It is the privilege of youth and old age to make comparisons. One has little or nothing of experience to use as a yardstick—the other has everything life can offer him. One compares with imagination, the other with fact, and youth, having a wider pasture for thought, usually finds pleasanter places for feeding. My children have spent nearly every Christmas thus far before this open fire, while I have ranged far and wide, from Florida to the Great Lakes, and from to Colorado. As we sit in silence before our fire the boys can imagine themselves in some hunter’s camp, or with the soldiers in France, while the girls can drop themselves down from the wings of fancy in Cuba or Brazil. I might try that, but stern fact drags me down to other days, and old-time companions come creeping out of the past to say “Merry Christmas” and stand here, a little sorrowful that they cannot give the children something of their story. So I must be their spokesman, it seems, and the children give me a chance when after dreaming a while they come and ask me to tell about the real Christmas. “What was the finest Christmas lesson you ever had?” They do not put it in quite these words, but that is the sense of it. So there comes to me a great desire to live up to the highest test of story-telling—that is, so to interest your audience that they will forget to eat their apples.  
 
The room seems full of the shadowy forms of men and women who have stepped out of the past to bring back a Christmas memory. Which of these old life teachers ever gave me the best lesson? They were all good—even that big fellow who tried to kick me out of a camp—and failed—or that slimy little fraud who beat me out of a week’s wages! I think, however, that those two women over by the window lead all the rest. One is an old woman—evidently a cripple; the other younger—you cannot see her face in the dim light, but she stands by the older woman’s chair. Yes, they represent the best Christmas lesson I have had. So come up to the fire, forget the wind roaring outside, and listen to it. I was a hired man that Winter in a Western State. Some of the farmers who read this will remember me—not for any great skill I showed at farm work, but because I spent my spare time (that meant nights) going around “speaking pieces.” I am greatly afraid that as an agriculturist I did better work at keeping air hot than I ever did at heating plowshares through .
 
You see, it was this way. I was a at an agricultural college, at a time when these institutions were struggling hard to live. The average freshman thinks he is the salt of the earth, forgetting that he is salt which has not gained its through losing its freshness. A man gets very little salt in his character until he goes out and assaults the world! At any rate, I had no money salted down and no fresh supplies coming in. I had to get out during the Winter and earn the price of another term at college. I tried for a book. We will draw the curtain down over that act. Some men tell me of making small fortunes as book agents. From my experience I judge these men to be supermen or superior prevaricators, to put it mildly. I worked the job for all I was worth in spite of all obstacles, such as the of farmers who had been cheated through signing papers, the laughter of pretty girls and the teeth of dogs, and sold four books in two weeks! At last I struck a farmer who offered me a job digging a ditch. I made him a present of my “sample copy” and went to work.
 
A dollar makes an interrogation point with a on it. About all a farm produced in Winter, those days, was enough to eat and drink and something to sell for the taxes. The farmer I worked for had a red colt that was to settle with the tax man, but just before the taxes were due the colt ran away and broke his neck. I cannot say that my labor was worth much, but education is not one of the few things which come to us without money or price. Then I suddenly made the discovery that I was “a talented young elocutionist.” At least that is what the local paper stated, and do we not know that all we see in print must be true? I suppose I could tell you of one Christmas long ago that I spent as “supe” in a big theater and what befell us behind the scenes. At any rate, I could “speak pieces,” and I had a long string of them in mind. So what was a rather poor in a city became a “talented elocutionist” far back over muddy roads. You want to remember that this was a long time before the bicycle had grown away from the clumsy “velocipede.” There were few, if any “good roads.” No one dreamed of gasoline engines or . During an open Winter the mud was 10 to 20 inches deep, and every mile of travel was to be multiplied by the number of inches of mud. Amid such surroundings it is not so hard to be known as a “talented elocutionist” when your voice is strong, your tongue limber, your memory good, and you have had a chance to see and hear some of the great actors from behind the scenes.
 
I made what they called “a big hit” at night, with audiences all the way from four or five up to 200. When life was dull and blue a neighbor would come with his family to our and I would sit by the kitchen fire and entertain them. Once a farmer had a little trouble with his mother-in-law, who seemed to hold the mortgage. On his invitation I dropped in one night and a few of my “funny pieces” made this good lady laugh so that she forgave her son-in-law. Then I was called into the of a very sick man to recite several “religious pieces.” I shall not soon forget that scene. The poor sick man lying there with eyes closed, the entire family and some of the neighbors grouped around like a company of mourners, and the “talented elocutionist” by the head of the bed in the gray light of the dying day. Yes, sir, the man recovered! They have a famous saying here in New York. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken!” I found it so that Winter, and as life was young and full ambition had not been wounded, I did not weaken.
 
But all this, of course, was practice for larger occasions. Whenever I could work up a crowd I would go about to schoolhouses and churches, entertain as best I could and then “pass the hat”! What evenings they were! They were usually in old-fashioned schoolhouses with the big iron stove in the center of the room. Such houses were rarely used at night, and there would be no light except as some of the audience brought lamps or candles. The room was usually crowded and the stove red-hot. In most cases the meeting would be opened with prayer and some local politician might make a speech. Then the “talented elocutionist” would stand up near the stove. He never was an “impressive figure” at his best. In those old days the best he could afford was a pair of thick cowhide boots, a coat which came from a long, thin man, and trousers evidently made originally for a fat man. Still, the light was dim and the speaker remembered hearing James E. Murdock say that if you could only put yourself into the spirit of your talk the audience would follow you there and forget how you looked. I had seen a great actor play the part of Fagin in “Oliver Twist,” and at these entertainments I tried giving an imitation of him, until a big husky farmer tried to whip me. I had a job to explain to my friends that he was trying to punch Fagin—not me. The audiences knew no middle ground. They wanted some or some tragedy of their own lives which would tear at their heartstrings. Now and then as I recited in those hot, dim schoolhouses the keen humor of the thing would come to me, or like a flash the poverty and of my own struggle would sweep over me with overwhelming force. Then I could feel that audience moving with me and for a brief moment I got out of the ditch of life and knew the joy of the complete mastery of one who can separate the human imagination from the flesh and compel it to walk with him where he wills.
 
These moments were all too brief. Back we came finally to the dim, room, and the rather and commonplace job of trying to measure the value of a thrill by a voluntary contribution. I have had many a high hope and many a dream of a new suit of clothes blackballed on “passing the hat.” At first, when a man got up and said: “Gents, this show is worth a dollar, and I will pass the hat,” I took him at his word and expected a hat full of bills. Yet even when I shook out the I could find nothing larger than a . During that Winter I made a fine collection of buttons. It may be that most men want to keep the left hand from knowing what the right hand is up to, but evidently you must have one hand or the other under public observation if you expect much out of the owner. I have learned to have no quarrel with human nature, and I imagine after all that the hire fitted the value of the laborer’s efforts fairly well.
 
Christmas came to us in that valley with the same beautiful message which was carried to all. It was a cold Christmas, and as we went about our chores before day and at night the stars were brilliant. The crinkle of the ice and snow and the hum of the wind over the fences and through the trees came to me like the of a faraway song. It touched us all. We saw each other in something of a new light of glory. The woman of the house, I think, regarded me as a sort of awkward hired man. Now she seemed to see a boy, far from home, struggling with rather feeble hands against the flood which swept him away from the ambition to earn an education. I am sure that it came to her that the Christmas spirit must be capitalized to help me on my way. So she organized a big for Christmas Eve at which I was to “speak” and accept a donation. It was to be over in the next district, and that good woman took the sleigh and drove all over that county drumming up an “audience.” I am sure that there never ............