A Christmas Problem

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This comes from the no-cover book I call the Bunny Book. The first story is about a child named Bunny, and that’s why I call it that!

No Cover 6.jpg A CHRISTMAS PROBLEM

“What do you think my grandmother said,
Telling Christmas stories to me
To-night, when I went and coaxed and coaxed,
Laying my head upon her knee?

“She thinks (she really told me so)
That good Saint Nicholas, long ago
Was old and gray
As he is to-day,—
Going around with his loaded sleigh,
Wrapped about with his robe of fur;
With lots of frolic, and fun, and stir,
A cheery whoop and a merry call,—
And never a jolly boy at all!

“She thinks he’s driven through frost and snows,
As every Christmas comes and goes,
With jingling bells and a bag of toys,
Ho, ho! for good little girls and boys,
With a carol gay
And a Clear the way!

No Cover 7.jpg
For a rollicking, merry Christmas day,—
With just exactly the same reindeers
Prancing on, for a thousand years!

“Grandmother knows ‘most everything,—
All that I ask her she can tell;
Rivers and towns in geography,
And the hardest words she can always spell.
But the wisest ones, sometimes they say,
Mistake, and even grandmother may!

“If Santa Claus never had been a boy
How would he always know so well
What all the boys are longing for
On Christmas day,—can grandmother tell?
“Why does he take the shiny rings,
Baby houses, and dolls with curls,
And dainty lockets, and necklaces,
Never to boys, but all to girls?
Why does he take the skates and sleds,
The Bats and balls, and arrows and bows,
And trumpets, and drums, and guns—hurrah!
To all the boys, does grandmother know?

“But there is a thing that puzzles me,—
When Santa Claus was a boy at play
And hung a stocking on Christmas Eve,
Who could have filled it for Christmas day?”