“Well, I must be going,” said I.

“When you get back to Texas,” said the President, rising, “you must write to me.  Your visit has awakened in me quite an interest in your State which I fear I have not given the attention it deserves.  There are many historical and otherwise interesting places that you have revived in my recollection—­the Alamo, where Davy Jones fell; Goliad, Sam Houston’s surrender to Montezuma, the petrified boom found near Austin, five-cent cotton and the Siamese Democratic platform born in Dallas.  I should so much like to see the gals in Galveston, and go to the wake in Waco.  I am glad I met you.  Turn to the left as you enter the hall and keep straight on out.”  I made a low bow to signify that the interview was at an end, and withdrew immediately.  I had no difficulty in leaving the building as soon as I was outside.

I hurried downtown in order to obtain refreshments at some place where viands had been placed upon the free list.

I shall not describe my journey back to Austin.  I lost my return ticket somewhere in the White House, and was forced to return home in a manner not especially beneficial to my shoes.  Everybody was well in Washington when I left, and all send their love.

[Illustration:  A page from “The Plunkville Patriot”]

AN UNFINISHED CHRISTMAS STORY

      [Probably begun several years before his death.  Published,
      as it here appears, in Short Stories, January, 1911.]

Now, a Christmas story should be one.  For a good many years the ingenious writers have been putting forth tales for the holiday numbers that employed every subtle, evasive, indirect and strategic scheme they could invent to disguise the Christmas flavor.  So far has this new practice been carried that nowadays when you read a story in a holiday magazine the only way you can tell it is a Christmas story is to look at the footnote which reads:  ["The incidents in the above story happened on December 25th.—­ED.”]

There is progress in this; but it is all very sad.  There are just as many real Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig ’em up.  Me, I am for the Scrooge and Marley Christmas story, and the Annie and Willie’s prayer poem, and the long lost son coming home on the stroke of twelve to the poorly thatched cottage with his arms full of talking dolls and popcorn balls and—­Zip! you hear the second mortgage on the cottage go flying off it into the deep snow.

So, this is to warn you that there is no subterfuge about this story—­and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum puddings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and handing over penny whistles to lame newsboys if you read further.

Once I knocked at a door (I have so many things to tell you I keep on losing sight of the story).  It was the front door of a furnished room house in West ’Teenth Street.  I was looking for a young illustrator named Paley originally and irrevocably from Terre Haute.  Paley doesn’t enter even into the first serial rights of this Christmas story; I mention him simply in explaining why I came to knock at the door—­some people have so much curiosity.