A Christmas Pi
I am not without claim to distinction. Although I still stick to suspenders—which, happily, —I am negatively . I have never, for instance, seen a professional baseball game, never said that George M. Cohan was “clever,” never started to keep a , never called Eugene Walter by his first name, never “The Raven,” never written a Christmas story, never—but what of Never-Never Land can so much? Or would, I overhear you think, if he could?
Always have I been on the lookout for the Impossible, always on the trail of the . Someday, perhaps, I shall find a sleeping-car with a name that means something, an intelligent West Indian hallboy in a New York apartment building, a boardinghouse whose inmates occasionally smile, a man born in Manhattan, a 60-cent table d’hôte that serves six the portion instead of four, a Southerner who leaves you in doubt as to his birthplace longer than ten minutes after the introduction, and myself writing a Christmas story. But that will happen ten days after the , and as the millennium is to be magazineless—
Every June I am asked to write a Christmas story. Every August I promise, , insist, swear that it shall be ready in two weeks. And every November I protest that I am sorry, but I couldn’t think of anything new and—well, next year, sure. It was so last year and the year before. It was so this year. And I said to myself that next year it would not be so. I would spend Christmas Eve looking about me. I would get copy from a cop, material from a , plot from a messenger boy. And ! it was Christmas Eve.
It was Christmas Eve, to give a synopsis of preceding chapters. I will fine-toothcomb the town for an idea next summer, quoth I. And so I walked, rode and taxi-cabbed. I spoke to waiters, subway guards, chauffeurs and newsboys and tried to draw from them some bit of life, some experience that might make a story, a Christmas story, C.O.D., at twenty cents a word. But there was not a syllable in the silly bunch, not a comma in the comatose lot.
And then I wandered into Grand Street and I saw that which made me instinctively clutch my fountain pen. A man, unswept, unmoneyed and unstrung, was about to hurl a brick into a pawnbroker’s window. His arm was raised and he was as deliberate as Mr. Tri-Digital Brown of Chicago trying to lessen the average of Mr. John P. Hanswagner of Pittsburgh. (I always spell Pittsburgh with the final h; it’s a final h of a town.)
“Here, Bill,” I said, “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, yes, you would,” he responded.
Which was my chance. “Let us withdraw to yonder inn,” I said, like a head chorus-man whose object is to “get ’em off,” “and we can discuss things.”
“What’s the game?” I asked, after the waiter had received instructions.
“I wanted to get money enough to buy my wife a Christmas present. Been out o’ work for a year. I’m desperate. I—”
“Nothing of the kind,” I contradicted. “People don’t try to steal diamonds on a crowded street for any such purpose. I’m not a detective, as you might know by my guessing so correctly.”
“Well,” he laughed, pulling out a bill and giving it to the waiter for the check; “it’s a good joke and I’ll let you in, though you can’t appreciate it. I thought if I hurled that brick in I’d get arrested quick and be sent to a cell or over on the island or something like that. You see, I’m a magazine writer and I wanted to get a real story—‘Yuletide on the Island’ or something. What’s your line, spoiler of a good story?”
“I?” I said. “My name is John Horner, and I’m a plumber.”