Of course everybody who goes south does not linger in Washington. As a matter of fact a great many Canadians flock to Florida during the winter months—thousands of them—and St. Petersburg on the western coast is a favorite resort. They are greatly in evidence everywhere, and last January, on a very warm day, I strolled over to the City Park, which was thronged with merry-makers. The band was playing popular airs, and many Canadians were indulging in dominoes, checkers, euchre, and other old-fashioned card games, and for the first time since boyhood days I saw quite a number pitching quoits with horse-shoes. I took a hand in the game, and nearly hit the man that beat the big drum, goodness knows how many yards away.

It was a grand day. The Canadians are there during the winter in such strong force that they have a club room for themselves, and on the door was a card which read: “Canadian Club,” and beneath it, “7:30”—signifying that a club meeting was to be held that evening at that hour. Mike Heenan, the Michigan Central Railway detective of Detroit, who is well-known throughout Western Ontario, and who was visiting St. Petersburg, didn’t read it exactly in that light.

“Holy Smoke,” he said, “Canadian Club—7:30. Minny’s the bottle I’ve bought for a dollar-tin, aye and for ninety cents.”

And then everybody smiled.

When my hair was lighter but not so gray, and a great deal thicker than it is now, Christmas-tide was the greatest and the happiest time of all the year. We kids counted the days for a month or six weeks before the Day of Days, and were filled with pleasant anticipation of the coming glorious event, which, it was conveyed to our infantile minds, meant “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.”

They were halcyon days, and Santa Claus was a mysterious and benificent, sanctified being who scattered lovely gifts with riotous profusion upon all the little ones the world over. Christmas Eve was an ecstatic evening, and when the stockings were hung up, and we all were bundled off to bed, but not to sleep, our little noddles were filled to overflowing with the happiest conjecture and surmises as to what good Old Santa would bring us. And we wondered how on earth he got down the chimney, especially in those houses which had no fireplaces, and if his reindeers were really truly live animals. And when, after a restless night, there was a rush for the stockings in the early dawn, joy filled our hearts and a pandemonium of unrestricted pleasure reigned as we gathered our treasured gifts, and really enjoyed the sugar sticks and sweet bull’s eyes which didn’t make us ill, as they doubtless would to-day. We lovingly caressed the beautiful dolls and exuberantly played with the pleasure-giving toys, free of all care and full of genuine juvenile enthusiasm. Happiness was supreme throughout many a household, and breakfast, for which sturdy, hungry youngsters were usually eager, was listlessly eaten with no particularly keen appetite.

Of course, then as now, there were many houses in which the youngsters were not so prodigally humored by Santa Claus, but in nearly all their childish wants were partially supplied. How many of us wish we could turn back the clock and enjoy those happy days again. Our sublime faith in good Old Santa Claus was far beyond infantile human comprehension and we gloriously revelled in our all-abiding blissful illusion.

But the time came naturally, as we grew up, when our innocent eyes were opened, and we learned to our sorrow and dismay that Santa Claus was really no travelling angel in disguise, but our own matter-of-fact parents. It was a sad awakening. Mine came accidentally. I was looking for something or other, and climbed on a closet shelf, where I found a whistle and a rocking-horse and a variety of other lovely things which I knew would not ordinarily be there. I discreetly kept my mouth shut, but when Christmas morn came, and all these same presents were arrayed in the parlor, I knew Santa Claus was a myth. But I didn’t let on. My father and mother, I figured out, were merely the earthly representatives of the princely gift-giver. Between you and me, I can conscientiously say I actually convinced myself of this fact against my will. But, later on, when I knew it all, I thought that, as is done in this later materialistic age, it is a damnable crime for anyone, man, woman or child, to break a little one’s faith in Santa Claus—as great a crime as it is for an iconoclast to destroy the faith of a child in its prattling prayer at the loved mother’s knee:—

A crime——it is diabolically fiendish!