Deworrali aidan. Bellefonte, Pa., December 17, 1915. Santa Claus’ Sweetheart. | [Continued from page 6, Section one.] They widened at the sight; then tha smiles brimmed over, and her whole face broke up into glee. How could she feel strange or afraid in a place where—big, grownup men though they were—such signs of expectancy were so openly displayed? She slipped from the protecting arm and ran close to the. hearth, clapping her hands in delight. | “Oh, youre all ready for Santa Claus!” she cried. “My, how he’ll have to work—there’s such a ’normous lot! But he'll fill ’em all.” She threw out this balm in eager haste. “He's truly coming. He said so. If I'd gone home with him his house would have crack- | ed to—to smither-eens, so I stayed.” A deafening roar of laughter greeted her words and sent her, unerringly as | a homing bird, back to her first friend, | who still knelt on the floor. But, rest- | ing against him, her fears vanished | almost instantly, and, as she glanced | around with renewed confidence, her | pretty silvery laugh tinkled out to join their rougher merriment. The men | pressed closer, one of them, the oldest. | acting as spokesman. He was the man whose chimney had never seen any | Christmas stockings hanging before it, | the baby's sock being too tiny in that! faraway year, but he seemed to know | better than any of them how to ask just the right questions that would set free the little tongue. Betty climbed gladly up on his knee, and from her new perch poured forth an account ot | her wonderful adventures. i It was the fault of her companions,’ surely, and not her own that the things | that were so real and true to her were | like myths out of fairyland to them because they had traveled farther down the stream of time. Much of | what she said was unintelligible to their dull, grownup minds. But if each word had been of gold they could not' have waited for it more eagerly, and when she stopped in her recital of that marvelous journey to laugh at some remembrance of Santa Claus’ fooling they looked at one another, smiling ir perfectest sympathy. Perhaps, afte: all, they understood. Who shall say" There was no interruption except wher old Jerome hazarded some remark tha: ' helped on the tale, and the only perso to move was a tall, gaunt man, wh) bent mysteriously over the fire and made something that smelled like—like the most delicious thing in all the’ world. You have to ride for hours through the snow and feel the keen air in your face and be as hungry as a bear into the bargain to know just what that is. By some re markable law of coincidence the story and the cooking came to an end at one and the same mo- ment. Nothing could have been more timely, Bet- ty’s whole atten- tion was quickly transferred to the tin plate which was placed before her, and her evident ap- preciation of the good things of life was so keen that the lookers on, who even in that short time had learned that their rougher ways frightened her, laughed gently among themselves. Well, they understood that too! While she was busy over her sup- per, to the utter forgetting of her sur- roundings, several of the men went outside to see if they could find any traces of the recreant Santa Claus. They returned, after a hasty search, bringing in the barrel and bags—suf- ficient proof that Terry, despite all convictions, wise head shakings and gloomy forebodings, had not (failed them. - He had kept his word. But the mystery deepened. Who was the little maid? Aside from her name, which was an unfamiliar one to them, they had not been able to learn anything definite about her. The excited little brain only seemed to live over the im- mediate past, in which Santa Claus had figured so importantly, the fact | that she was his sweetheart apparent: | ly outweighing every other considera- | ‘tion. “Don’t ye want to go to sleep, deary?” “Terry O'Connor hain’t a chick nor ; child an’ never hed,” old Jerome de-: clared stoutly, as somebody ventured this solution of the difficulty, “nor there ain't any kin b’longin’ to him. Guess I orter to know—I’ve knowed him ’'nintimut these thirty years”— “Losh, man,” interrupted Sandy. “then he just inveegled the bairn awa’, makin’ oot he was Santa Claus! The e-normity of it!” I “Oh, Terry must olluz be jokin’. It's! his way,” Jerome returned tolerantly. With his arm around the small form and the little golden head resting on his breast he was knowing one of the rare, happy moments of his life. There could be scant condemnation from him under the circumstances. Betty, who had been alternately blinking at the fire and smiling con: tentedly to herself for some time, now interrupted any dispute that might ' have arisen concerning Her absent friend by giving utterance to a series of baby yawns. The discussion came to a speedy close, such signs needing no interpretation to her hearers. “Don’t ye want to go to sleep, deary ?" | could be . the words: | “God bless ev'rybody an’ most speshil- the old man asked. She signified her willingness without delay, though first her stocking musi be hung up among the others. He pro ceeded to draw it off, but before thai accomplished he was le! into the secrets the buttons on your' shoe always tell—what you are to be | what you will wear and in what map ner yon travel through life, ir carriage, cart, wheelbarrow or wagon, When this “sure as sure” knowledge had been mastered he stripped off the stocking, and Shawe, imperiously sum- moned, came close and put the wee packet, as she directed, way down in its very toe. Then he hung it up in the center, where even the blindest deputy, supposing Santa Claus unable will J Te 2A “And please, God, take care of muvve and uncle and faraway daddy.” to get round, would never have passec | it by. A rollicking little cheer wens ! up at sight of the small red stocking swinging slightly to and fro in the! breath of the fire, but it died away op the instant, for the child had slippec to the floor and knelt there by the ol¢ | man’s knee, her face hidden in her’ chubby hands. Perhaps in the intens¢ stillness she missed the voice that gen erally guided hers, for there was a mo ment of hesitation on her part. Ther she began to pray aloud, halting ove: “Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me; Bless thy little lamb tonight; In the darkness be thou near me, Keep me safe till morning light. Let my sins be all forgiven, Bless the friends I love so well, Take me when I die to heaven, There forever with thee to dwell.” She paused a moment. “And please, God, take care of muvver and uncle and faraway daddy and make Betty a good girl f’rever and ever. Amen.” It was very still all around, and usually when she finished her prayers a soft cheek was laid against her own, while a soft voice echoed “Amen,” and that meant “My heart wants it to be exactly so!” Now, however, no one spoke. Betty glanced wonderingly about as she rose to her feet, a trifle dazed and even frightened, but such | grave, quiet, kind faces looked back at! her that swiftly she dropped to her ; knees again with another petition, ly Santa Claus.” i “Amen,” said old Jerome in the! pause that followed. i A bed had been hastily constructed | in the warmest corner out of the besi | materials the camp afforded, and thith- | er Jerome carried the child. She nes ! tled down drowsily while he tucked ! the covering about her. But his was | an alien touch, and through the room there suddenly sounded a low. wailing cry: “Muvver—oh, muvver’— “There, honey! There, blossom”— the man’s voice broke, the hand that soothed was clumsy and old, and it trembled. “There, honey”— The men sat breathless—waiting dreading to hear the cry again, but mo- ment after moment passed, and it did not come. There was one little sob: then the dream fairy stooped with hel comfort. How quiet the room was! And this | was Christmas eve—the time when | each map. wes—to do a stunt for the! amiSément of his fellows and the glo ry of himself. Generally on this occa: sion the lord of misrule held high car nival—the flowing bowl was like a per petual fountain, and laughter, shout: ing and horseplay abounded on every side. There was rum in plenty since Terry had not failed them, but no ef- fort was made to secure it. Desire ot that kind was dead, it seemed. They were content to sit there listening to the soft rise and fall of the child's breath; the land of dreams into which she had slipped open to them also. And though it was so different from those other Christmas eves it was far from being dull. Into each heart there had crept a soft glow, which did not come from the blazing logs and which no grog, no matter how skillfully blénded, could have given, for once again the presence of one of God's lit- tle ones made holy a humble place. Shawe was the first to bring the still- ness to an end. They had been sit- ting quiet, nobody could tell how long, when he got to his feet. Noiselessly him. some with resentment. others | i please a little child, one, a third ice and crowded likewise. . a distressing similarity in the presents i when you came to think of it. espe- | cially where handkerchiefs were con- | cerned. i through his pockets revealed the same as he moved he broke the spell, and eyes that had grown misty looked at with curiosity and others again with reproach. ©ld Jerome's gaze held the | latter quality. Nobody knew mnch ubout Shawe. anyway. He was not | ne of them. He had come to the camp some weeks before and would be ! gone in a day or so—up to Merle this time, and then— He was a wanderer | —some outcast, perhaps, from a better life gone by. Nobody knew him. They had no quarrels with him. He was a good enough fellow, only not of them. They watched him, therefore, almost coldly, yet noting with jealous satis- faction that he stepped warily as he passed from the room. Then they fell to thinking again—with a difference. He came back after a short absence with a soft. dark mink’s skin in his hand—a bit of fur that a woman's fin- gers could fashion into a cop to cover a child’s golden hair—and went to the small stocking, cramming the gift far down to keep that other company. A breath of approval fairly twinkled around the room. The grave faces melted into smiling delight, and just as the circles widen in a pool of water when a stone is thrown in, spreading farther and farther tiil the whole sur- face is disturbed, so every one present came within the influence of Shawe's action. As if by one accord the men hurriedly left their places, making scarcely any noise, yet jostling against | one another in their eagerness to play at being Santa Claus, each man seek- ! ing out his kit and returning with what would be the likeliest thing to A bright red handkerchief, an orange | as many colored as Jo- seph’s coat, an old habitant sash worth its weight in gold to a connois- seur, a scavipin set with a cairngorm the size of a man’s thumbnail—this from Sandy!--a (you mustn't laugh) pair of braid new suspenders and big and little coins that spelled liquor or tobacco to the givers and now bought | what pleased them infinitely more. ' Of course one stocking couldn't begin to hold the gifts. though they were, massed into a dizzy pyramid at the top, so its mate was pressed into serv- | There was Still, no man withheld his: giving because another’s choice was | necessarily the same. He added his | contribution proudly, as if it were the | Frenchy. only one of its kind. who | Each Man Had to Wait His Turn to Stow Away His Gift. had a pretty trick of carving, gave a really beautiful little frame which his deft fingers had made in the long even- ings, and the cook, when no one was looking, slipped in his prayer book, | though I don’t believe any one that . night would have laughed at his hav- ing it with him. The young fellow they called Kid—he was something of a dandy—added a ring of massive pro- portions. It wasn't gold, but he pre- tended it was and liked to wear it when he went to dances to make the girls think he was a fine, up and com- | ing man. And Jerome—poor old Jerome! It was a very meager kit that he rummaged through again and again— one that he himself had packed, and when a man has to take care of him- self he doesn’t put in any useless traps, any what you'd call gewgaws, not when he is old, that is. So he could find nothing there, and a search depressing poverty. He had nothing— nothing but a certain battered snuff- box that had been his companion for so many years that it would be easier to imagine him without his head than without the box. He was evidently of that opinion, for he stowed it down in his pocket with an air of great final- ity. But nevertheless, polished to an almost glittering show of youth and filled with coins, it very fitly crowned the motley collection. It had taken some time to play San- ta Claus, for each man had to wait his turn to stow away his gift. There were no deputies allowed on this occa- sion, and the bungling fingers couldn't work very quickly— didn't try to, if the truth were known. But all too soon the joy- ful task came to an end, and the men stood back radiant eyed, looking at those bulging little red stockings as if they were the most beautiful things in all the world. How the glow spread and spread in their hearts, though the fire, banked for the night, was shining quite dimly 'Fhey Were the Most Beautiful Things In All the World. | its strand of + this beard for 782 years. . around and about. | came into their midst the very largest, | | whitest. " me, eh? | have to hurry down to earth to make | goodies? i you hear? now! That mighty threefold cable of the Christmas tide--with its strand of affection—bound them very closely to one another. In that | inheritance, its strand of opportunity, moment old wrongs and heartburnings. bitternesses and rivalries slipped away, and they knew the blessedness of peace and good will. Happy? How Santa Claus Won His Whiskers A Christmas Bedtime Story For Children. HIS is a story that Santa Claus himself told me, whispering it in my ear one Christmas eve before he climbed back out of my chimney and into his flying sleigh. “Whee,” said Santa Claus, mopping his brow; "this is hot work! And this big. flowing beard of mine makes it hotter too. You know, I've only had Before that I used to be clean shaven, and I'm not quite used to this white set of whisk- ers yet. “Though, dear me, I don’t know what I'd do without my whiskers. They are quite the nicest part of me, next to the gifts I take to little boys and girls. Well, when 1 was young, 782 vears ago, I longed to have whisk- ers. I thought that there never could be anything so wonderful as whiskers, and made up my mind to have a pair —a long, flowing pair—before another _ Christmastide was past. “Well, toy time arrived. I packed a thousand hobbyhorses into my sleigh, a thousand drums and a full million dollies. Then I mounted to the seat and cracked my whip, and away, away went I, up to the sky, toward the far other end of the earth. “Up. up flew my trusty reindeer, up into the topmost sky, up into the windy clouds “Oh. you should see those clouds! They were white, and they coiled about in the blue heights like soft. thin fleece. They seemcd to be doing a sort of dance—a windy, hoppity jig, flying this way and that way, up and down, And the moment I fleeviest of them swept to- ward me “What do vou think it did. this cloud? It honped rieht around my neck. “¢Fleigh. what are you doing that for? I asked. ‘You are trying to choke And don’t you know that 1 all the little girls and boys happy by filling their stockings with toys and So let go—let go of me, do “The cloud *ust lauzhed and laughed. ‘I'll do nothing of the sort, it said. ‘I'm going down to earth with you. And nothing will stop me. I've always wanted to go down to earth and see the earth children. And this is my chance—my great biz chance. So here I stay. around your neck, until you have carried me down to earth’ “But don't you know, I scolded, ‘that clouds aren’t welcome on earth? Their place is in the sky and nowhere else. So please, please go away and let me be. “ ‘Hee, hee, not I!" sang the cloud. ‘I love your neck. It’s so nice and warm |; and round. And here I shall stay.’ “Just then a brilliant idea struck me. ‘Truly? I said. ‘Will you stay right there forever and ever and follow me : wherever 1 go on my travels through | the wide world, up and down black | chimneypots. across steep roofs, over ! high steeples? Will you never forsake | me? { “ ‘No, no, never! I promise—never, : never, if only you will take me down | to earth witi. you! cried the white cloud around my neck. | “ “Then huddle up close to my red | chin,” I replied. ‘Cling close to my ! puffy cheeks and keep them warm. | From now on, presto. you are my | WHISKERS! i “And there you are. came to have this long, white, fleecy | beard. Isn't it a pretty beard? And | isn’t it a pretty story?’ A Remarkable Christmas Tree. —— | Here is a novel idea for a Christmas tree. “It is not an idea that can be util- ized everywhere,” she says, “it belongs to the green oak of the Southern Christ- mas or the evergreen of the North. “Last year an electrician was set to work wiring the oak, not stringing the tiny bulbs in the usual artificial festoons, but setting them more irregularly along the outermost twigs, where they were partially hidden by clumps of leaves. Our active man-of-all-work fastened the gifts about the branches. We did not use the old ornaments of former Christmases, they seemed tawdry and trifling against the immensity of the oak. Instead the tree bore actual fruit; oranges, bunches of bananas, pineapples, gleaming yellow among the leaves; grapes, red apples, bound to small stems; gay bags of candy and nuts swinging in unsuspected places. “Packages lurked under limbs and swung in shadows. It seemed to us, watching in the shadows that the charm of the out-of-doors, the ireedom of the open sky, the touch of mystery night lays upon all things, served to heighten and add zest to our own as well as their Christmas joy.” ——Ladies’ $4.00 suede shoes reduced | to $1.98.— YEAGER’S Shoe Store. 49-2t There | ! was just one thing to make them hap- : ' piler—the merry voice of a little child greeting the misty light of the Christ- mas dawn. [Concluded in next week’s paper. ] : raorning. Indian Children at . Christmastide ITTLE Jimmy Red Eagle and his brothers peeped from un- der their red blankets long be- fore daybreak on Christmas They cast an eye about the tepee. but not for stockings filled with presents. for Jimmy and his brothers learned many years ago that Santa Clauses never came to tepees. In the first place. there is vo chimney in the tepee. and. secondly. there is no fire- place. The teacher was responsibie for this. of course, this tale which buzzed in their littie brown ears and made them sad. But the Red Eagle boys and girls were not discouraged because Santa had not come to their tepee and forthwith made arrange- ments to go to him. On the Indian veservations of the southwest Santa comes to the little red schoolhouses dotted here and there along the trail. The teachers have ar- ranged for his visit there every Christ- mas, and that dav is spent under the roof of plenty distributing the pres- ents that have been left there by un- seen persons. It is a day of good cheer for those little brown people, who do not know much pleasure anyway. The boys forget their bashfulness and min- gle with the girls in their anxiety to show their presents. At noon the teachers set out a dainty lunch, such as is not known in tepee life, and the little fellows and their sisters gorge themselves. The afternoon is spent in entertainment, partly by the little fel- lows and partly by the teachers and the older girls. A neat program is ar- ranged. and songs. recitations and charades follow. The holidays are a continuous round of pleasure to the reservation Indian children of the southwest. They play their rough games and cat the candy and chew the gum. Their principal play is going on the warpath. That is for the boys. while the girls play at jumping the rope. making mud pies and cooking. Indian girls of late years have been elevated above their former position, of waiting on bucks, to lace making, painting and studying and . teaching music, until some of them are That's how I quite proficient in this line. The little girls are not allowed to play with the boys on the same playground, although the teachers advocate their association in the classes and schoolroom. It has not been until within recent years that Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Arapahoe. Cheyenne. Wichita, Tonka- wa, Ponca or Osage children knew the slightest thing of a holiday. ihe birth of Christ. qr even that there was such a person as Christ. But when the res- ervation schools opened all of these things were taught, much against the desire of the old Indians. who did not care to have their offspring reared in the path of the paleface, whom they so despised. The mothers used to move their tepees close to the reservation schools, and every night they wculd try to worm out of the child everything the teacher had taught her during the day. Progress with the red children was thus delayed until an order against the women coming near their children during the school season was issued _ and enforced. The little girls are quick | to learn, and the boys are apt and ' witty. Why They Sing at Christmas. In modern times the Christmas waits are bands of men and boys who on Christmas eve parade the streets of towns and villages in England, singing carols and accompanying themselves | on simple wind instruments for pres- ents from the houses in front of which ' they stop. Santas with each GirladBoy * uu Christmg Shatin their 3 At eventide the little ! ones are carted home in buggies and | there go to sleep and dream of great ' things that are to come into their lives. PRETTY PERUVIAN GIRL Miss Teresa Granda y Pezet is an in- teresting addition from the diplomatic circle to the list of debutantes in Washington society this winter. Miss Granda is spending the winter at the Peruvian legation with her uncle and aunt, the minister from Peru and Mme. Pezet. INNIS NI NINN NSS NSS SNS SSS NPS SPSS SSS CAN'T PROVE HE IS DEAD Will of a Man Who Has Been Missing Twenty-One Years, Offered for Probate. Denver.—For the first time in the history of the Denver county court the will of a man of whose death there is no record has been lodged with the clerk of the court. It may be come necessary to have the maker, George T. Sheets, declared legally dead before the instrument is offered for probate. Sheets, a contractor, made the will in 1893. He was then seventy-two years old. A year later he disap peared. The family did not know of the existence of the will until a few days ago, when Attorney Edwin Parke discovered the document in his safe. Parke turned it over to the clerk of the court. MORE JOBS THAN CHEMISTS Scarcity of Engineers Shown at Co- lumbia University Since Out- break of War. New York.—Since the outbreak of the war and the resulting increase in chemical projects in this country the demand for chemical engineers has grown so rapidly that the companies are finding it difficult to fill the many places that are now open. Indication of this was given at Co- lumbia university when Dean Fred- erick A. Goetze of the graduate en- gineering school reported that he had received a call from a mining com- pany for several chemical engineers familiar with the iron and steel in- dustry, but that he has been unable to find any of the recent graduates who were not already well placed. IS LONELIEST OF PUPILS Missouri Youth Has School and Teach. er All to Himself—Sports Are Eschewed. Chillicothe, Mo.—Livingstone county has the smallest possible school in the world—it has just one pupil. But, despite the small enrollment, it keeps grinding steadily away, confining ite activities principally to the text books . and eschewing football and other forms of athletics. The school in question is in district ' No. 2 in Medicine township and Miss Mary Phillips is the teacher. The list of matriculants has not been pub- lished. When the term began five weeks ago, it was anticipated that a number of children would enroll, but only this one boy came, so the teacher started in with the course. CHILD SMOTHERS IN COTTON Litile Oklahoma Girl Digs Hole in Pile and Then Accidentally Tumbles In. Guthrie, Okla.—The nine-year-old daughter of Paul Richey, a farmer liv- ing near Prague, thirty miles east of here, was “drowned” in a pile of cotton in her father’s field. When the little girl was missed, her parents started out to search for her. Her father finally saw her shoes on top of the huge mound of cotton, and closer examination disclosed her body buried, head first, in the fluffy mass. She evidently had dug a hole in the pile and then accidentally fallen into it, the loose cotton packing about her and smothering her. Anti-Girl Club Formed. Kendallville, Ind.—Thirty-five young bachelors of this city have organized the “Ant#-Girl” club. To be caught taking a young woman to a theater, dance or other social function, or home from church, or even to make a social call, will cost the member $I The “high cost of entertainment” is given as the cause for organiziag.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers