[00:00.00]Lesson Five
[00:03.50]Text First Principles
[00:08.67]Frances Gray Patton
[00:13.53]No family had ever had a nicer Christmas,
[00:18.99]Emily Wade thought happily
[00:23.12]as she drove the children to school for the first time after the holidays,
[00:29.88]and of course,it had been largely Laura's doing.
[00:35.00]She glanced at Laura,
[00:38.87]a slim, dark-haired girl of fourteen,sitting beside her,
[00:45.92]and felt warm with that most comfortable of parental emotions,
[00:52.79]gratitude to one's own child.
[00:57.34]The air was soft with the vapors of melting snow,and almost fragrant,
[01:04.10]as if some delicate flowers were blooming near at hand.
[01:09.88]"And tomorrow we'll probably have a raging sleet storm. "
[01:16.12]"King Claudius weather," said Laura,
[01:20.95]looking prettily shy as she made the literary allusion.
[01:28.22]"It can smile and smile and still be a villain. "
[01:34.09]"Exactly," Emily agreed.
[01:38.14]She wasn't sure for a moment who King Claudius was,
[01:44.18]and then she saw a copy of Hamlet" among Laura's books.
[01:51.91]She thought her heart would burst with pride
[01:56.98](imagine a child saying that!) ,
[02:01.34]and thought how wise she and Henry had been
[02:07.29]when they'd decided to make every possible sacrifice
[02:12.86]for the sake of Laura's education.
[02:17.12]Laura,who was in first-year high,
[02:23.28]had gone to the same public school that her brothers now attended,
[02:30.44]but this year she was a pupil at Green Valley Academy,
[02:37.10]a small country day school on the outskirts of the city.
[02:43.27]It was a very good school and a very expensive one,
[02:49.22]and most of the Wades' friends
[02:53.17]thought they were being rather fancy in sending Laura there.
[02:59.44]They knew Laura was smart, of course,
[03:03.80]but some of the other Baltimore private schools for girls were excellent
[03:10.46]and had lower tuition,and even the public high schools were all right.
[03:18.01]Lots of nice kids,
[03:21.25]whose fathers had twice as big an income as Henry Wade,went to them.
[03:28.61]Besides you weren't doing a girl a favor
[03:34.26]when you encouraged her to develop tastes she couldn't afford to gratify.
[03:41.13]You either spoiled her or made her bitter.
[03:46.09]These arguments were cogent, Emily Wade admitted,
[03:51.65]but they simply didn't apply in Laura's case.
[03:57.22]Nothing was too good for that child.
[04:01.48]Moreover,it was Emily's theory that children learned love
[04:10.12]as well as discipline by family example;
[04:15.97]if you did all you could for them,keeping their best interests in mind,
[04:24.33]they wouldn't let you down in a crisis.
[04:29.79]And events had certainly proved her theory.
[04:35.07]How true that had been, thought Emily,driving slowly
[04:41.42]because she had a quarter hour to spare
[04:46.17]and she might as well give Laura time to study.
[04:51.03]Her mind went back to that black moment,a month before,
[04:58.29]when she'd met Henry for lunch in a restaurant
[05:03.44]and he'd told her that he was out of a job.
[05:09.68]The branch sales office he'd been managing
[05:15.85]had been absorbed by a larger firm,
[05:21.20]and its whole staff was out in the cold
[05:27.16]without so much as a month's salary to tide them over.
[05:32.90]He was pretty sure he could get another and a better position;
[05:39.28]there was a firm that had been making overtures to him,
[05:44.24]and only a sense of loyalty to his old firm
[05:49.39]had made him ignore them up to this point.
[05:53.85]But the man he'd have to see was out of town
[05:59.11]and wouldn't be back until the first of the year.
[06:04.17]Then, too, he'd just had a letter from his brother in Ohio;
[06:10.52]it seemed that the whole family out there was shot to hell.
[06:16.89]His brother, who was a school teacher, was broke,
[06:23.14]his stomach ulcers were troubling him,
[06:27.89]one of his children had to have a serious operation,
[06:33.17]and his wife was about to have twins.
[06:38.32]He needed five hundred dollars."I should think he would!"
[06:46.18]Emily had said.
[06:49.34]"We'll have to send it to him."
[06:52.71]"I guess if we let him have it,we can still eat,"
[06:58.27]Henry had said,brooding gloomily.
[07:03.42]"But it knocks Christmas into a cocked hat.
[07:07.36]I hate to borrow on my insurance."
[07:11.44]"Oh, no!" Emily had exclaimed.
[07:16.30]"We'll manage.We can cut our list to the bone and concentrate on the kids.
[07:24.34]You know how they are
[07:27.82]all they want is the illusion of abundance and cheerful confusion
[07:34.66]"That goes for the young ones," Henry had said,
[07:39.34]"but what does Laura want?"
[07:43.78]"The only thing she's mentioned is a ballerina dress.
[07:50.02]It's priced at $125.
[07:56.08]She's been invited to some parties by her friends at school."
[08:01.44]"Well...Couldn't you charge that?" Henry had asked.
[08:07.50]"No," she'd said. "I'm charged to the hilt already,
[08:13.74]and I don't want to risk being refused.
[08:18.29]As a matter of fact, I'd planned to pay my bill today.
[08:24.35]"She had sat silent for a moment,
[08:28.60]looking at Henry's discouraged face.
[08:33.96]"The only thing to do, dear," she'd said at last,
[08:39.92]"is to return to first principles. "
[08:44.56]"What do you mean by that?"
[08:48.04]"Christmas has been commercialized out of its real meaning.
[08:54.10]The gifts people give have become a sort of advertising display.
[09:01.18]What we ought to do is give to people we love
[09:06.04]give memorable things according to our ability.
[09:11.68]If you could give your child a horse,say,that would be fine.
[09:17.64]But if you can't,
[09:21.11]give her a little locket or a book of verse,
[09:26.36]"Henry had looked hopeful but skeptical.
[09:31.64]"I'll tell you what we'll do," she had continued.
[09:36.31]"We'll go to the farm for the holidays.
[09:40.44]We'll have a good time there.
[09:43.89]We won't have to do any entertaining
[09:48.85] —the liquor bills alone are always staggering at Christmas.
[09:55.51]We'll have our turkey and our tree and take long walks
[10:02.38]and sing carols and forget the world."
[10:07.71]"Did you ever have a Christmas like that?" Henry had asked.
[10:13.56]"Lord, no!" she'd answered.
[10:18.92]"Well, you're the captain. But try to break it gently to Laura."
[10:25.87]"Laura'll be all right,"
[10:29.32]Emily had said with a smile.
[10:33.08]"Poor Daddy!" the girl had cried
[10:37.83]when Emily explained the situation to her.
[10:42.59]And then, being reassured as to his future prospects,
[10:49.35]she had clasped her hands-
[10:53.19]"But how marvelous to go to the farm, Mother!
[10:58.23]It'll be just like a picture on a Christmas card.
[11:03.69]I adore it there, and I don't care a thing about presents or parties!"
[11:11.56]She had raised herself on the tips of her toes, as if she were about to dance.
[11:20.10]Several days before Christmas, they'd gone down to their little farm.
[11:26.58]It was just a half-dozen acres that Henry had bought and had hung on to.
[11:34.44]It made him feel good to own a piece of land.
[11:39.48]They'd all had a wonderful time,really.
[11:43.63]They had cut a tree in their own woods.
[11:47.89]They had eaten and slept, and read by the light of oil lamps.
[11:54.84]The children had been more than satisfied with their presents;
[12:00.80]there had been balls,erector sets, a number of story books,
[12:08.74]and a lot of junk from the five-and-ten for the boys,
[12:14.77]and for Laura,a picture Emily had found cheap in a second-hand art shop
[12:22.71]and a small brooch that had belonged to Henry's mother.
[12:28.96]It was Laura's obvious pleasure that had brightened everything.
[12:35.12]Whether she was chopping wood, or romping with her brothers,
[12:40.69]or basting the turkey,or talking politics very sensibly with her father,
[12:48.55]she'd seemed to radiate happiness.
[12:53.30]On New Year's Eve,they had given her a weak highball the first she'd ever had,
[13:02.26]and she had gone to sleep sitting on the floor
[13:06.94]with her rosy cheek against Henry's knee.
[13:11.38]"By God, I believe she's the best girl in the world," he had said softly.
[13:20.24]"She probably is," Emily had said.
[13:25.69]If I don't hand her the earth some day,on a silver platter,"Henry had declared,
[13:34.16]"may I be damned from here to eternity!"
[13:38.81]Emily slowed the car to a full stop near the gates ot the Academy.
[13:45.29]"Here we are," she said.
[13:48.84]"I'm going to miss you today. "
[13:52.68]"I'll miss you, too," she said.
[13:58.24]It's been a beautiful holiday.
[14:02.61]I love the picture and the pin!"
[14:06.73]"Of course you do, Laura," said Emily.
[14:11.80]"Now run!"She watched Laura hurry up the path.
[14:19.25]She drove about aimlessly for a while.
[14:23.92]Then she went to a market and bought some groceries and a big bunch of flowers.
[14:31.42]The cool blossoms perfumed the car all the way home.
[14:37.98]They made her think of the ballerina dress,and of all the pure, proud,
[14:47.04]filmy beauty of the world that belonged, by right, to Laura. |