But, I’ll tell you to what kind of a mortal Christmas seems to be only the day before the twenty-sixth day of December.  It’s the chap in the big city earning sixteen dollars a week, with no friends and few acquaintances, who finds himself with only fifty cents in his pocket on Christmas eve.  He can’t accept charity; he can’t borrow; he knows no one who would invite him to dinner.  I have a fancy that when the shepherds left their flocks to follow the star of Bethlehem there was a bandy-legged young fellow among them who was just learning the sheep business.  So they said to him, “Bobby, we’re going to investigate this star route and see what’s in it.  If it should turn out to be the first Christmas day we don’t want to miss it.  And, as you are not a wise man, and as you couldn’t possibly purchase a present to take along, suppose you stay behind and mind the sheep.”

So as we may say, Harry Stickney was a direct descendant of the shepherd who was left behind to take care of the flocks.

Getting back to facts, Stickney rang the doorbell of 45.  He had a habit of forgetting his latchkey.

Instantly the door opened and there stood Mrs. Kannon, clutching her sacque together at the throat and gorgonizing him with her opaque, yellow eyes.

(To give you good measure, here is a story within a story.  Once a roomer in 47 who had the Scotch habit—­not kilts, but a habit of drinking Scotch—­began to figure to himself what might happen if two persons should ring the doorbells of 43 and 47 at the same time.  Visions of two halves of Mrs. Kannon appearing respectively and simultaneously at the two entrances, each clutching at a side of an open, flapping sacque that could never meet, overpowered him.  Bellevue got him.)

“Evening,” said Stickney cheerlessly, as he distributed little piles of muddy slush along the hall matting.  “Think we’ll have snow?”

“You left your key,” said—­

      [Here the manuscript ends.]

[Illustration:  A front page of The Rolling Stone.]

THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT

      [Left unfinished, and published as it here appears in
      Everybody’s Magazine, December, 1911.]

I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men.  Singly, they are my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers.  But now and then it happens that all of them will pitch upon the same printworthy incident of the passing earthly panorama and will send in reportorial constructions thereof to their respective journals.  It is then that, for me, it is to laugh.  For it seems that to each of them, trained and skilled as he may be, the same occurrence presents a different facet of the cut diamond, life.

One will have it (let us say) that Mme. Andre Macarte’s apartment was looted by six burglars, who descended via the fire-escape and bore away a ruby tiara valued at two thousand dollars and a five-hundred-dollar prize Spitz dog, which (in violation of the expectoration ordinance) was making free with the halls of the Wuttapesituckquesunoowetunquah Apartments.