BKINQNG -ftfo FAIRIES16 BKOADW
.The St&ry of aHand-Made Christinas
fTy
Marie. Louise. Van Saanei
Illustfertions by C.Emerson
T
11 EKE otice lived in n garret n man named Emmanuel
Fink, who was not only old and ugly and poor, but
who, in deliberate contradiction of I hristmu doctrines,
delighted in considering himself wicked. He hated
world, he hated people, he hated things. It is true that
world always had knocked him about as something su
perfluous, that people had never cared whether he
lived or died, and that pleasant things had never come
his way. He had, from birth, inherited trouble and
care, and only after many phases of privation had he
reached the shabby garret of this dubious lodging
house on the dark side of the great noisy city.
The child watched him. passionately ab
sorbed in the deft movements of his Angers
But even a garret and its attendant roof cost money. So to continue life such
as it was, to earn the shelter of the roof and the right to exist at all, Emmanuel
Fink worked. Perhaps under other circumstances he might have been a famous
sculptor; as it was ho carved little monsters in wood, painted them red or green,
and sold them to an evil rapacious old Jew who owned a toy shop.
He needed small imagination in their making. What he did was to stare at
himself in the crazy cracked mirror hanging near his miserable eot and twist
his face into ingenious grimaces, us if it were made of rubber. The tricks played
him by the mirror, his natural ugliness and his instincts of a caricaturist, pro
vided enough ideas for an army of monsters. They glared from the dusty
corners of the room; they formed fierce miniature battalions trailing in fantastic
file from rickety chair legs to the decrepit cot; they smirked odiously ranged
along the walls, and sprawled under the bed. They peered diabolically from the
high window through which straggled pitifully a scrap of light on very sunny
days, (lutsh, father of them all, n toad with a man's face, lurked near t ho door,
and frightened the little maid of all work every time she entered the room, which
was seldom.
CHAZV Emmanuel Fink loved theso monsters, because after all it is every
man's nature to love something or someone, and he hated everything else.
Also because in making them, he felt ho was revenging himself on the detestable
world. They were his expression of defiance.
But in spite of his work, and the long hungry days when he fashioned mon
sters so skilfully, the wherewithal to eat was scarce. He barely eked out an ex
istence. One night as he toiled before the cracked mirror in the light of a dick
ering caudle, inventing grimaces one more horrible than the other, because he
was hungry and because he was discouraged and lonely, he wept. Nothing could
have been more lamentably grotesque than the convulsion of his lean wrinkled
face unaccustomed to tears. Inspired by this supreme grimace, he made a mon
ster and called it Pain. This monster he did not try to sell. He loved it more
than all the others.
Now the landlady had seven years ago brought a child into the world. For
seven years, accordingly, she had called this unwelcome addition to the house
hold, n nuisance. Not that the child, Amelia, was naughty or noisy, or especially
ailing; but her pallid young presence annoyed the tliin-lipped miserly mother.
The child was not strong enough nor old enough to take the place of the maid
of all work, which in itself was sulllcient source of grievance. Amelia could
not run up and downstairs without coughing, could not carry heavy packages,
could not think quickly, or bring back beer from a neighboring saloon without
spilling it. In short she was more of a nuisance than a help. So she was kept
most of the day in the kitchen stirring beau soup of which the landlady was
very fond, or washing dishes in scalding water. She hud never seen the mail
lodger in tho garret, who made monsters.
Then one day they met.
It was on the stairs. All the way down from the top lloor, Old Fink had
been making faces, partly from habit, partly to keep in practice, lie was
carrying, wrapped in a crumpled newspaper, a batch of monsters to offer to the
toy merchant. Amelia was toiling up the stairs, clutching a pitcher of foam
ing beer. When she saw Emmanuel Fink making faces, she was so terrified
that she screamed at the top of her thin little voice, and dropped the pitcher
which fell with a loud thump and broke into a hundred bits. Whereupon she
turned and lied back to the kitchen.
if"LI) Fink stood staring after her. He told himself that he was delighted
to have actually frightened somebody. "All on account of me," he mur
mured. "If only she knew how wicked I was."
Then he stepped gingerly over the hits of broken pitcher, soaking his shabby
shoes in the beer which was dripping from step to step. "Pity to waste it," he
mumbled thirstily, and continued his way in haste, for already he heard the
shrill scolding voice of the landlady from the third lloor, calling, "Alelia
A-melia."
The little Jew met him gloomily. "Say, I've had enough monsters," he
growled.
"But these are beauties," cried Emmanuel Fink eagerly.
"Naw!" snarled the .lew. "I tell you they give kids the Jim Jams," and he
turned his back on Fink, and began crossly dusting u blue, glassy-eyed doll
with pink cheeks and flaxen hair.
"But " persisted Fink.
"I know my business," said the merchant disagreeably. "They were n nov
elty at first. Now nobody wants 'em."
Emmanuel Fink glared at him defiantly, hugged his package closer and strode
from the shop, upsetting a wooden horse in the doorway.
"Hey there," shrieked the tradesman, but Old Fink did not listen. Ho
wnlked away in the shndows of the
late attcriioon.
It was December and very cold.
Fink wandered aimlessly towards
Sixth Avenue, where the lights blaz
ing from shops hit his blinking eyes,
like hostile things, exposing without
mercy, beneath their crude glare,
the dilapidated condition of his thin
dot lies, the unshaven hollows of his
cheeks, tho fierce wrinkles about his
eyebrows. Tho elevated roared fit
fully over his head. Idlers brushed
his elbows and busy passers-by
shoved him aside. In the distance
the great silhouettes of titanic build
ings loomed like feudal towers
against n wintry sky.
"They Yo all monsters," mur
mured Ohl Fink disconsolately.
There seemed no place, for him any
where. Tho life of the city surged
and swayed about him in uneven
rhythms. Forlornly at last, he turned
and trudged buck to the dingy lodg
ing house. Amelia, in tho entry,
saw him and scuttled away. He
pretended not to notice her. Hut
once in his room he went to the
cracked mirror.
"I guess 1 can look like other
folks if I want to. That child
needn't think . . . ." He tried to smile. Hut it was as if the pleasant
muscles of his face were rusty. He only achieved a comical leer. With that,
however, he was well content.
Now he faced want. His little store, put by for a rainy day, would keep him
for a week or so no more. He could not go back to the Jew anil he was too
discouraged to try other toy shops. He only knew (Continued on Puije 9j
indeed