THE SHADOW OF CHRISTMAS
Poole, Ernest
THE SHADOW OF CHRISTMAS By ERNEST POOLE THIS brief story was told me by a doctor who works in a tenement section of the city of N e w Y o r k. It is no bright Christmas story—the bells ring out...
...I've heard bitter talk on sick beds—but none so bitter as talk I've heard then...
...Hospitals won't take such cases—they're overcrowded at this time of year...
...Lunch for two—twenty cents...
...Breakfast for two—six cents...
...It ran about like this...
...She had a young sister "really sick"—so sick that she wanted me to come at once...
...It met one night a week...
...Last winter New York had 200,000 out of work...
...The younger one got back her job in May...
...I went over it all in my mind again...
...The other two meals in lunch rooms...
...On the double bed lay the young sister...
...If she didn't—goodbye to their "regular home...
...And—what money 7 had, I had already used...
...I wish I could give you the room as it was...
...She could barely wait to get started...
...So she'll probably stay where she is— and I'll do what I can to pull her through this coming Merry Christmas...
...The public, I suppose, might do its shopping earlier—or in some way force the big stores by law to hire even more extra help than they do, and work them in day and evening shifts...
...The younger wrapped up parcels...
...I turned to the older sister, who was eighteen...
...What's to be done about it—this jovial Christmas rush...
...The pace was fast and never let up...
...If she threw up a job she might not get it back...
...He had died two years back, and since then this room had been their home...
...By nine o'clock at night it was bad enough for her to lean down from her wrapper's perch and tell her sister to keep one eye on her—in case anything queer should take place...
...They found a way out...
...And the small woman touches made the attempt the more painful...
...The Christmas Season had come on...
...You can do that of course, and still make it true...
...They had lived with their father—a clerk...
...But I was only a doctor—with a damnably bitter message to give...
...Breakfast cooked over the gas—coffee...
...And the thing worked at first like a charm...
...In two years they had saved not quite fifty dollars—a brief illness having wiped out $11.40...
...The name of the way I needn't give...
...Can't you hurry it up...
...She lay on her back—her hands opening and then clinching, her face twitching hard, her wide open eyes staring up at the ceiling...
...It's nervous prostration—and a bad case...
...Hospitals fill up way over their limit...
...She hardly needed meals even—and "simply sailed along...
...None...
...This money paid for rent, food and clothes...
...Her sister had to help her...
...Not really sick," but enough to make both sisters nervous...
...But her voice was quiet enough...
...She had herself well in hand...
...Five or six hundred at least from New York's busy shops are sick in bed for a week or more...
...It's common enough—the doctor began—and I'll give you all I can remember...
...Perhaps you can—come again tomorrow and—tell me where to send her...
...She was quiet enough...
...Last year on Christmas Eve —late, about eleven o'clock—a girl came into my office as I was closing up...
...Probably close to a hundred die...
...Another tense silence...
...AWRITER like Dickens, I suppose, at this stage in the game would have gone to the window, stared silently out at the city with eyes that saw into a million homes, into mistletoe scenes and the like...
...Her story was plain and to the point...
...So the shadow of Christmas is cast ahead...
...I'll give all I can...
...And that's what I was thinking myself—as I watched the white face of the child on the bed...
...Well...
...You might fill that in from what you know...
...Total for meals—$4.20 a week...
...She was sixteen but looked three years younger—small, thin and weak—a child...
...But the small things different—quite different—and so arranged as to cover the ugliness...
...Of the $2.50 left, each girl spent one dollar a week on "laundry, clothes and amusements...
...One girl sold toys, the other wrapped 'em up...
...What ought I to give her tonight...
...Each had worked since the legal age—fourteen...
...As I was giving a few directions—the midnight bells began to strike...
...The room was a desperate try at a home...
...to somebody rooming down below...
...Charitable organizations won't send a girl to the country for two months free—when the girl has $48 saved...
...The scheme for a home grew out of the girls' club they belonged to...
...In August she came to me "for a tonic"—and said they had already nine dollars saved...
...Too many sick girls who hadn't a cent...
...Of course it's a knotty problem...
...And she gave me the details of the case...
...On the whole it failed...
...Of course there is a way out, if the Public cares to find it...
...she asked from behind me...
...Fifty cents a week had been saved...
...In this tense, rushing city life, the keen autumn months and the month of December are the time to store up the strength that takes people through the raw months ahead...
...Have you no relatives...
...It happened more each hour...
...It's a pity," some people may say, "to force such gloomy thoughts on us on Christmas Day...
...The girl who wrapped 'em up grew sick...
...I'm sorry.—Yes...
...Then three nights—and in the last stretch six nights a week till eleven o'clock...
...And that was about all that the older girl could tell me—except that her sister had been like this as soon as they reached the room...
...An ambulance had been summoned...
...This of course was the trouble...
...Most people don't know that in tenement rooms and cheap boarding house rooms, thousands of men, women and young girls—some nothing but kids—lie sick and exhausted on Christmas Day...
...I've tried to make her change her job, but times are still hard and jobs are few...
...They needed fifty-six...
...They were saving to live in a "regular home...
...Some fool across the courtyard threw open wide his window and shouted "Merry Christmas...
...One four years, the other two...
...For the last six weeks they had worked overtime—with "supper money...
...They were in the same store...
...It had scared her and she had come to me...
...Ask your readers to look for themselves—while they shop—at the faces behind the counters...
...Its only interest for Christmas Day is the interest it would have for Christ...
...At least not last winter...
...YES—the girl pulled through...
...Well," she said, "then it can't be helped.—Anyhow—thanks for coming so late at night...
...Bare enough—but clean...
...One of the kind that Christ, I suppose, would be tackling if he were here, on this mighty birthday of his—while his followers gather round Christmas trees to celebrate his name...
...Furniture cheap and ugly—the landlady's taste...
...She'll have to quit work—go to the country and stay there—get a good rest...
...Carfare, when it rained, added thirty cents more, on an average—$7.50...
...The point to be shown is this...
...Make it vivid...
...They had faced the thing that night—faced the thing till 2 a. m. The objection to her quitting work was this...
...By now, it was near twelve o'clock...
...Would have felt "the great hush that lay over the town...
...Forty-eight dollars saved...
...The older girl sold children's toys...
...Sap their strength at Christmas—and pneumonia finds easy victims in March...
...THEIR mother had died long ago...
...Room—$3 a week...
...Three nights ago, it grew bad enough so that on the way home at 11 p. m. "she couldn't walk quite straight...
...She was young, slim, worn, her face so white that I took it for granted she was a patient...
...It's a time for happiness— Christmas is...
...It wiped out the money, of course...
...Adding the rent made $7.20...
...At first only two nights a week till ten o'clock...
...As to what you want to write—there's no need of adding many facts...
...There was one of those long mean silences...
...Only I wish I could put it all in her words—and in full—for she made it real—vividly real...
...THE SHADOW OF CHRISTMAS By ERNEST POOLE THIS brief story was told me by a doctor who works in a tenement section of the city of N e w Y o r k. It is no bright Christmas story—the bells ring out but once...
...But she settled that with a quick nervous laugh...
...In this club they had joined with six other girls in a plan to save up and rent two small tenement flats—flats adjoining—and so make "a regular home...
...Yes—It's a hard knotty problem...
...For in a few minutes the hour would strike—and Christmas Day, with its message of "peace and good will to men," would begin...
...Until the day before Christmas...
...Some of the ugliness...
...They lived in a cheap furnished room—fourth floor back— with two windows looking into a court...
...For it's not only just after Christmas that trouble comes...
...Supper for two—thirty-four cents on an average...
...Two months at least...
...Only as a doctor I want to add this...
...It was one of the worst of the patent nerve tonics...
...The trouble is that I'm no writer, and I've seen so many cases more or less like it, that a good many details have slipped my mind...
...Her shoes were off—and some of her clothes...
...When I tried to ask questions, her only reply was a short shaking laugh...
...While she talked she sat now stiff on a chair, then rose and moved about nervously...
...Six and four dollars a week made their wages...
...Is that package of mine never coming...
...Something began to happen inside," that afternoon...
...You mean that forty-eight dollars," she said...
...They're living still in the same furnished room...
...And standing by the window I only racked my brains for some other way out of the trouble...
...How...
...The queer thing took place about ten o'clock...
...she asked...
Vol. 1 • November 1909 • No. 47
