The other day I was at Tom McGinnis\'s house, and he had some company. He was a big boy, and something like a cousin of Tom\'s. Would you believe it, that fellow said there wasn\'t any Santa Claus?

Now that boy distinctly did tell—but I won\'t mention it. We should never reveal the wickedness of other people, and ought always to be thankful that we are worse than anybody else. Otherwise we should be like the Pharisee, and he was very bad. I knew for certain that it was a fib Tom McGinnis\'s cousin told. But all the same, the more I thought about it the more I got worried.

If there is a Santa Claus—and of course there is—how could he get up on the top of the house, so he could come down the chimney, unless he carried a big ladder with him; and if he did this, how could he carry presents enough to fill mornahundred stockings? And then how could he help getting the things all over soot from the chimney, and how does he manage when the chimney is all full of smoke[Pg 229] and fire, as it always is at Christmas! But then, as the preacher says, he may be supernatural—I had to look that word up in the dictionary.

The story Tom McGinnis\'s cousin told kept on worrying me, and finally I began to think how perfectly awful it would be if there was any truth in it. How the children would feel! There\'s going to be no end of children at our house this Christmas, and Aunt Eliza and her two small boys are here already. I heard mother and Aunt Eliza talking about Christmas the other day, and they agreed that all the children should sleep on cot bedsteads in the back parlor, so that they could open their stockings together, and mother said, "You know, Eliza, there\'s a big fireplace in that room, and the children can hang their stockings around the chimney."

Now I know I did wrong, but it was only because I did not want the children to be disappointed. We should always do to others and so on, and I know I should have been grateful if anybody had tried to get up a Santa Claus for me in case of the real one being out of repair. Neither do I blame mother, though if she hadn\'t spoken about the fireplace in the way she did, it would never have happened. But I do think that they ought to have made a little allowance for me, since I was only trying to help make the Christmas business successful.

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It all happened yesterday. Tom McGinnis had come to see me, and all the folks had gone out to ride except Aunt Eliza\'s little boy Harry. We were talking about Christmas, and I was telling Tom how all the children were to sleep in the back parlor, and how there was a chimney there that was just the thing for Santa Claus. We went and looked at the chimney, and then I said to Tom what fun it would be to dress up and come down the chimney and pretend to be Santa Claus, and how it would amuse the children, and how pleased the grown-up folks would be, for they are always wanting us to amuse them.

Tom agreed with me that it would be splendid fun, and said we ought to practise coming down the chimney, so that we could do it easily on Christmas-eve. He said he thought I ought to do it, because it was our house; but I said no, he was a visitor, and it would be mean and selfish in me to deprive him of any pleasure. But Tom wouldn\'t do it. He said that he wasn\'t feeling very well, and that he didn\'t like to take liberties with our chimney, and, besides, he was afraid that he was so big that he wouldn\'t fit the chimney. Then we thought of Harry, and agreed that he was just the right size. Of course Harry said he\'d do it when we asked him, for he isn\'t afraid of anything, and is so proud to be allowed to play with Tom and me that he would do anything we asked him to do.

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Well, Harry took off his coat and shoes, and we all went up to the roof, and Tom and I boosted Harry till he got on the top of the chimney and put his legs in it and slid down. He went down like a flash, for he didn\'t know enough to brace himself th............