Eliza Gant’s Night Before Christmas
’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the boardinghouse
Not a boarder was stirring, not even a louse;
Their stockings were hung on the bedposts with care,
In hopes that Santa might find them sleeping there;
The boarders were nestled all sharing their blankets and beds,
While visions of hot candied yams danced in their heads;
And me in my old coat, and a pair of fingerless gloves,
Had just emptied the coal scuttle, as the house froze.
When out on Spruce Street, on the brick pavers, arose such a clatter,
“What Say?” I sprang from my room, to see what was the matter.
Down the hallway to the parlor, I flew like a flash,
Skurfing the frost from the loose window-sash.
The streets of Altamont were dumb with falling snow,
Washed pleasantly in the milky winter below,
When, what to my uneasy eyes should appear,
But a miniature sled, and eight aerial reindeer,
With a little old drayman, so lively and quick,
I thought for a moment it must be a trick.
Fist loosely clenched, and forefinger extended, he came,
And he whistled, and hollered, and called them by name;
Now, Leslie! now, Stevie! now, Daisy and Helen!
On, Eugene! on Luke! on, Grover and Ben!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the bay window!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away y’all
Beyond the unfound door, the sled and jolly elf, like the leaves fly,
When they meet a mountain rock and soar to the sky,
Up to the hipped-slate-roof and the yellow gables they flew,
With the sleigh full of gimcracks, and “useful gifts” too.
And then, with the specter moan of the wind, I heard on the roof
Drumming, prancing, and pawing, each little hoof.
As I drew in my glycerined hands and was turning around,
“Merciful God!” down the chimney ole St. Nick came with a bound.
He was cheaply dressed in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes needed laundered, all dirty with soot;
He was liberally dowered with a canvas sack on his back,
And he looked like a county peddler ready to open his pack.
His aqueous gray eyes how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!
This stocky fleshy man, his face birth-marked with a raspberry!
Pursing his lips, all drawn up like a bow,
The patriarchal beard on his chin, as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his gold-traced teeth,
Plumed wisps of smoke encircled his head like a wilted laurel wreath;
He had a silly white face, like marble in a stonecutter’s shop.
He laughed, same as a local yokel who don’t know slop.
He was a plump man, a right jolly old elf,
And as big as you please, I giggled when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A bird-like wink of his eye and a twist of his waggling head,
Soon gave me to know, “pshaw,” I had nothing to dread;
Not a word was spoken, google-eyed he went straight to his work,
Filled the boarders cotton-stockings; then turned with a frantic jerk,
Nodding smartly and laying his finger aside his broad scalloped nose,
Like a sudden wild roar of flame, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang like a hound to his sled, to his team he gave a retreating whistle,
Winged with the convoying winds, away they flew like an angel.
I heard him in a drawling voice exclaim ere he drove out of sight,
HAPPY GANT CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL YE BOARDERS A GOOD-NIGHT!
