made his last attempt to raise money, and in his present state the
contrast was overwhelming. The shopkeepers would have told him that it
was a dull day for business, and that the rain was costing them hundreds
of dollars every hour, because there are a vast number of people who buy
things within the month before Christmas, if it is convenient and the
weather is fine, but will not take the trouble if the weather is bad;
and afterwards they are so glad to have saved their money that they buy
nothing of that sort till the following year. For Christmas shopping is
largely a matter of temptation on the one side and of weakness on the
other, and you cannot tempt a man to buy your wares if he will not even
go out and look at your shop window. At Christmas time every shopkeeper
turns into a Serpent, with a big S and a supply of apples varying, with
his capital, from a paper-bagful to a whole orchard, and though the
ladies are the more easily tempted, nine generous men out of ten show no
more sense just at that time than Eve herself did. The very air has
temptation in it when they see the windows full of pretty things and
think of their wives and their children and their old friends. Even
misers relax a little then, and a famous statesman, who was somewhat
close-fisted in his day, is reported to have given his young coloured
servant twenty-five cents on Christmas Eve, telling him to go out to
Mount Auburn Cemetery and see where the great men of New England lie
buried. And the man, I believe, went there; but he was an African, and
the spirit of Christmas was not in his race, for if it had moved him he
would have wasted that money on cream-cakes and cookies, reflecting that
the buried worthies of Massachusetts could not tell tales on him.

Overholt went down town to the bank where he kept his account and
explained his little mistake very humbly, and asked for time to pay up.
The teller looked at him as if he were an escaped lunatic, but on
account of his great reputation as an inventor he was shown to the desk