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Speaker 1: Asaf Sheaf's Christmas by Edward Everett Hale. Asaf had just

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the Christmas presents he wanted. Wanted is hardly the word.

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He had not supposed that a boy like him could

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have such things for his own. His father and mother

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gave him one present. It was a camera obscura and

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thirty glass plates, all ready to take photographic views. They

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were made to work by the new dry process, so

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that without over nice manipulation of chemicals, Asaf could go

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where he pleased and make his own photographs. What the

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children gave him I must not tell. We have so

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little room, But of all the children in Boston who

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had their Christmas presents at breakfast, none was better pleased

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than Asaf as he opened his parcels. It was afterwards

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that his grief and sorrow came, when his mother's turn came,

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and she opened the parcels on her table, For in

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the Sheaf house each of them had a set separ

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at present table. After she had passed the little children's,

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she came to Asaf's present to her. It was in

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quite a large box, done up in a German newspaper.

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She opened it carefully and lifted out a Bohemian coffee pot,

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which Aesaf had bought at the German woman's shop in

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Shawmont Avenue. Missus Sheef eagerly expressed her delight and her

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wonder that Asaf knew she wanted it, But alas all

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her love could not hide the fact that the nose

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of the coffee pot was broken at the end, and

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what was left was all in splinters. Poor Aesf saw

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it as soon as she, and the great big tears

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would come to his manly eyes. He bent his head

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down on his mother's shoulder, and the hot drops fell

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on her cheek. She kissed the poor boy and told

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him she should never mind. It would pour quite as well,

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and she should use it every morning. She knew how

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many months of his allowance had gone for this coffee pot.

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She remembered how much she had been pleased with Missus Henry's,

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and she praised Asaf for remembering that so well. This

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is the joy of the present. She said that my

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boy watches his mother's wishes, and that he thinks of her.

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A chip more or less off the nose of the

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coffee pot is nothing. And Asaf would not cheat the

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others out of their good time, and he pretended to

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be soothed, but all the same there was a great

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lump in his throat. Almost all that day, when the

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children were going to church, he walked with Isabel and

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he told her how it all happened. He would not

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tell his mother, and he made Isabel promise not to tell.

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He had spent every cent of his money in buying

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his presents. He had them all in that big basket

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which they bought at the pier. He was coming home

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after dark on foot because he could not pay his

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fare in the horse car. All of a sudden a

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little German boy with a tall woman by him, stopped

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him and said, with a very droll accent, which Esaf imitated,

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East Canton Street, and poked out a card on which

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was written Karl Schoeneger seven twenty three East Canton Street.

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Bell I was in despair. It was late. I was

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on Dwight Street, and I led them to Chaumont Avenue

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and tried to explain Belle. They did not know one

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word of English except East Canton Street. They kept saying

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East Canton Street as a dog says bow wow. I

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looked for an officer and could not find one. It

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snowed harder and harder. I was coward enough to think

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of shirking. But then I said, lie and cheat on

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Christmas Eve that you may lug home your Christmas presents,

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that is to me. And I said, very loud, come here.

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I guess that's good German anyway, and I dragged them

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to their old seven twenty three East Canton Street. It

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is a mile if it is an inch. I climbed

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up the snowy steps to read the number, but I

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slipped as I came down and knocked my own basket

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off the step where it stood. That is how mamma's

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coffee pot came to be broken, I suppose. But all

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looked so steady in the basket that I never thought

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of it. Then that's how I came late to supper.

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But Bell, don't you ever tell Mamma as long as

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you live? And Bell never did. She told me when

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the Christmas dances were half over, when they had acted

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Lochnavarre and Lord Ullen's Daughter, but before they acted Villikins

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and Johnny the Miller. Supper was served in Missus Sheef's

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dining room. All the best china was out Grandmamma's spoded out,

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and the silver pitcher the hands gave Papa on his

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fiftieth birthday, and missus Sheef's wedding breakfast set all that

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was left of it, and Asaf's coffee pot held the

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place of honor. One wretched bit of broken ware had

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consented to be cemented in its place, But yet it

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was but a miserable nose. And the lump came into

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Aesaf's throat again as he looked at it, and he

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almost wished his mother had put it away so that

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he need not hear her tell Uncle Eliakim the hateful story.

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The lump was in his throat when he went to bed,

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but he fell asleep soon after. I must confess that

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there were a few wet spots on his pillow. His

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last thought was the memory that all his hoarded monthly

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allowances had gone for the purchase of a broken nosed pitcher.

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The two angels who watch his bedside saw this, and

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one of them said to the other, would you not

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tell him? But the other said, wait a little longer.

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What the angels would not tell him, I will tell you.

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For it happened that I was driving round in my

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sleigh that Christmas night on the very snow which was falling.

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While Esaf was fumbling up the steps in East Canton Street,

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and I stopped at a house not far from Boylston

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Station as you turn into Lambertine Street, and found myself

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in the midst of the drollest home festivity. The father

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was sitting with two babies on his knee, the other

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children were delving in a trunk to find something which

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would stay in the bottom the house. Mother clearly did

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not know where anything was in the trunk or anywhere else,

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but a broad grin was on every face, and whatever

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was said was broken by ejaculations and occasional kisses. At last,

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some lost parcel revealed itself and opened out into some

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balls for a Christmas tree, which these honest people had

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brought all the way from Lynz on the Danube, quite

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sure that no such wonders would be known in that

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far off America. There are many other tales to be

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printed in this volume, so that I must not tell you,

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as I should be glad to do, all the adventures

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that that house mother and her three boys, and her

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two girls and the twin babies had encountered as they

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came from Lynz to join Hans Bergmann, the father of

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the seven and the husband of their mother. He had

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come the year before. They had come now by way

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of Antwerp, and had landed in Philadelphia, but the Shiller

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had made so short a run that when they arrived,

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hans Bergmann was not in Philadelphia to meet them. Of course,

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the Frau Bergmann should have waited in Philadelphia, as hans

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Bergmann had bidden her, But on the hint of a

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voluble woman who spoke pure Bohemian, whom she met on

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the peer, who knew just where he boarded in New York,

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she took her charge to New York to find that

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he had left that boarding house three months before. Still

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eager to spend Christmas with him, she had hurried to

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Boston to ask his uncle where he was. She had

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arrived in Boston with the snowstorm the day before Christmas itself,

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having made an accidental detour by Bridgeport and Westfield. Happily

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for her, the boy asaff had led her to Uncle

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Carl's lodgings just as Uncle Carrol was leaving them forever

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on his way to Chicago. Happily for hans Bergman, Uncle

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Carl had the wit to pile them all into a

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carriage and to send them to a friend of his

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at the Boylestyn station, bidding him keep them under lock

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and key. Then to Hans Bergmann, Uncle Carl telegraphed find

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your wife at Burr Street, Num forty, Boyleston Station. Then

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Hans Bergmann, who had been bullying every police station in

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New York to know where his family was, had taken

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the early train and had spent his Christmas in plowing

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through snow drifts to Boston. And so it was that

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at nine on Christmas night I saw the children in

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a Christmas party, not quite as well arranged, but quite

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as happy as any I saw that day. And all

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this came about because a kind a Saf Sheaf forgot

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himself on Christmas Eve and showed Frau Bergmann the way

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to East Canton Street. As it happened, I saw the

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diamond necklace that John Gilder gave his bride that night,

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But it did not give so much pleasure as Asaf

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Chief's Christmas present to the Bergmanns did, And yet he

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never knew he gave it. End of Asaf Chef's Christmas

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by Edward Everett Hale,