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Show loms Fourteenth Christmas ! j I i r, Z?y Fannie Hurst ;;' J f v y1 OWN around the Bowery, f B Christmas comes in murkily. B Even more so than in the if tJ. daJS w'ien tllere was un air of lurid festivity to this I down-at-the-heel section of Kv v T the greatest metropolis of I ' the world. All that has gone now. There are no more knee-high knee-high swinging doors to Invite the sordid sor-did reveler or the threadbare celebrant. cele-brant. All that remains of a picturesque pic-turesque yesterday are the rows of lean and lusterless buildings which house pretty shops and lunch-counter eating-places and men's hotels, where the wayfarer may obtain a cot for fifteen cents and a cruller for five. Tom Mason, who had a three-days' growth of beard, a turned-up coat collar col-lar and a pulled-down cap visor, and who walked close to the sordid buildings, build-ings, as If for their sordid protection, was one of hundreds who presented almost precisely his personal appearance appear-ance as Christmas week descended sootlly upon the Bowery. Try as you would, however, It was Impossible to keep out that permeating ' r- Tom Paused Before the Window of a Telegraph Office. sense of holiday. There was tinsel-fringe tinsel-fringe already dangling In the sooty window of a second-hand shoe store. On a level with the elevated railroad, rows of unwashed windows showed the dim outline of holly wreaths. Up in the sleeping ward of the men's hotel where Tom Mason was In the babit of hiring a cot for fifteen cents a night, some wag had pasted a red paper Santa Claus against the window pane. In spite of one's self, even when one had every reason to desire to forget Dr Ignore, Christmas week elbowed its way Into these murky recesses of the city. Once Tom, lurking along as he was wont to do, pausing for a while in doorways, chatting with the dim outline out-line of figures who joined him there and then ambling along again, picking up a window washing or a floor sweeping sweep-ing job here and there, paused before the plate glass window of a telegraph office. The Christmas blurbs displayed there sent a laugh along Tom's ironic slanting mouth. "Wire to Mother." "Let Mother hear from you this Christmas." Christ-mas." "Wire happiness to that ach ing, waiting heart back there." "It's Christmas, remember the folks back home." Cheap melodramatic appeal like this, Mason reasoned, had its place after all. More than one Bowery bum, reading read-ing these snide reminders, might quile conceivably slink back home to gladden glad-den some waiting heart. Thus Tom Mason, ambling away his furtive meaningless days, was apt up on occasion to reason or meditate. But most of the time It was just a case of apathy with him. One had to pass the days somehow, and one had to eat to live, so for the most part life with him consisted of working the few hours a day necessary to put food in his body and then to lay that body on a cot. A failure of a man if ever there was one; and a failure that had come about without any particular reason. Indeed it was a failure that was inconceivable in-conceivable to those who had known him in his youth, when life had promised prom-ised and even been fulfilled to the extent ex-tent of marriage with a woman of his own excellent social sphere, subsequent subse-quent success in business, and the establishment of a home and family. The decline, when it began, had been relentless and consistent. The decline and fall of Tom Mason was the old soiled, repetitious one of appetites, the alienated affections of family and broken fortunes. It had been fourteen years since Tom had encountered any members of that family, although from time to time he read in the newspapers, accounts ac-counts and notices- that kept him in touch with some of Its d"ings. lie knew that his three children had married mar-ried out of the nest of the home he had created for them. Good, substantial substan-tial marriages. lie knew that the i house in Brlarcllff Manor, that had been bought and paid for In the hey day of his well-being, was still occupied occu-pied by the woman who was still legally le-gally bound to him as wife. He thought of her sometimes, as he thought of everything in his apathy, dimly and without affection. She had been a high-spirited girl, who rode a horse magnificently and who had won him with the quality of her vitality, vi-tality, good nature and good humor. Whatever had come subsequently, they had enjoyed the brief heydey of their well-being together. Their children had come healthily and in close succession; suc-cession; their founding of the family had at the time seemed well worth the doing. The changes began to come when the changes In Tom begin be-gin to set in. Lurid, terrible, frightening fright-ening changes. Children who shrank from him. A cold, hating, nlienated wife. Debts. Decline. Catastrophe. Then Tom's disappearance. It was bitter to the man who had spent fourteen years slinking close to the sinister buildings of the Bowery to look back upon the horror of the decline de-cline and fall of his empire. And there was no doubt about It, sneer as he would inwardly at the second-rate appeal of the telegraph advertisements, advertise-ments, some of his apathy seemed to full away from him at Chrlstmastide and an ache In his heart begin to gnaw its way through. More probably than not, there were white-haired mothers who would burn candlelights in windows on Christmas eve for recalcitrant sons, who instead of returning to them, would be lurking lurk-ing in Bowery dives on Christmas eve. j Fourteen Chrlstmases on that Bowery had brought a chronic chill to the heart of Tom Mason. After all, it i was impossible, if you were human, i not to recall happier Chrlstmases. There had been happy, glowing Christmases In Tom's life; as a child in the home of his parents; as a father fa-ther and husband in the home he had created for his wife and children. At the home in Briarcliff Manor there had been one Christmas when his three babies, just for the fun and excitement ex-citement of it, had been brought in to the laden Christmas table In an enormous enor-mous wash basket that was all decorated deco-rated In . holly sprigs. There had been a Christmas eve in that same big house, when he and his wife had worked until past midnight, decorating decorat-ing three individual Christmas trees for the three babies. yes, Tom, even as the others who slunk through these Bowery Christmases, Christ-mases, had his memories. This Christmas, Christ-mas, for some reason or another, prob ably because his vitality was at lowest low-est ebb, the memories lay damper and heavier on his spirit than they had in air the fourteen years. It seemed to Tom that his life was like a gray procession marching like gray cowled figures, one by one, to his grave. Time and again this Christmas, as the holly wreaths began to shine dimly through the dirty windows of his district, dis-trict, Tom found himself asking this sinister question. Was this cowled, gray, procession of his days worth the She Had Been High-Spirited and Rode Magnificently. living? More and more frequently, as these thoughts squatted upon him, Tom found his badly-shod feet wandering wan-dering down toward Brooklyn bridge. Countless men and women had jumped off it for surcease from the misery of failure. It seemed as good a way as any to avoid the one more meaningless Christmas. And yet somehow, some-how, there was not In Tom the courage, cour-age, or the cowardice, call it what you will, to take this way out, although all the while there was boiling within him the consciousness that another of the Christmases similar to the fourteen behind it, would not be endurable. And so, in spite of his sophisticated abhorrence of the second-rate sentimentality senti-mentality of the write-to-mother blurbs on the plate glass window-front of the telegraph office, Tom found himself on Christmas eve, standing on the porch of the house he had built for his wife and family in Briarcliff Manor. Either he had rung the bell, or some one inside had opened the door to the crunching of his footsteps along the gravel walk. The figure of his wife, smaller than he remembered It, was standing in the doorway with a lighted light-ed candle in her hand. It smote Tom as laughable, that lighted candle. All that was needed now was the blinding snow storm to give the picture the final melodramatic touch. "Come in, Tom," said his wife, almost In the manner of one who had been waiting an arrival and had opened the door to greet him. On her words, the wind blew out the candle. All that Tom foolishly could find to say was, "Your candle's gone out, Pauline." "It's all right," she said evenly. "Come in. It was only burning for you." ( by McClure Npw.i .i :c-r syndicate.) ( W. U Servicu) |