CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY
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cry: "The snuffer, quick, where is the snuffer?" It has even happened
during severe thunderstorms that the gnomes have been suddenly
impelled to lift their arms without the agency of heat and swing them
wildly as though giving a special performance-a phenomenon that
people have tried, rather unimaginatively, to explain by the prosaic
word "electricity."
A by no means inessential aspect of
this
arrangement is the
financial one. Even though in general our family suffers no lack
of cash, such extraordinary expenses upset
all
calculations. For
naturally, despite precautions, the breakage of gnomes, anvils, and
hammers is enormous, and the delicate mechanism that causes the
angel to speak requires constant care and attention and must now
and again be replaced. I have, incidentally, discovered its secret: the
angel is connected by a cable with a microphone in the adjoining .
room, in front of whose metal snout there is a constantly rotating
phonograph record which, at proper intervals, whispers "Peace,
peace." All these things are the more costly because they are designed
for use on only a few occasions during the year, whereas with us
they are subjected to daily wear and tear. I was astounded when
my uncle told me one day that the gnomes actually had to be replaced
every three months, and that a complete set of them cost no less
than 128 marks. He said he had requested an engineering friend
of his to try strengthening them by a rubber covering without
spoiling the beauty of the tone. This experiment was unsuccess–
ful. The consumption of candles, butter-and-almond cookies, marzi–
pan, the regular payments for the trees, doctor's bills and the
quarterly honorarium that has to be given to the prelate, altogether,
said my uncle, come to an average daily expense of 11 marks, not to
mention the nervous wear and tear and other disturbances of health
that began to appear in the fall of the first year. These upsets were
generally ascribed, at the time, to that autumnal sensibility that is
always noticeable.
The real Christmas celebration went off quite normally. Some–
thing like a sigh of relief ran through my uncle's family when other
families could be seen gathered under Christmas trees, others too had
to sing and eat butter-and-almond cookies. But the relief lasted only
as long as the Christmas holidays. By the middle of January my
Cousin Lucie beg.an to suffer from a strange ailment: at the sight
