A YEAR ago I had a frightful time with my Christmas shopping. I put it off until too late. I know this is a shocking admission, for it was quite as outré at that time to postpone one's Christmas shopping as it would be nowadays to walk into a war-worn drawing room and boldly demand a cocktail. But it is a fact. Regardless of newspaper slogans, pictures of pleading saleswomen and the dictates of common or preferred sense, I deliberately postponed the evil day, and finally sallied forth on the very eve of our great gift-swapping contest armed with a list, a king's ransom and a determination to do or die.

The expedition was an awful fizzle. It is hard enough to close a bargain when one has not the faintest idea of what one wishes to buy, but when time is extremely limited and everything is sold and the princess behind the pile of slightly shop-worn slip-overs utterly fails to respond to one's most engaging witticisms,— well, one becomes dejected and loses heart. I showed early speed, faltered in the stretch and then turned round and ran the other way.

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HALF of my purchases never arrived; those that did were hopelessly inappropriate. I got along swimmingly with Uncle Paul, whose tastes are more or less sympathetic, checking him off briskly with a thermos bottle and a most captivating corkscrew, but I entirely forgot Aunt Lucy, from whom I have been led to expect posthumous recognition if I showed her constant thoughtfulness, always remembered her at Christmas and always—this is the hard part—kissed her on meeting. So I always do it, dexterously dodging the mole and buttoning my lips into the form of a double zinnia.

Let the memory of that week after Christmas lie in the depths of the ocean of oblivion. "Spurlos versenkt," as quaint Will Hohenzollern hath it. I was persona non grata, anathema and taboo. Fortunately, there were parties—there always are—and the dawn of New Year's Day, arriving punctually at twelve noon, found the bitter past blotted out and forgotten, save only for a faint sense of wrong, a violent pain in the left temple and a strong, desire to lead a better life,—to be something really worth while, to become a Who's-Who instead of a Why's-He.

THEN and there I decided that among other little corners of my cosmos which needed a shine was this matter of Christmas shopping. ''This year," said I, "I shall do it early—early and often," and to make sure that there should be no slipping, backsliding, skidding or side-swiping on my part, I made an entry to that effect in my diary. Yes, I always keep a diary. Every year my Cousin Egbert gives me one, saying rather sheepishly—he's such a sweet, gentle soul, very like a sheep, in fact—"I don't know whether you want this old thing or not." And then I seize Egbert by both hands, the way people do in books, because I know Egbert likes one to do things the way they are done in books, and I say, "You know I do, Egbert," and it's all over for another year.

And I do think diaries are splendid things to have. I've kept mine for the last six years. Of course, I've never written anything in them, but they are perfectly splendid for shaving,—a leaf for each day, just equal to the orthodox number of shaves. Really, isn't Nature wonderful?

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WELL, back to my good resolution. There lay my brand new "Diary for 1917," in its sweet-scented morocco. I opened it and in a firm, round hand—or fairly so, considering,—I wrote "Merry Xmas" at the top of every page devoted to the month of July. "There," said I, addressing the old Adam from whom I proposed to take permanent leave, "there's a fine reminder for you! There's a jolly little brain-jogger, like those cute, grinning skulls that were so much the thing in the old haircloth days. Get by that if you can!" And I shut the volume with the sense of a disagreeable duty already half done. Obviously, the only way I could miss my own reminder was by going unshaven for the entire month of July.

July seemed to me to be just about the right month,—mid-channel, as it were. There is such a thing as being too forehanded. My brother Benjamin, for instance, always buys his next year's presents immediately after the Christmas before. He is a whole year ahead of the game, and immediately begins to wear the disagreeable expression of a man who is on velvet in a poker game, falsely hilarious and pleased with everything. Such efficiency is positively Prussian. Benjamin claims that immediately after Christmas the shops are flooded with the most surprising bargains. Consequently, he wades right in, on or about December twenty-sixth, just as if the party were not all over. By the first of the year, everything is wrapped up in white paper and red ribbons, culled from the current year's packages, and marked with mawkish good wishes for the next Yule-tide, just like one of those dreadful dated-ahead checks one gets occasionally. To me there is something ghoulish about it,—as if poor old Christmas could not be left alone once decently past and gone.

Fortunately, such virtue is its own reward. Brother's gifts undergo a sea-change. Frequently, by the time they are wished onto the helpless recipients, they have sunk so low in the social scale as to be quite impossible. I wish my two million readers—surely, a grand wish!—could have seen the expression on my sister Juliette's face when she opened the vanity-box Benjamin gave her, just at the time ladies were passing the things on to their maids and one could buy a perfect beauty at the five-and-ten cent store. I suggested to Benjamin that he buy gifts for ten years ahead, so that they might be valuable as antiques when they matured, but he was quite sniffy about it.

Thus, having seen the evils of doing your Christmas shopping over-early, I thought, as I say, that July would be just about the golden moment. And then, having closed my diary and hung it by my shaving-mirror, the matter passed entirely out of my mind. When the first "Merry Xmas" leaped out at me in the middle of my one hundred and eighty-first shave, it startled me so I sclaffed badly and removed quite a divot out of the fair green of my cheek. Who, of all the poor mortals who ever sold his soul to the devil, ever thought of his bargain until the clock struck the appointed hour and the cloven-footed gentleman bust the party wide open by his prompt appearance? Of course, I tried the usual dodges, the mental squirms and twists, the careless assumption that it was all a joke, that I hadn't meant it, that there was lots of time. In vain. There was no getting away from it. It greeted me every morning. It was exactly like the Liberty Bond posters; I passed through just the same mental phases in the same order, indifference and growing irritation, followed by rage, despair and finally the blessed dawn of enthusiasm and a holy sense of duty.

JULY had almost flown before my determination crystallized. I had been spending the last two weeks of the month in an Adirondack camp, playing golf, motoring to and from the big hotel near by, tramping often as many as three miles a day,—in a word, leading the hard, rough out-of-door life that I love. The camp stood in a grove of Christmas trees, which, coupled with the fact that I had done rather well at bridge during my visit, put the finishing touch to my resolution. "By Jove," I thought, "I'll do it now. The afternoon train to Boston, the midnight to New York, and ho! for a day of jolly old Christmas shopping before the first of August!"

With me, to think is to act. I do not always act just as I think I am going to, but let that pass; this time I did. Jogging Hub-ward, I began deliberately to put myself in the proper frame of mind. This was no ordinary occasion. I must be gay and happy, full of the glad spirit of giving. I made out my list and lo! Aunt Lucy's name led all the rest. Then I dozed, repeating over and over to myself all I could remember of " 'Twas the night before Christmas." Swiftly my spirits rose. Somewhat to my annoyance, so did the thermometer.

THE South Station was just coming to a boil when I turned my impedimenta over to the attendant porter. I strolled to a near-by hostelry and ordered a beaker of egg-nogg, for was not this Christmas Eve! The waiter eyed me suspiciously, but the order was finally served, with the result that I slept the sleep of a child,—a child, that is, the night before Christmas. Cheerful headway against the matinal grouch of the sleeping car was rather difficult but, thanks to the trusty little diary, the daily greeting did the work and I strode through the Grand Central radiating peace and good will and small change in all directions.

"Just the day for Christmas shopping!" I thought, as I emerged from the cool cavern of the terminal. At that very moment the sun literally fell on me. I can describe it in no other way. The sensation was one of solid, crushing impact. At the same time I inadvertently inhaled a certain amount of outside air,—I merely breathe to live, not because I like it—which, combined with the lower temperature of the interior must have instantaneously formed steam. My body expanded perilously, my head whirled and it was with the greatest difficulty that I gained the basement of the hotel opposite, where a kind-faced person in white applied first aid to the injured, with particular reference to sUn-stroke.

PARTIALLY restored, I endeavored to concentrate. I got out my list. Aunt Lucy, with the note "furs," topped it. I must say that at the word "furs" I shuddered. A large man who was sitting in a self-made pool in the middle of the room groaned and said, "O, boy! This is worse that yesterday!" Then he shook himself like a public fountain. Clearly I was in an impossible environment; I must go away from there. But where? How? Suddenly a brilliant idea struck me—the subway! I had a flashing recollection of the extraordinary life led by a friend of mine, a denizen of the suburbs, whom I had met a month previously. I had been shocked at his pallor, and had asked the reason for it; had he been ill, or in jail, or what? And he had answered, "No. I never felt better. But I never go out in the open air any more. A closed car to the train, subway to the office, lunch in the sub-basement, subway back to Grand Central,—clubs, hotels, offices, stores—everything opens off the subway. Occasionally I run over to the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn and next Sunday I am taking my wife through the Hudson tubes. It's the life of a mole."

I had felt a sort of pity for him at the time, but now his image was a glad inspiration. Quickly then I descended to the city's mid-region and squeezed through* the roots of one of the great department stores, confident that here at last my problems should be solved. The basement was delightfully comfortable, but it was plain that I should cither have to leave it or else confine my remembrances to mops and agate-ware,—and if there is one thing that fills me with horror, it is the utilitarian Christmas present. With this in mind I sought the moving stairway and was wafted upward, like little Eva, humming an old Chanson de Noël as I rose. Numerous electric fans were drawing the air from somewhere—the boiler room, I imagine,—and the whole first floor was one scorching sirocco.

"Furs?" I asked of a pallid peeress, limp under a massive hair-bun. "Summer?" she questioned, languidly. "No," I replied stoutly, "Winter." With a low moan, she sank behind the counter.

"What did you say to that young woman?" demanded a fierce floor-walker, crimson with heat. Measuring my words, I gave him the full charge,—

"I asked her to show me some red flannel underwear."

His color faded to that of paste.

"Red flan—" he gasped. "My God!" and reeled back, clutching the counter.

I STAGGERED out into the street. As I reached the sidewalk, a dray-horse at the curb shuddered slightly and dropped to his knees. What followed is only vague. I remember thinking of the gentleman who lived so comfortably in the fiery furnace in the old Bible story of Hansel and Gretel, and I recall plunging through various shops, up and down dim aisles hung with frothy, lacy foliage, and out again into blazing spaces where mine was the only moving figure against a background of dead horses and swooning taxi-drivers. At times I know I was shouting "Noel!" loudly, wildly and I must have made many purchases—one of them, I vaguely remembered, an electric fan for Cousin Egbert. Probably the depletion of my bridge-winnings led me ultimately to the Club, a tub and bed.

It was weeks before I was able to sit up and even then I shuddered at the sight of the boxes and bundles neatly stacked in my closet. I could not face them. People were still talking of those two harrowing days. They will always talk of them. As I turned my door key on my frightful experience, I felt a faint plucking up of life-interest in the thought that in the future, whenever heat was mentioned, whenever some dreadful boi should begin talking about the desert and so on, I should be there with the big story! I should be the original sunkissed Boy! For years I have heard the ciders prate of the blizzard of '88 and the big wind of '76, and have had no come-back, but never again!

ONLY yesterday, fortified by another month of rough life at White Sulphur, did I dare to return to my rooms. Yesterday was bitterly cold, you will recall. Snow was falling. Putting on a fur coat I opened my windows—and my presents—simultaneously. The list has a certain pathological interest.

Aunt Lucy..... One-piece bathing suit.

Mother...... Ice cream freezer.

Father...... Cape-Cod hammock.

Brother Benjamin...... Pink silk chemise.

Brother William...... Japanese umbrella.

Sister Juliette...... Bottle of citronella.

Cousin Egbert...... Electric fan.

Uncle Paul...... Case of Gordon gin.

I do hope they will all be pleased, but somehow I feel a bit shaky about every one but dear old Uncle Paul.