Grab Bag Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    “We have a tradition to maintain.”
    The tradition dated back, as Professor Shandy’s research had revealed, no farther than 1907, when the wife of the then president of the college had found herself stuck with a box of Japanese lanterns left over from the alumni ball. Being of a temperament which combined artistic leanings with Yankee thrift, she conceived the notion of staging a Grand Illumination of the common on Christmas Eve, producing a dramatic effect at practically no expense. As the years wore on, the professor had come to feel a deep sense of personal injury because it had not rained that night.
    In fact, the event had attracted so much attention that it had been repeated with ever-accumulating embellishments ever since. As time went on, the village green had become a positive welter of blue lights, red sleighs, and whimsical figurines of carolers in quaint costume.
    The householders around the common, and eventually throughout the village, had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the jollification. Of late years, Bemisville had become one multicolored blaze of Yuletide spirit. People drove miles to look at the lights. Pictures appeared in national magazines.
    However, the photographers always had to avoid one dark spot in the gala scene. This was the home of Professor Shandy. He alone, like a bald, pudgy King Canute, stood firm against the all-engulfing Christmas tide.
    In the daytime, as even the bursar’s wife admitted, it was not so bad. In fact, the small house of rosy old bricks looked quite festive in its frame of snow-covered evergreens. This was what really galled the ladies of the village.
    “You could do so much with it,” they moaned.
    Their fingers itched to hang Styrofoam candy canes on the professor’s gleaming brass knocker. They yearned to bedeck his magnificent blue spruces with little lights that winked on and off. One after another, they had volunteered as decorators. They had showered the professor with garlands of gilded pine cones, with stockings cut out of red oilcloth, with wreaths of sour balls that had tiny pairs of scissors dangling whimsically on red satin ribbons to snip off goodies as required.
    He had thanked them all courteously and passed on their offerings to his cleaning woman. By now, Mrs. Lomax had the most bedizened place in town, but the brick house on the common remained stubbornly unadorned.
    Left to himself, the professor would have been perfectly willing to make some small concession to Christmas: a spray of holly on the door, perhaps, and a wax candle flickering pleasantly after dark in the parlor window. No matter what the bursar’s wife said, he rather enjoyed the holidays. Every year he sent off a few carefully austere cards to a few old friends. He then avoided as many as he decently could of the Christmas festivals, Christmas dances, and Christmas cocktail parties, and went to visit relatives.
    These were a cousin and his wife: quiet, elderly people who lived a comfortable three hours’ journey from him. They would thank him for the cigars and the box of assorted jellies, then sit him down to an early dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. Afterward, the cousin would show his stamp collection. The professor did not care for stamps as such, but they were splendid things to count. As soon as he had finished his tabulation, the cousin’s wife would serve tea and her special lemon cheese tarts and remark that he had a long ride ahead of him. Professor Shandy considered his cousin to have married exceptionally well.
    About nine o’clock, agreeably stuffed, he would sneak home and settle down with a glass of good sherry and Bracebridge Hall. At bedtime, he would step outside the back door for a last whiff of fresh air. If it was a fine night, he would feel an urge to stay out and count stars for a while. However, if he indulged the whim, some neighbor was sure to spot him and insist on inviting poor, lonely Professor Shandy over for a