The Booming of Acre Hill And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life

The Christmas season was approaching, and Mr. Carraway, who had lately become something of a philosopher, began to think about gifts for his wife and children.  The more he thought of them, the more firmly was he convinced that there was something radically wrong with the system of giving that had prevailed in past years.  He conjured up visions of the useless things he had given and received on previous occasions, and an inventory of his personal receipts at the four celebrations leading up to the present disclosed the fact that he was long on match-boxes, cigar-cases, and smoking-jackets, the last every one of them too small, with an appalling supply of knitted and crocheted objects, the gifts of his children, in reserve.  His boot-closet was a perfect revelation of the misdirected Christmas energies of the young, disclosing, as it always did upon occasions when he was in a great hurry, a half-dozen pairs of worsted slippers, which he had received at Yuletide, some of them adorned with stags of beads leaping over zephyr walls, and others made in the image of cats of extraordinary color, with yellow glass eyes set in directly over the toe whereon he kept his favorite corn.  I am not sure that it was not the stepping of an awkward visitor upon one of these same glass eyes, while these slippers for the first time covered his feet, that set Mr. Carraway to cogitating upon the hollowness of “Christmas as She is Celebrated.”  Indeed, it is my impression that at the very moment when that bit of adornment was pressed down upon Mr. Carraway’s corn he announced rather forcibly his disbelief in the utility of any such infernal Christmas present as that.  And as time went on, and that offending, staring slipper slipped into his hand every time he searched the closet in the dark for a left patent-leather pump, or some other missing bit of foot-gear, the conviction grew upon him that of the great reforms of which the world stood in crying need, the reformation of the Christmas gift was possibly the most important.

The idea grew to be a mania with him, and he gradually developed into a utilitarian of the most pronounced type.  Nothing in the world so suited him as an object, homely or otherwise, that could be used for something; the things that were used for nothing had no attractions for him.  After this he developed further, and discovered new uses for old objects.  Mrs. Carraway’s parlor vases were turned into receptacles for matches, or papers, according to their size.  The huge Satsuma vase became a more or less satisfactory bill-file; and the cloisonné jar, by virtue of its great durability, Mr. Carraway used as a receptacle for the family golf-balls, much to the trepidation of his good wife, who considered that the vase, like some women, had in its beauty a sufficient cause for existence, and who would have preferred going without golf forever to the destruction of her treasured bit of bric-à-brac.

Mrs. Carraway did her best to stay the steady advance in utilitarianism of her husband.  She could bide with him in most matters.  In fact, until it came to the use of the cloisonné jar for a golf-ball reservoir, she considered the idea at least harmless, and was forced to admit that it indeed held many good points.

“I think it is perfectly proper,” she said, “to consider all things from the point of view of their utility.  I do not believe in sending a ball-dress to a poor woman who is starving or suffering for want of coal, but I must say, John, that you carry your theory too far when you insist on using an object for some purpose for which it was manifestly never intended.”

“But who is to say what a thing is manifestly made for?” demanded Carraway.  “You don’t know, or at least you can’t say positively, what one of many possible uses the designer and maker of any object had in mind when he designed and made that especial object.  This particular vase was fashioned by a heathen.  It is beautiful and graceful, but beyond producing something beautiful and graceful, how can you say what other notion that heathen had as to its possible usefulness?  He may have made it to hold flowers.  He may have intended it for a water-jug.  He may have considered it a suitable receptacle in which its future favored owner might keep his tobacco, or his opium, or any one of the thousand and one things that you can put in a vase with a hope of getting it out again.”

“Well, we know he didn’t intend it for golf-balls, anyhow,” said Mrs. Carraway.  “For the very simple reason that the heathen don’t play golf.”

“They may play some kind of a game which is a heathen variation of golf,” observed Mr. Carraway, coldly.

“That couldn’t be,” persisted Mrs. Carraway. “judging from the effect of Sunday golf-playing on church attendance, I don’t think anything more completely pagan than golf could be found.  However—­”

“But the fact remains, my dear,” Carraway interrupted, “that while we may surmise properly enough that the original maker of an object did not intend it to be used for certain purposes, you cannot say positively, because you don’t know that your surmise is absolutely correct.”

“But I think you can,” said Mrs. Carraway.  “In fact, I will say positively that the man who made our new frying-pan made it to fry things in, and not to be used in connection with a tack-hammer as a dinner-gong.  I know that the hardware people who manufactured our clothes-boiler, down in the laundry, did not design it as a toy bass-drum for the children to bang on on the morning of the Fourth of July.  I would make a solemn affidavit to the fact that the maker of a baby-carriage never dreamed of its possible use as an impromptu toboggan for a couple of small boys to coast downhill on in midsummer.  Yet these things have been used for these various purposes in our own household experience.  A megaphone can be used as a beehive, and a hammock can be turned into a fly-net for a horse, but you never think of doing so; and, furthermore, you can say positively that while the things may be used for these purposes, the original maker never, never, never thought of it.”

“Nonsense,” said Carraway, wilting a little.  “Nonsense.  You argue just like a woman—­”

“I think that was what I was designed for,” laughed Mrs. Carraway.  “Of course I do.”

“Oh! but what I mean is that you take utterly ridiculous and extreme cases.  The things never could happen.  Who’d ever dream of making a beehive out of a megaphone?”

“Oh, I think it might occur to the same ingenious mind that discovered that a cloisonné vase would hold golf-balls,” smiled Mrs. Carraway.

Carraway laughed.  “There you go again,” he said.  “I wonder why women can’t argue without becoming ridiculous?  It would be mighty poor economy to pay $4 for a megaphone as a substitute for a $2 beehive.”

“That is true,” said Mrs. Carraway.  “I never thought of that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” retorted Carraway, triumphantly.  “Of course you didn’t; and that’s what I mean when I say you argue like a woman.  You get hold of what seems on the surface to be a regular solar-plexus retort, and fail to see how it becomes a boomerang before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“I suppose if I hadn’t been worried about the vase I would have thought of it,” said Mrs. Carraway, meekly.  “It worries me to see a $150 vase used for a purpose that a fifty-cent calico bag would serve quite as well.”

Carraway glanced searchingly at his wife.

“Well—­ah—­hem!” he said.  “Quite right, my dear, quite right.  I think, on the whole, you would better get the calico bag.”

For a few days after this little discussion Carraway was very reticent about his utilitarian ideas.  The more he thought of his wife’s retort the less secure he felt in his own position, and he was very sorry he had spoken about boomerangs and solar-plexus retorts.  But with time he recovered his equanimity, and early in December returned to his old ways.

“I’ve just been up in the attic,” he said to his wife one Sunday afternoon, when he appeared on the scene rather dusty of aspect.  “There’s a whole lot of useful stuff up there going to waste.  I found four old beaver hats, any one of which would make a very good waste-basket for the spare bedroom if it was suitably trimmed; and I don’t see why you don’t take these straw hats of mine and make work-baskets of them.”  Here he held out two relics of bygone fashions to his wife.  Mrs. Carraway took them silently.  She was so filled with suppressed laughter over her husband’s suggestions that she hardly dared to speak lest she should give way to her mirth, and a man does not generally appreciate mirth at his own expense after he has been rummaging in an attic for an hour or more, filling his lungs and covering his clothes and hands with dust.

However, after a moment she managed to blurt out, “Perhaps I can make one of them dainty enough to send to your mother for her Christmas present.”

“I was about to suggest that very same thing,” said Carraway, brushing the dust from his sleeve.  “Either you could send it or Mollie”—­Mollie was Mr. Carraway’s small daughter.  “I think Mollie’s grandmother would be more pleased with a gift of that kind than with one of the useless little fallals that children give their grandparents on Christmas Day.  What did she give her last year?”

The question was opportune, for it gave Mrs. Carraway a chance to laugh outright with some other ostensible object than her husband.  She availed herself of the chance, threw her head back, and shook convulsively.

“She sent her a ball of shaving-paper,” Mrs. Carraway said.

A faint smile flitted over Carraway’s face.  “Well, it might have been worse,” he said.  “She can use it for curling-paper.”  He paused a moment.  Then he said:  “I want to say to you, my dear, that—­ah—­I want Christmas celebrated this year after my plan of selection.  Instead of squandering our hard-earned dollars on things no sensible person wants and none can use, we will consider, first of all, practical utility.”

“Very well,” sighed Mrs. Carraway.  “I quite agree as far as you and I are concerned—­but how about the children?  I don’t think Tommie would feel very happy to wake up on Christmas morning and find a pair of suspenders and a new suit of clothes under the tree.  He needs both, but he wants tin soldiers.  And as for Mollie, she expects a doll.”

“Well, I don’t wish to be hard on the children,” said Mr. Carraway, “but now is the time to begin training them.  There may be a temporary disappointment, but in the end they will be happier for it.  Of course I don’t say to give them necessities of life for Christmas, but in selecting what we do give them, get something useful.  Dolls and tin soldiers and toy balloons are well enough in their way, but they are absolutely useless.  Therefore, I say, don’t give them such things.  Surely Mollie would be pleased to receive a nice little fur tippet or a muff, and I’ll get Tommie a handsome snow-shovel, that he can use when he cleans off the paths.  He won’t mind; it will be a gift worth having, and by degrees he’ll come to see that the plan of utility is a good one.”

Mrs. Carraway discreetly held her tongue, although she was far from approving Carraway’s course in so far as it affected the children.  She tacitly agreed to the proposition, but there was the light of an idea in her eye.

The days intervening before Christmas passed rapidly away, and Christmas eve finally came.  Tommie and Mollie were bubbling over with suppressed excitement, and frequently went off into spasms of giggles.  There was something very funny in the wind evidently.  After dinner the small family repaired to the library, where the children were in the habit of distributing their gifts for their parents on the night before Christmas.  Mrs. Carraway was beaming, and so was Mr. Carraway.  The children had been informed of what they were to expect, and after an hour or two of regret, they had put their little heads together, giggled a half-dozen times, and accepted the situation.

“Your mother has presented me with a ton of coal, children,” said Carraway, smiling happily.  “Now you may think that a funny sort of gift—­”

“Yeth, papa,” said Mollie.

“Awful funny,” said Tommie, wiggling with glee.

“Well, it does seem so at first, but, now, how much better to give me that than to present me with something that I could look at for a few days and then would have no further use for!”

“That’s so, pa,” said Mollie.

“I guess you’re right,” said Tommie.  “Wat cher got for ma?”

“I have given her a brand-new set of china for the dining-room,” said Mr. Carraway.

“And it was just what I needed,” said Mrs. Carraway, happily.  “And now, children, go up-stairs, and bring down your presents for your father.”

The children sped noisily out of the room and up the stairs.

“I hope you impressed it on their minds that I wanted nothing useless?” said Carraway.

“I did,” said Mrs. Carraway.  “I explained the whole thing to them, and told them what they might expect to receive.  Then I gave them each ten dollars of the money they’d saved, and let them go shopping on their own account.  I don’t know what they bought you, but it’s something huge.”

Mrs. Carraway had hardly finished when the two giggling tots came into the room, carrying with difficulty a parcel, which, as Mrs. Carraway had said, was indeed huge.  Mr. Carraway eyed it with curiosity as the string was unfastened and the package burst open.

“There,” cried Tommie, breathlessly.

“It’s all for you, pa, from Mollie and me.”  The two children stood to one side.  Mrs. Carraway appeared surprised in an amused fashion, while Carraway stood appalled at what lay before him, as well he might; for the package contained a great wax doll with deep staring blue eyes, a small doll’s house with two floors in it and a front door that opened, china and chairs and table and bureaus in miniature to furnish the house—­indeed, all the paraphernalia of a well-ordered residence for a French doll.  Besides these were two boxes of tin soldiers, cannon, tents, swords, a fully equipped lead army, a mechanical fish, and a small zinc steamboat, suitable for a cruise in a bath-tub.

Carraway looked at the children, and the children looked at Carraway.

“Why,” said he, as soon as he could recover his equanimity, “there must be some mistake.”

“No,” said Mollie.  “We picked ’em out for you ourselves.  We thought you’d need ’em.”

Mrs. Carraway turned away to cough slightly.

“Need them?” demanded Carraway with a perplexed frown.  “When?”

“Oh—­to-morrow,” said Tommie.

“What for?” demanded Carraway.

“Why, to give to us, of course” said the children in chorus.

* * * * *

“My dear,” said Carraway, two hours later, after the children had retired, “I’ve been thinking this thing over.”

“Yes?” said Mrs. Carraway.

“Yes,” said Carraway; “and I’ve made up my mind that those children of ours are born geniuses.  I don’t believe, after all, they could have selected anything which would be more satisfactorily useful in the present emergency.”

“Well,” observed Mrs. Carraway, quietly, “I don’t either.  I thought so at the time when they asked my permission to do their shopping at the International Toy Bazar.”

“It’s a solar-plexus retort, just the same,” said Carraway, as he shook his head and went to bed.  “I think on the 1st of January, if you have no objections, Mrs. Carraway, I will forswear utilitarianism—­and you may remove the golf-balls from the cloisonné vase as soon as you choose.”