Mrs. Larrabee"s first attempt, with the sketch of Letty at the window on Christmas Eve, her hearth-fire aglow, her heart and her door open that Love might enter in if the Christ Child came down the snowy street,--this went to the Excelsior Card Company in a large Western city, and the following correspondence ensued:
MRS. LUTHER LARRABEE, _Beulah, N.H._
DEAR MADAM:--
Your letter bears a well-known postmark, for my father and my grandfather were born and lived in New Hampshire, "up Beulah way." I accept your verses because of the beauty of the picture that accompanied them, and because Christmas means more than holly and plum pudding and gift-laden trees to me, for I am a religious man,--a ministerial father and three family deacons saw to that, though it doesn"t always work that way!--Frankly, I do not expect your card to have a wide appeal, so I offer you only five dollars.
A Christmas card, my dear madam, must have a greeting, and yours has none. If the pictured room were a real room, and some one who had seen or lived in it should recognize it, it would attract his eye, but we cannot manufacture cards to meet such romantic improbabilities. I am emboldened to ask you (because you live in Beulah) if you will not paint the outside of some lonely, little New Hampshire cottage, as humble as you like, and make me some more verses; something, say, about "the folks back home."
Sincerely yours, REUBEN SMALL.
BEULAH, N.H.
DEAR MR. SMALL:--
I accept your offer of five dollars for my maiden effort in Christmas cards with thanks, and will try my hand at something more popular. I am not above liking to make a "wide appeal," but the subject you propose is rather a staggering one, because you accompany it with a phrase lacking rhythm, and difficult to rhyme. You will at once see, by running through the alphabet, that "roam" is the only serviceable rhyme for "_home_," but the union of the two suggests jingle or doggerel. I defy any minor poet when furnished with such a phrase, to refrain from bursting at once into:--
No matter where you travel, no matter where you roam, You"ll never dum-di-dum-di-dee The folks back home.
Sincerely yours, REBA LARRABEE.
P.S. On second thought I believe James Whitcomb Riley could do it and overcome the difficulties, but alas! I have not his touch!
DEAR MRS. LARRABEE:--
We never refuse verses because they are too good for the public. Nothing is too good for the public, but the public must be the judge of what pleases it.
"The folks back home" is a phrase that will strike the eye and ear of thousands of wandering sons and daughters. They will choose that card from the heaped-up ma.s.ses on the counters and send it to every State in the Union. If you will glance at your first card you will see that though people may read it they will always leave it on the counter.
I want my cards on counters, by the thousand, but I don"t intend that they should be left there!
Make an effort, dear Mrs. Larrabee! I could get "the folks back home" done here in the office in half an hour, but I"m giving you the chance because you live in Beulah, New Hampshire, and because you make beautiful pictures.
Sincerely yours, REUBEN SMALL.
DEAR MR. SMALL:--
I enclose a colored sketch of the outside of the cottage whose living-room I used in my first card. I chose it because I love the person who lives in it; because it always looks beautiful in the snow, and because the tree is so picturesque. The fact that it is gray for lack of paint may remind a casual wanderer that there is something to do, now and then, for the "folks back home." The verse is just as bad as I thought it would be. It seems incredible that any one should buy it, but ours is a big country and there are many kinds of people living in it, so who knows? Why don"t you accept my picture and then you write the card? I could not put my initials on this! They are unknown, to be sure, and I should want them to be, if you use it!
Sincerely yours, REBA LARRABEE.
Now here"s a Christmas greeting To the "folks back home."
It comes to you across the s.p.a.ce, Dear folks back home!
I"ve searched the wide world over, But no matter where I roam, No friends are like the old friends, No folks like those back home!
DEAR MRS. LARRABEE:--
I gave you five dollars for the first picture and verses, which you, as a writer, regard more highly than I, who am merely a manufacturer. Please accept twenty dollars for "The Folks Back Home," on which I hope to make up my loss on the first card! I insist on signing the despised verse with your initials. In case R. L. should later come to mean something, you will be glad that a few thousand people have seen it.
Sincerely, REUBEN SMALL.
The Hessian soldier andirons, the portrait over the Boynton mantel, and even Letty Boynton"s cape were identified on the first card, sooner or later, but it was obvious that Mrs. Larrabee had to have a picture for her verses and couldn"t be supposed to make one up "out of her head"; though Osh Popham declared it had been done again and again in other parts of the world. Also it was agreed that, as Letty"s face was not distinguishable, n.o.body outside of Beulah could recognize her by her cape; and that anyhow it couldn"t make much difference, for if anybody wanted to spend fifteen cents on a card he would certainly buy the one about "the folks back home." The popularity of this was established by the fact that it was selling, not only in Beulah and Greentown, but in Boston, and in Racine, Wisconsin, and, it was rumored, even in Chicago. The village milliner in Beulah had disposed of twenty-seven copies in thirteen days and the minister"s wife was universally conceded to be the most celebrated person in the State of New Hampshire.
Letty Boynton had an uncomfortable moment when she saw the first card, but common sense a.s.sured her that outside of a handful of neighbors no one would identify her home surroundings; meantime she was proud of Reba"s financial and artistic triumph in "The Folks Back Home" and generously glad that she had no share in it.
Twice during the autumn David had broken his silence, but only to send her a postal from some Western town, telling her that he should have no regular address for a time; that he was traveling for a publishing firm and felt ill-adapted to the business. He hoped that she and the children were well, for he himself was not; etc., etc.
The twins had been photographed by Osh Popham, who was Jack of all trades and master of many, and a sight of their dimpled charms, curly heads, and straight little bodies would have gladdened any father"s heart, Letty thought. However, she scorned to win David back by any such specious means. If he didn"t care to know whether his children were hump-backed, bow-legged, cross-eyed, club-footed, or feeble-minded, why should she enlighten him? This was her usual frame of mind, but in these last days of the year how she longed to pop the bewitching photographs and Reba"s Christmas cards into an envelope and send them to David.
But where? No word at all for weeks and weeks, and then only a postal from St. Joseph, saying that he had given up his position on account of poor health. Nothing in all this to keep Christmas on, thought Letty, and she knitted and crocheted and sewed with extra ardor that the twins" stockings might be filled with bright things of her own making.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
VI
On the afternoon before Christmas of that year, the North Station in Boston was filled with hurrying throngs on the way home for the holidays. Everybody looked tired and excited, but most of them had happy faces, and men and women alike had as many bundles as they could carry; bundles and boxes quite unlike the brown paper ones with which commuters are laden on ordinary days. These were white packages, beribboned and beflowered and behollied and bemistletoed, to be gently carried and protected from crushing.
The train was filled to overflowing and many stood in the aisles until Latham Junction was reached and the overflow alighted to change cars for Greentown and way stations.
Among the crowd were two men with suit-cases who hurried into the way train and, entering the smoking car from opposite ends, met in the middle of the aisle, dropped their enc.u.mbrances, stretched out a hand and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in the same breath:
"d.i.c.k Larrabee, upon my word!"
"Dave Gilman, by all that"s great!--Here, let"s turn over a seat for our baggage and sit together. Going home, I s"pose?"
The men had not met for some years, but each knew something of the other"s circ.u.mstances and hoped that the other didn"t know too much.
They scanned each other"s faces, d.i.c.k thinking that David looked pinched and pale, David half-heartedly registering the quick impression that d.i.c.k was prosperous.
"Yes," David answered; "I"m going home for a couple of days. It"s such a confounded journey to that one-horse village that a business man can"t get there but once in a generation!"
"Awful hole!" confirmed d.i.c.k. "Simply awful hole! I didn"t get it out of my system for years."
"Married?" asked David.
"No; rather think I"m not the marrying kind, though the fact is I"ve had no time for love affairs--too busy. Let"s see, you have a child, haven"t you?"
"Yes; Letty has seen to all that business for me since my wife died."
(Wild horses couldn"t have dragged the information from him that the "child" was "twins," and d.i.c.k didn"t need it anyway, for he had heard the news the morning he left Beulah.) "Wonder if there have been many changes in the village?"
"Don"t know; there never used to be! Mrs. Popham has been ailing for years,--she couldn"t die; and Deacon Todd wouldn"t!" d.i.c.k"s old animosities still lingered faintly in his memory, though his laughing voice and the twinkle in his eyes showed plainly that no bitterness was left. "How"s business with you, David?"
"Only so-so. I"ve had the devil"s own luck lately. Can"t get anything that suits me or that pays a decent income. I formed a new connection the other day, but I can"t say yet what there is in it. I"m just out of hospital; operation; they cut out the wrong thing first, I believe, sewed me up absent-mindedly, then remembered it was the other thing, and did it over again. At any rate, that"s the only way I can account for their mewing me up there for two months."
"Well, well, that is hard luck! I"m sorry, old boy! Things didn"t begin to go my way either till within the last few months. I"ve always made a fair living and saved a little money, but never gained any real headway. Now I"ve got a first-rate start and the future looks pretty favorable, and best of all, pretty safe.--No trouble at home calls you back to Beulah? I hope Letty is all right?" d.i.c.k cast an anxious side glance at David, though he spoke carelessly.