Speaker 1: A Christmas Present Assurance Company by C. H. Grinling. I
was so worn out when I got home on the
Saturday before Christmas Day that I was obliged to go
straight off to bed. You see, I had been out
shopping all day, buying Christmas presents. It is an old
custom in our family always to give every member a
present at Christmas time. It is not the price of
the gift we value so much as the affectionate spirit
which it shows. And yet, for all that we are,
every one of us always more touchy after our Christmas
shopping than at any other time in the year. Indeed,
it was to escape from the general irritation just as
much as from over fatigue that I was glad to
get off to bed early that evening. I fell asleep directly.
I got between the blankets, and presently I dreamed the
most extraordinary dream. In the first place, I dreamed that
I was an old and valued contributor to the public press,
a sufficiently wild idea, considering that I have at home
a large box full of manuscripts returned with the editor's
compliments and regrets. Then I found myself entering an office,
on the door of which was inscribed the Christmas Wedding
and Birthday Present Assurance Company. The manager of the company
received me cordially, Yes, he said in reply to my queries.
And then at once it flashed upon me that I
must be interviewing him for an article. Yes, the idea
of our company has caught on and we are doing
a rattling business already. What precisely is the object of
your business? I inquired, or at least I dreamt I did,
and I remember feeling pleased that I was doing this
thing in the right style. Why to save people the
trouble and expense of buying Christmas, Birthday and wedding presents?
Was the reply. You see, everyone has to give such
gifts nowadays, and to people with many relations and friends,
it is becoming an important item of expenditure as well
as a serious call on their time. You know how
you feel yourself when Christmas is drawing near, or a
friend is going to be married, or a birthday in
the family is approaching. You say to yourself, I must
give so and so a present, But I'm sure I
don't know what to get, and I really can't afford
the time just now to spend half a day ransacking
the shops, and so you put the thing off till
it can't be postponed any longer. Then you go in
desperation into the first shop you come to and either
spend twice as much as you meant to, or buy
something which you are a shore aim to send. Yes,
that's so, I said, But how do you propose to
help me by taking the whole thing off your hands?
You take out a policy with us, pay a year's premium,
and we choose and pay for the presents you have
occasion to give in the year. But who judges what
I ought to give? I asked, remembering how long I
had discussed with myself whether my wife's aunt would be
offended if I left her out this year. Oh, trust
that to us. We have experts in etiquette who can
decide these points to a nicety. Now suppose you want
a general policy covering all sorts of presents. Well, you
are a middle class man with a small family, a
moderate number of relations, and a not very large circle
of middle class friends. Our actuary would probably estimate our
risk at taking you at about fifteen pounds per annum
for that we should undertake to give your wife and
children each two suitable presents during the year Christmas and Birthday.
Then we should give one present each, probably at Christmas,
to half a dozen selected relations annually. We should also
send wedding presents to such of your friends as might
be married during the year. That last would be an
uncertain item, would it not? I queried a little so perhaps,
But one year balances another. You see, we have a
very strict set of rules drawn up by a committee
of authors of etiquette primmers as to what persons are
called upon to give one another wedding presence. When you
want us to send a wedding gift on your behalf,
you would have to prove either that the bridegroom or
bride had given such a present to you or your
or that you were in the habit of taking at
least one meal in a month in the house of
the parents of one or other of the happy pair.
Afternoon teas don't count as meals. In the case of
old schoolfellows, we don't admit liability unless an uninterrupted correspondence
has been maintained since separation. In the case of ladies,
we require at least monthly letters. We have not so
far had an instance of a man wishing us to
give a present to an old school chom and do
I have no voice in the selection of the gifts
I asked? You may if you like, within certain fixed limits,
But we recommend our clients to leave the matter entirely
in our hands. You see from our large experience we
are thoroughly qualified to decide matters of the greatest delicacy.
Already we have statistics carefully compiled which show the precise
age two a month at which rattles and India rubber
suckers begin to pall on infants. And we can also
advise with confidence as to when it is safe to
entrust young children with tin soldiers, mechanical toys, et cetera,
which it would do them harm to suck or swallow.
In cases of special difficulty, we usually ask for photographs
of the recipients. By a glance at a boy's tie
or boots, we can always tell whether he will most
appreciate a book or a malacca cane. And if a
girl has her hair up, we know we are safe
in sending gloves or trinkets. Do the gifts you send
usually give satisfaction? In nearly all instances you see our
experience is so valuable in delicate cases, such as mothers
in law and maiden aunts. We never commit the common
blunder of giving such ladies a costly pre present one
year and nothing the next. More family quarrels are caused
by the sudden stopping of presents previously given, than by
not making any gifts at all. But perhaps you would
like to see our store rooms. Walk this way. I
followed my guide into a large warehouse which had all
the appearances of a fancy fair. One counter looked like
a toy shop, another resembled a tobacconist's, a third a bookseller's,
and so on. In the children's section, I found a
very large assortment of most ingenious mechanical toys and puzzles.
But I looked in vain for the Noah's arks, picture
books and fairy tales which so delighted my own childhood.
Have children's tastes changed, so I asked, with reference to these,
No was the reply. The children still like them, But
nowadays toys like pantomimes and circuses, though ostensibly for the children,
have to interest and amuse the parents as well. This
toy music hall, for example, with its automatic skirt dancers
and knock about artists is a very popular line. And
so are these musical boxes which play all the latest
Coster songs. Both of those are presents sure to give
satisfaction in cases of children from one year old upwards.
But come this way and I will show you our
latest development, so saying, the manager led me into an
adjoining room, which, to my amazement I found filled with
such articles as coal scuttles, sauce pans, brooms, basins and ewers,
and other miscellaneous domestic utensils. What I exclaimed, you don't
mean to say that people give useful things like these
as presents. Why the millennium must be approaching? The manager smiled. No,
he said, this is a separate undertaking from the present assurance.
We call this the wedding present clearing house. All the
articles you see on this shelf are marked equivalent to
salad bulls. Now, a salad bowl is a very favorite
article for a wedding present. You see, it is handsome
and genteel and not too expensive, and it looks well
in a printed list of gifts. The result is that
it is not an uncommon thing for a young married
couple to receive from ten to twenty of these bowls. Well,
one salad bowl is quite sufficient for a family of
two persons, even if they are vegetarians, so something must
be done with the others. Some ladies make them up
into flower vases, but many now bring them to us
and exchange them for any of the useful articles on
this shelf which they may be in need of. We
are glad of the bulls, which we send out again
in our next batch of wedding gifts. The articles on
the next shelf are a better class of goods. We
give them in exchange for silver candlesticks or side dishes,
of which young couples usually have a large surplus. I
wish your clearing house had been in existence when I married,
I exclaimed, with the distant recollection of a number of
silver articles which my wife put away years ago in
tissue paper, and which now never saw the light. Perhaps
even now it is not too late. What do you say, Madeline,
my dear, I said to my wife, who now seemed
to be by my side. What's that you're talking about?
Came the reply in my wife's voice. I asked you
to go to the nursery to see what's the matter.
With the children. They've been crying for the last ten minutes.
I think one of them must have tumbled out of bed.
I hurriedly pulled on some clothes and sallied forth. I
found my two youngsters sitting on their bed and howling.
It appeared they had got up in the middle of
the night to see what Santa Claus had put in
their stockings, and they were weeping because there was only
one layer in the boxes of chocolates instead of two
like last year. I comforted them with promises of another
box each and went back to bed. It's disgraceful, I
said to my wife, and I shall write to the
company about it tomorrow morning. Madeline stared at me, and
then I remembered that I had bought the chocolates myself
at a bargain at the confectioners round the corner, and
that the Christmas Wedding and Birthday Present Assurance Company was
only a dream, and of a Christmas Present Assurance Company
by C. H. Grinling