Christmas Stories Rediscovered by Barbara Quarton

Author:Barbara Quarton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christmas, Holiday, Christmas Carol, charles dickens, short stories
ISBN: 9781434447739
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2012-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

THE KID HANGS UP HIS STOCKING, by Jacob A. Riis

There were thousands of homeless children in American cities in the second half of the nineteenth century. Lodging houses run by the Children’s Aid Society sheltered boys who needed a place to stay. For a fee, boys could have a bed, food, and a locker; most of the boys worked for their money as shoe shines or newsboys. The person in charge—the superintendent—often kept a “bank,” where boys could keep their money and gain interest on it. This is an endearing story of Christmas spirit and boyhood camaraderie in a turn-of-the-century lodging house.

The clock in the West-Side Lodging-house ticked out the seconds of Christmas eve as slowly and methodically as if six fat turkeys were not sizzling in the basement kitchen against the morrow’s spread, and as if two-score boys were not racking their brains to guess what kind of pies would go with them. Out on the avenue the shop-keepers were barring doors and windows, and shouting “Merry Christmas!” to one another across the street as they hurried to get home. The drays ran over the pavement with muffled sounds; winter had set in with a heavy snow-storm. In the big hall the monotonous click of checkers on the board kept step with the clock. The smothered exclamations of the boys at some unexpected, bold stroke, and the scratching of a little fellow’s pencil on a slate, trying to figure out how long it was yet till the big dinner, were the only sounds that broke the quiet of the room. The superintendent dozed behind his desk.

A door at the end of the hall creaked, and a head with a shock of weather-beaten hair was stuck cautiously through the opening.

“Tom!” it said in a stage-whisper. “Hi, Tom! Come up an’ git on ter de lay of de Kid.”

A bigger boy in a jumper, who had been lounging on two chairs by the group of checker-players, sat up and looked toward the door. Something in the energetic toss of the head there aroused his instant curiosity, and he started across the room. After a brief whispered conference the door closed upon the two, and silence fell once more on the hall.

They had been gone but a little while when they came back in haste. The big boy shut the door softly behind him and set his back against it. “Fellers,” he said, “what d’ ye t’ink? I’m blamed if de Kid ain’t gone an’ hung up his sock fer Chris’mas!”

The checkers dropped, and the pencil ceased scratching on the slate, in breathless suspense.

“Come up an’ see,” said Tom, briefly, and led the way.

The whole band followed on tiptoe. At the foot of the stairs their leader halted.

“You don’t make no noise,” he said, with a menacing gesture. “You, Savoy!”—to one in a patched shirt and with a mischievous twinkle,—“you don’t come none o’ yer monkey-shines. If you scare de Kid you’ll get it in de neck, see!”

With this admonition they stole upstairs.

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