"I know," said my
mother, "that the children will upset their stomachs eating them, but
even that is better than that they should be restricted to too low a
diet. They shall have joyful holiday feeling during all these days,
and nothing can give it to them better than holiday cakes." There is
something in that view, and it may be absolutely right if the children
are thoroughly robust. But we were not so robust that the principle
could be applied to us without modification. And so, about Christmas
time, I was always much given to crying.
On New Year's Eve there was a club ball, which I, being the oldest
child, was allowed to witness. I took my position in one corner of the
hall and looked on with vacillating feelings. When the dancing couples
whirled past me I was happy, on the one hand, because I was permitted
to stand there as a sort of guest and share in the pleasure with my
eyes, and yet, on the other hand, I was unhappy, because I was merely
an onlooker instead of a participator in the dance. My personal
insignificance weighed heavy upon me, doubly heavy because of the
gastric condition I was regularly in at this reason, and it continued
so until the nightwatchman, wrapped in his long blue cloak, came into
the hall at midnight and, after blowing a preliminary signal on his
horn, wished everybody a happy New Year. Then, as if by magic, my
feeling of sentimentality vanished entirely, and I was carried away by
the comic grotesqueness of the scene, and soon regained my freedom and
buoyancy of spirit.
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