, and she was standing in the middle of it in her nigh[Pg 37]t-gown, and tied round and round with ribbons, so she couldn't move hand or foot. The old gobbler, First Premium, said they were going to turn the tables now, and she knew what he meant, for they had had that in the reader at school just before vacation, and the teacher had explained it. He made a long speech, with his hat on, and kept pointing at her with one of his wings, while he told the other turkeys that it was her grandfather who had done it, and now it was their turn. He said that human beings had been eating turkeys ever since the discovery of America, and it was time for the turkeys to begin paying them back, if they were ever going to. He said she was pretty young, but she was as big as he was, and he had no doubt they would enjoy her.
♥ .. and she tried to make them understand that there was a great difference between eating people and just eating turkeys.
“What difference, I should like to know?” says the old hen-turkey, pretty snappishly.
“People have got souls, and turkeys haven't,” says the other little girl.
“I don't see how that makes it any better,” says the old hen-turkey. “It don't make it any better for the turkeys. If we haven't got any souls, we can't live after we've been eaten up, and you can.”
♥ They acted perfectly ridiculous, and one little brat of a spiteful little chick piped out, “I speak for a drumstick, ma!” and then they all began: “I want a wing, ma!” and “I'm going to have the wish-bone!” and “I shall have just as much stuffing as ever I please, shan't I, ma?” till the other little girl was perfectly disgusted with them; she thought they oughtn't to say it before her, anyway; but she had hardly thought this before they all screamed out, “They used to say it before us,” and then she didn't know what to say, because she knew how people talked before animals.
♥ “Yes,” said the other little girl, “but I think you might take some older person to begin with. It's a perfect shame to begin with a little girl.”
“Begin!” says old First Premium. “Do you think we're just beginning? Why, when do you think it is?”
“The night after Thanksgiving.”
“What year?”
“1886.”
They all gave a perfect screech. “Why, it's Christmas Eve, 1900, and every one of your friends has been eaten up long ago,” says old First Premium, and he began to cry over her, and the old hen-turkey and the little turkey chicks began to wipe their eyes on the backs of their wings.
~~Turkeys Turning the Tables.
♥ Christmas Eve, after the children had hung up their stockings and got all ready for St. Nic, they climbed up on the papa's lap to kiss him good-night, and when they both got their arms round his neck, they said they were not going to bed till he told them a Christmas story. Then he saw that he would have to mind, for they were awfully severe with him, and always made him do exactly what they told him; it was the way they had brought him up. He tried his best to get out of it for a while; but after they had shaken him first this side, and then that side, and[Pg 52] pulled him backward and forward till he did not know where he was, he began to think perhaps he had better begin.
♥ “You see, she knew how ambitious the little Pony Engine was, and how it wasn't contented a bit just to grow up in the pony-engine business, and be tied down to the depot all its days. Once she happened to tell it that if it was good and always did what it was bid, perhaps a cow-catcher would grow on it some day, and then it could be a passenger locomotive. Mammas have to promise all sorts of things, and she was almost distracted when she said that.”
“I don't think she ought to have deceived it, papa,” said the boy. “But it ought to have known that if it was a Pony Engine to begin with, it never could have a cow-catcher.”
“Couldn't it?” asked the little girl, gently.
“No; they're kind of mooley.”
The little girl asked the papa, “What makes Pony Engines mooley?” for she did not choose to be told by her brother; he was only two years older than she was, anyway.
“Well; it's pretty hard to say. You see, when a locomotive is first hatched-”
“Oh, are they hatched, papa?” asked the boy.
“Well, we'll call it hatched,” said the papa; but they knew he was just funning. “They're about the size of tea-kettles at first; and it's a chance whether they will have cow-catchers or not. If they keep their spouts, they will; and if their spouts drop off, they won't.”
“What makes the spout ever drop off?”
“Oh, sometimes the pip, or the gapes-”
The children both began to shake the papa, and he was glad enough to go on sensibly. “Well, anyway, the mother locomotive certainly oughtn't to have deceived it. Still she had to say something, and perhaps the little Pony Engine was better employed watching its buffers with its head-light, to see whether its cow-catcher had begun to grow, than it would have been in listening to the stories of the old locomotives, and sometimes their swearing.”
♥ “..it kept right on till it reached the Mississippi River. There it found a long train of freight cars before it on the bridge. It couldn't wait, and so it slipped down from the track to the edge of the river and jumped across, and then scrambled up the embankment to the track again.”
“Papa!” said the little girl, warningly.
“Truly it did,” said the papa.
“Ho! that's nothing,” said the boy. “A whole train of cars did it in that Jules Verne book.”
♥ “Well,” the papa went on, “after that it had a little rest, for the Express had to wait for the freight train to get off the bridge, and the Pony Engine stopped at the first station for a drink of water and a mouthful of coal, and then it flew ahead. There was a kind old locomotive at Omaha that tried to find out where it belonged, and what its mother's name was, but the Pony Engine was so bewildered it couldn't tell. And the Express kept gaining on it. On the plains it was chased by a pack of prairie wolves, but it left them far behind; and the antelopes were scared half to death. But the worst of it was when the nightmare got after it.”
“The nightmare? Goodness!” said the boy.
“I've had the nightmare,” said the little girl.
“Oh yes, a mere human nightmare,” said the papa. “But a locomotive nightmare is a very different thing.”
“Why, what's it like?” asked the boy. The little girl was almost afraid to ask.
“Well, it has only one leg, to begin with.”
“Pshaw!”
“Wheel, I mean. And it has four cow-catchers, and four head-lights, and two boilers, and eight whistles, and it just goes whirling and screeching along. Of course it wobbles awfully; and as it's only got one wheel, it has to keep skipping from one track to the other.”
~~The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express.
♥
♥ ““I'm just going to cover myself with blossoms; and blossoms that won't shut up, either, when the sun comes out, but'll stay open, as if they hadn't anything to be ashamed of, and that won't drop off the first day, either. I noticed those morning-glories all last summer, when I was nothing but one of the blossoms myself, and I just made up my mind that as soon as ever I got to be a vine, I would show them a thing or two. Maybe I can't be a morning-glory, but I can be a pumpkin-glory, and I guess that's glory enough.””
♥
♥
“The farmer's boy went up to his room over the wood-shed, and got in at the garret window, and brought[Pg 95] out the pumpkin-glory. Only he began to slip when he was coming down the roof, and he'd have slipped clear off if he hadn't caught his trousers on a shingle-nail, and stuck.”
♥ “The boys didn't say anything, because their mouths were so full, but they looked at each other and winked their left eyes. There were about forty or fifty of them, and when they all winked their left eyes it made it so dark you could hardly see; and the mother got the lamp; but the other mothers saw what the boys were doing, and they just shook them till they opened their eyes and stopped their mischief.”
♥ “The grandmother had been sitting all alone in her room ever since dinner; because she was always afraid somehow that if you enjoyed yourself it was a sign you were going to suffer for it, and she had enjoyed herself a good deal that day, and she was feeling awfully about it.”
♥
“When the old grandmother got up close, it thought it would do something extra to please her; or else the heat of the candle had dried it up so that it cracked without intending to. Anyway, it tried to give a very broad grin, and all of a sudden it split its mouth from ear to ear. ..As soon as the grandmother saw it open its mouth that way she just gave one scream, ‘My sakes! It's comin' to life!’ And she threw up her arms, and she threw up her feet, and if the funniest papa hadn't been there to catch her, and if there hadn't been forty or fifty other sons and daughters, and grandsons and daughters, and great-grandsons and great-granddaughters, very likely shemight have fallen.
♥
“..but there were so many of them they jostled the pump, and the first thing the pumpkin-glory knew, it fell down and burst open; and the pig that the boys had plagued, and that had kept squealing all the time because it thought that the people had come out to feed it, knocked the loose board off its pen, and flew out and gobbled the pumpkin-glory up, candle and all, and that was the end of the proud little pumpkin-glory.”
~~Pumpkin-Glory.
♥
♥ “The fact is, he had not thought up any story at all; and he was so tired of all the stories he used to tell his own children that he could not bear to tell one of them, though he knew very well that the niece and nephew would be just as glad of it as if it were new, and maybe gladder; for they had heard a great deal about these stories, how perfectly splendid they were-like the Pumpkin-Glory, and the Little Pig that took the Poison Pills, and the Proud Little Horse-car that fell in Love with the Pullman Sleeper, and Jap Doll Hopsing's Adventures in Crossing the Continent, and the Enchantment of the Greedy Travellers, and the Little Boy whose Legs turned into Bicycle Wheels. At last the papa said, “This is a very peculiar kind of a story. It's about a Prince and a Princess.”
♥ “Why, I should think you would know a girl's name when you heard it. Butterflyflutterby was the Prince and Flutterbybutterfly was the Princess.”
“I don't see how we're ever going to keep them apart,” sighed the niece.
“You've got to keep them apart,” said the papa. “Because it's the great thing about the story that if you can't remember which is the Prince and which is the Princess whenever I ask you, the story has to stop. It can't help it, and I can't help it.”
They knew he was just setting a trap for them, and the same thought struck them both at once. They rose up and leaned over the papa, with their arms across and their fluffy heads together in the form of a capital letter A, and whispered in each other's ears, “You say it's one, and I'll say it's the other, and then we'll have it right between us.”
They dropped back and pulled the covering up to their chins, and shouted, “Don't you tell! don't you tell!” and just perfectly wriggled with triumph.
♥
“She was the greatest person for order there ever was; and if she found a speck of dust or dirt on the kingdom anywhere, she would have out the whole army and make them wash it up, and then sand-paper the place, and polish it with a coarse towel till it perfectly glistened. The father of the Prince and Princess had taken the precaution, before he died, to subdue all his enemies; and the consequence was that the longest kind of peace had set in, and the army had nothing to do but keep the kingdom clean. That was the reason why the fairy godmother had made the General-in-Chief take their guns away, and arm them with long feather-dusters. They marched with the poles on their shoulders, and carried the dusters in their belts, like bayonets; and whenever they came to a place that the fairy godmother said needed dusting-she always went along with them in a diamond chariot-she made the General halloo out: ‘Fix dusters! Make ready! Aim! Dust!’ And then the place would be cleaned up.
“But the General-in-Chief used to go out behind the church and cry, it mortified him so to have to give such orders, and it reminded him so painfully of the good old times when he would order his men to charge the enemy, and cover the field with gore and blood, instead of having it so awfully spick-and-span as it was now. Still he did what the fairy godmother told him, because he said it was his duty; and he kept his troops supplied with sudsine and dustene, to clean up with, and brushes and towels.
..“The fairy godmother was so severe with the dirt she found because it was a royal prerogative-that is, nobody but the King, or the King's family, had a right to make a mess, and if other people did it, they were infringing on the royal prerogative.
“You know,” the papa explained, “that in old times and countries the royal family have been allowed to do things that no other family would have been associated with if they had done them. That is about the only use there is in having a royal family. ..The fairy godmother thought she would try to bring up the Prince and Princess rather better than most Princes and Princesses were brought up, and so she said that the only thing they should be allowed to do different from other people was to make a mess. If any other persons were caught making a mess they were banished; and there was another law that was perfectly awful. ..Why, if any person was found clearing up anywhere, and it turned out to be a mess that the royal twins had made, the person was thrown from a tower.”
“Did it kill them?” the niece inquired, rather faintly.
“Well, no, it didn't kill them exactly, but it bounced them up pretty high. You see, they fell on a bed of India-rubber about twenty feet deep. It gave them a good scare; and that's the great thing in throwing persons from a high tower.”
♥
“..the young Khan and Khant of Tartary entered the kingdom with a magnificent retinue of followers, to select a bride and groom from the children of the royal family.”
♥ “We shall just have to keep on and see. Perhaps when they meet the Prince and Princess we shall find out. I don't suppose a boy would fall in love with a boy.”
“No,” said the niece; “but he might want to go off with him and have fun, or something.”
“That's true,” said the papa. “We've got to all watch out.”
♥
“It seemed as if the poor old fairy godmother would go perfectly wild, and she almost made the General crazy giving orders in one breath, and taking them back in the next. She said that now something had got to be done; she had stood it long enough; and she was going to take the case into her own hands. She saw that she should have no peace of her life till the Prince and Princess and the Khan and Khant were married. She sent for the head Imam, and told him to bring those children right in and marry them, and she would be responsible.
“The Imam put his head to the floor-and it was pretty hard on him, for he was short and stout, and he had to do it kind of sideways-and said to hear was to obey; but he could not marry them unless he knew which was which.
“The fairy godmother screamed out: ‘I don't care which is which! Marry them all, just as they are!’”
♥ “The troops marched and counter-marched, and fired away the whole afternoon, and sprang mines and blew up magazines, and threw cannon crackers and cannon torpedoes. There was such an awful din and racket that you couldn't hear yourself think, and some of the court ladies were made perfectly sick by it. They all asked to be excused, but the fairy godmother wouldn't excuse one of them. She just kept them there on the seats round the battle-field, and let them shriek themselves hoarse. So many of them fainted that they had to have the garden hose brought, and they kept it sprinkling away on their faces all the afternoon.”
♥
“She told the Grand Vizier that now she didn't see any end to the trouble, and she was just going into hysterics when a barefooted boy came along driving his cow home from the pasture. The fairy godmother didn't mind it much, for she was in her chariot; but the court ladies were on foot, and they began to scream, ‘Oh, the cow! the cow!’ and to take hold of the knights, and to get on to the fence, till it was perfectly packed with them; and who do you think the fairy godmother found had scrambled up on top of her chariot? ..The Khant! The fairy godmother pulled her inside and hugged her and kissed her, she was so glad to find out that she was the one; and she stopped the procession on the spot, and she called up the Imam, and he married the Khant to Prince-”
♥ “He may, if he guesses right. If he guesses wrong, he has to be thrown from a high tower-the same one the wicked enchantress was thrown from.”
“There!” shouted the nephew; “you said you wouldn't tell. How high was the tower, anyway, uncle? As high as the Eiffel Tower in Paris?”
“Not quite. It was three feet and five inches high.”
“Ho! Then the enchantress was a dwarf!”
“Who said she was a dwarf?”
“There wouldn't be any use throwing her from the tower if she wasn't.”
“I didn't say it was any use. They just did it for ornament.”
The nephew had been lying quiet a moment. Now he began to laugh.
“What are you laughing at?” demanded his uncle.
“The way that Khant scrambled up on top of the chariot when the cow came along. Just like a girl. They're all afraid of cows.”
The tears came into the niece's eyes; she had a great many feelings, and they were easily hurt, especially her feelings about girls.
“Well, she wasn't afraid of the cannon, anyway.”
“That is a very just remark,” said the uncle.
~~Butterflyflutterby and Flutterbybutterfly.