THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY CHEER: 180+ Novels, Tales & Poems in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Лаймен Фрэнк Баум
his son came in.
"Everything all right?" he asked, with an attempt to be cheerful.
"Oh yes, fine," answered the boy, looking at the motionless model for the five-hundredth time, and sticking his hands into his pockets. "I'm only third in mathematics yet, but I'm head in everything else. I wish I had your brains, father! I'd be at the head of the arithmetic class in half a shake of a lamb's tail if I had your brains."
So far as mathematics were concerned this sounded probable to John Henry, who would have considered the speed of the tail to be a variable function of lamb, depending on the value of mother, plus or minus milk.
"Well," he said in an encouraging tone, "I never could remember geography, so it makes us even."
"I'd like to know how!" cried the boy in a tone of protest. "You could do sums, and you grew up to be a great mathematician and inventor. But what is the good of a geographician, anyway? They can only make school-books. They never invent anything, do they? You can't invent geography, can you? At least you can, and some boys do, but they go to the bottom of the class like lead. It's safer to invent history than geography, isn't it, father?"
Overholt's clever mouth twitched.
"It's much safer, my boy. Almost all historians have found it so."
"There! I said so to-day, and now you say just the same thing. I don't believe one word of ancient history. Not—one—word! They wrote it about their own nations, didn't they? All right. Then you might just as well expect them to tell what really happened, as think that I'd tell on another boy in my own school. I must say it would be as mean as dog pie of them if they did, but all the same that does not make history true, does it?"
Newton had a practical mind. His father, who had not, meditated with unnecessary gravity on the boy's point of view and said nothing.
"For instance," continued the lad, sitting down on the high stool before the lathe Overholt was not using, "the charge of Balaclava's a true story, because it's been told by both sides; but they all say that it did no good, anyway, except to make poetry of. But Marathon! Nobody had a chance to say a word about it except the Greeks themselves, and they weren't going to allow that the Persians wiped up the floor with them, were they? Why should they? And if Balaclava had happened then, those Greek fellows would have told us that the Light Brigade carried the Russian guns back with them across their saddles, wouldn't they? I say, father!"
"What is it?" asked Overholt, looking up, for he had gone back to his work and was absorbed in it.
"The boys are all beginning to talk about Christmas down at the school. Now what are we going to do at Christmas? I've been wondering."
"So have I!" responded the man, laying down the screw-plate with which he was about to cut a fine thread on the end of a small brass rod for the tangent-balance. "I've been thinking about it a good deal to-day, and I haven't decided on anything."
"Let's have turkey and cranberry sauce, anyway," said Newton thoughtfully, for he had a practical mind. "And I suppose we can have ice-cream if it freezes and we can get some ice. Snow does pretty well if you pack it down tight enough with salt, and go on putting in more when it melts. Barbara doesn't make ice-cream as well as they do in New York. She puts in a lot of winter-green and too little cocoanut. But it's not so bad. We can have it, can't we, father?"
"Oh yes. Turkey, cranberry sauce, and ice-cream. But that isn't a whole Christmas!"
"I don't see what else you want, I'm sure," answered the boy thoughtfully. "I mean if it's a big turkey and there's enough ice-cream—cream-cakes, maybe. You get good cream-cakes at Bangs's, two for five cents. They're not very big, but they're all right inside—all gooey, you know. Can you think of anything else?"
"Not to eat!"
"Oh, well then, what's the matter with our Christmas? I can't see. No school and heaps of good gobbles."
"Good what?" Overholt looked at the boy with an inquiring glance, and then understood. "I see! Is that the proper word?"
"When there's lots, it is," answered Newton with conviction. "Of course, there are all sorts of things I'd like to have, but it's no good wishing you could lay Columbus's egg and hatch the American eagle, is it?[The writer acknowledges his indebtedness for this fact in natural and national history to his aunt, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, to whom it was recently revealed in the course of making an excellent speech.] What would you like, father, if you could choose?"
"Three things," answered Overholt promptly. "I should like to see that wheel going round, softly and steadily, all Christmas Day. I should like to see that door open and your mother coming in."
"You bet I would too!" cried Newton, dropping from bold metaphor to vulgar vernacular. "Well, what's the third thing? You said there were three."
"I should like you to have a real, old-fashioned, glorious Christmas, my boy, such as you had when you were smaller, before we left the house where you were born."
"Oh well, you mustn't worry about me, father; if there's plenty of turkey and ice-cream and the cream-cakes, I can stand it. Mother can't come, anyhow, so that's settled, and it's no use to think about it. But the motor—that's different. There's hope, anyway. The wheel may go round. If you didn't hope so, you wouldn't go on fussing over it, would you? You'd go and do something else. They always say hope's better than nothing."
"It's about all we shall have left for Christmas, so we may as well build as much on it as we can."
"I love building," said Newton. "I like to stand and watch a bricklayer just putting one brick on another and making the wall grow."
"Perhaps you'll turn out an architect."
"I'd like to. I never showed you my city, did I?" He knew very well that he had not, and his father looked at him inquiringly. "No. Oh well, you won't care to see it."
"Yes, I should! But I don't understand. What sort of a city do you mean?"
"Oh, it's nothing," answered the boy, affecting carelessness. "It's only a little paper city on a board. I don't believe you'd care to see it, father. Let's talk about Christmas."
"No. I want to see what you have made. Where is it? I'll go with you."
Newton laughed.
"I'll bring it, if you really want me to. It's easy enough to carry. The whole thing's only paper!"
He left the workshop and returned before Overholt had finished cutting the thread of the screw he was making. The man turned as the boy pushed the door open with his foot, and came in carrying what had evidently once been the top of a deal table.
On the board he had built an ingenious model of a town, or part of one, but it was not finished. It was entirely made of bits of cardboard, chips of wood, the sides of match-boxes, and odds and ends of all sorts, which he picked up wherever he saw them and brought home in his pocket for his purpose. He had an immense supply of such stuff stored away, much more than he could ever use.
Overholt looked at it with admiration, but said nothing. It was the college town where he had lived so happily and hoped to live again. It was distinctly recognisable, and many of the buildings were not only cleverly made, but were coloured very like the originals. He was so much interested that he forgot to say anything.
"It's a silly thing, anyway," said Newton, disappointed by his silence. "It's like toys!"
Overholt looked up, and the boy saw his pleased face.
"It's very far from silly," he said. "I believe you're born to be a builder, boy! It's not only not silly, but it's very well done indeed!"
"I'll bet you can't tell what the place is," observed Newton, a secret joy stealing through him at his father's words.
"Know it? I should think I did, and I wish we were there now! Here's the College, and there's our house in the street on the other side of the common. The church is first-rate, it's really like it—and there's the Roman Catholic Chapel and the Public Library in Main Street."
"Why,