Page:Our American Holidays - Christmas.djvu/242

Rh shouted around the house, and the snow fell steadily half the year, so that the summers never melted it away till winter came again. And Santa Claus thought that was the greatest pleasure in life: for he loved to have enormous fires in the great fire-places, and the colder it was, the bigger fires he would have, and the louder the winds roared around his chimney. There he sat and worked away all the year round, making dolls, and soldiers, and Noah’s arks, and witches, and every other sort of toy you can think of. When Christmas Eve came he’d harness up his reindeers, Dasher, and Prancer, and Vixen, and the rest of them, and wrap himself up in furs, and light his big pipe, and cram his sled full of the doll-babies and Noah’s arks, and all the other toys he’d been making, and off he’d go with a great shout and tremendous ringing of sleigh-bells. Before morning he’d be up and down every chimney in New Amsterdam, filling the stout grey yarn stockings with toys, and apples, and ginger-bread, laughing and chuckling so all the while, that the laughs and chuckles didn’t get out of the air for a week afterwards.

But the old house has gone to ruin, and Santa Claus doesn’t live there any longer. You see he married about forty years ago; his wife was a Grundy, daughter of old Mrs. Grundy, of Fifth Avenue, of whom you’ve all heard.