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- It is Christmas Eve. Mrs. Martin, the poor widowed mother of a seven-year-old child, returns to her cheerless apartment, after a long day's tramp in search of work, and all in vain. The little one asks her mother if Santa Clans is coming, to which the poor, almost heartbroken woman is unable to answer. The baby then says, "I'll write him a letter to be sure to come." And so she writes on a scrap of paper, "Dear Santa, please don't forget little Margie. Me and mamma ain't got no food even. Little Margie, 114 Broome St., top floor." This she shows her mother who is unable to control her emotion. Baby then hangs up her stocking, putting the letter in it. When the little one is asleep, the mother takes the note, and reading it, is driven almost mad with helplessness. With the child's missive clutched in her hand, she takes up her cloak and hurries to the pawnshop, which is presided over by Mike McLaren, an Irish pawnbroker. Mike's reputation as a philanthropist is not very pronounced. On the contrary as we see him he appears to be a cruel, pitiless Hibernian, without a grain of charity in his makeup. Ah! but who can reckon the power of the Christmas spirit. Mrs. Martin enters Mike's place and proffers her cloak as a pledge for a few cents, but Mike throws the cloak back at her with an invective. It is worth nothing to him, so he will allow her nothing. In her mental agony she absent-mindedly drops the baby's letter on the floor. Mike picks this up alter she leaves. What a change comes over him as he reads the child's innocent appeal. Hustling his clerks about, he bids them buy a Christmas tree, ornaments, toys and provisions. This done, he enlists the service of a couple of burglars, who burglarize Mrs. Martin's apartment, slightly chloroforming her and her child, so as to be sure of their not waking while they are at work. In comes the clerk with the tree and presents, which Mike arranges, and when finished, he goes out into the hall to watch the effect. He hasn't long to wait, and he dances around like a child at the view he gets through the keyhole, hurrying off before the inmates learn from whence their blessing came. The little one attributes it to her letter to Santa, and in truth it was, but they never knew the real Santa. "To dry up a single tear has more of honest fame than shedding seas of gore."
- A few of us have had the chance to read our own obituary notice, but it fell to the lot of John Goodhusband the rare privilege of viewing his own elegiac cinerary floral offerings, and at the time John was anything but a "dead one." It happened thusly: John, after office hours, meets a couple of his erstwhile chums, who prevail upon him to go with them to the show and make a jolly old-time bachelorhood night of it. Now John is fully alive to his duties as a benedict, but it is hard to resist the temptation, so he yields and sends Mrs. Goodhusband a telegram that he had left on the Red Eagle Express for Freeport on business, and will return in the morning. The trio then repair to the Empire Theater, where the Burlesque Company is playing, of which La Tunita, the Queen of the Orient, is the bright peculiar star. To say they enjoy the show is putting it mildly, and after the performance they play the role of stage door Johnnies, inducing several of the show girls to join them in several cold bottles and hot birds at a neighboring lobster palace. Meanwhile, an "extra" evening paper is handed Mrs. Goodhusband, which contains the alarming news that the Red Eagle Express has been "wrecked and all on board killed." Sorry her lot; a widow so early in the game. Well, she dons the weeds and hies herself to the florist and orders a suitable floral tribute, a large wreath of roses, with the word "R-E-S-T" worked in violets. All this time John is having a rip-roaring good time piling up an iridescent souse, arriving in the gray of morning to a house of mourning, where he is met by his own widow. Shown the newspaper, he feels some eclaircissement is due the lachrymose Mrs. Goodhusband, so he sets to work his fabricating faculties, and in lucid terms tells how he, the lone survivor of the calamity, at the risk of his own life endeavored to save others, dragging them from the wreck. He plays the noble hero in the eyes of Mrs. G. until the maid enters with the morning paper, which states that the account of the wreck was all a mistake; it never happened. Poor John is now up against it for fair, and he certainly would have come out badly but for the arrival at this moment of the wreath, which presents to the Mrs. the thought of what might have been, hence she weakens, with a promise from John that to his bachelor traits he exclaim "requiescat in pace."