Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

The Good Fellows' Christmas Eve on (Essanay) By LULU MONTANYE fol|CZ30I=3 Hurry, bustle, noise and confusion ! A smooth, shining pavement, swept clean and dry by the east wind. On one side, the history-haunted Common, where barebranched elms swayed, shivering, toward each other, as if exchanging confidences — perhaps comparing the gaily-dressed throngs who hurried up and down the intersecting walks, with the red-coated, stern-visaged Britishers, whom they had seen patrolling the same paths so many years ago. On the other side, a row of smart shops — florists, confectioners, tea-rooms, ultra-fashionable milliners — vied with each other in bright display, until they merged into the brighter dazzle of the theater district. Tremont Street is always thronged at eight o'clock, on a crisp clear evening, but tonight the throng was a jam. This was not the ordinary dinner and theater crowd, but a jostling, pushing throng of humanity, laden with bundles and boxes and great wreaths of Christmas greens. Sweet-faced women wrapped in costly furs; tall, spectacled, college youths ; portly, prosperous business men ; school-girls, chattering and giggling in a fashion far removed from the famous Boston repose of manner; and, everywhere, in everybody's way, the ever-present small boy, as irrepressible in Boston as in New York or Chicago. "It's a confounded nuisance! " growled Kenneth Crocker; "what a fool I was to try to walk down thru here tonight. I wont get to Copley Square in four hours at this rate." He looked strangely out of place in the bustling, good-natured throng. Tall and lean, his hair showing gray at the temples, a gray moustache drooping over straight, thin lips, two scowling lines between deep-set eyes which looked out on the pleasure seeking multitude with a gleam of scornful disgust, he was anything but the personification of the Christmas spirit. With another growl, he turned the fur-lined collar of his ulster about his face, and worked his way to the edge of the sidewalk, where he beckoned a disengaged taxi. "Merry Christmas, sir! Paper, sir?" chirped an urchin who was almost eclipsed by a great armful of Globes. "No; get out!" he snapped, sharply, and the youngster fled, bumping into a vendor of greens, who approached Crocker with a cheerful grin. "Merry Christmas, sir! Have a holly wreath, or a bunch of mistletoe for the young lady?" inquired the vendor, cheerily. "Get away!" thundered Crocker. "Cant a man have a minute's peace? Where's that chauffeur? Here, what are you so long about?" A traveling-toy came toward him, at this inopportune moment — one of those gaily-painted tin soldiers which seem to lead charmed existences in the midst of thousands of pedestrians. With a vicious kick, Crocker landed it in the middle of the street. It represented the profit of a dozen sales to its owner, who rushed anxiously forward, but the delayed taxi had come up, and Crocker stepped in with a curt order to the chauffeur to "get out of this mob, and take me down to Copley Square." "Good night; merry Christmas, sir!" said the chauffeur, a few moments later, waiting expectantly while his passenger alighted. But Crocker, with a deeper scowl, counted the exact fare into the outstretched hand, and hastened up the steps of the clubhouse. As he waited an instant at the door, the bells of Old Trinity 114