Freddy Goes to the North Pole

by Walter R. Brooks

  Then Freddy presented his friends, and Santa Claus shook hands warmly with each of them. When he came to the bear, “And this,” the pig said, “is—er—ah—hrrumph—”

  “I beg your pardon,” said the saint. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  The bear shifted awkwardly from one foot to another and blushed—at least he blushed inside, but it couldn’t be seen through his fur. “I—er—I—Well, I haven’t any name,” he said finally.

  “No name?” said Santa Claus. “Well, now, how did that happen? You’re the first animal I ever knew who hadn’t one.”

  The bear hesitated a moment; then he said: “Well, sir, I really have got a name, but I never liked it, so I never used it. It’s—no, I can’t say it. It’s so silly.”

  “H’m,” said Santa Claus thoughtfully. “If you don’t like your name, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t change it. Isn’t there any name you like?”

  The bear brightened. “Really?” he asked. “I always thought you had to keep your name, whether you liked it or not. But if you say so—”

  “I do,” said Santa Claus.

  “Well, then, the name I choose is Peter,” said the bear.

  “That’s a fine name,” said Santa Claus. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance, Peter. And now, animals, come up round the fire and make yourselves comfortable. You must be cold after such a long trip. Get warm first, and then Freddy will show you your rooms and you can wash up, and then we’ll have some supper.”

  “There’s one thing we’d like to ask you, sir,” said Ferdinand, and he repeated what the eagle had told him. “Is it true that these sailors have caused trouble?”

  A worried look came into the saint’s eyes. “Trouble?” he said. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. They’ve changed things certainly. They—”

  He stopped, for at that moment a door flew open and a man came into the room—a tall thin man, with drooping black moustaches and hard, sharp black eyes. He had sea boots on, and a red sash about his waist, in which a pistol was stuck. “Ah, Mr. Claus,” he said in a harsh voice, “talkin’ to the animals again, eh? I thought I heard you.” He swept a contemptuous glance over the group about the fire. “Well, I’m sorry to disturb you, but there’s this here matter of the workmen in the mechanical-toy department; they don’t seem to want to adopt the suggestions of Mr. Pomeroy, and we think you’d better talk to ’em. Then the New York Times just came in on the last mail, and there’s an editorial there about you we think you should answer. We’ve got the answer all drafted, but we want your signature.”

  Santa Claus got up wearily. “All right, all right; I’ll come,” he said. Then turning to his new guests, “Freddy will entertain you until I’m at liberty,” he said. “And he can answer the question you just asked me.” He stooped suddenly and caught up Ella and swung her to his shoulder, then held out a hand to Everett. “You children come along with me,” he said.

  The children giggled delightedly, but the man with the harsh voice said: “Surely, Mr. Claus, you don’t intend to bring these children to a business conference? They’ll only be in the way. They—”

  “Surely I do,” boomed Santa Claus in his deep bass voice. “This business is run for children and don’t you forget it. When you leave the children out, you leave Santa Claus out, Mr. Hooker. Let’s have that perfectly clear.”

  Hooker shrugged and turned on his heel, and before he followed him, Santa Claus paused and whispered to the children: “Don’t mind him. He isn’t as unpleasant as he tries to make out. And, anyway, I’ll tell you stories all the time he’s talking.” And the door closed behind them.

  CHAPTER XI

  SANTA AND THE SAILORS

  The animals, who had stood up politely when Santa Claus left the room, gathered again round the fire and began asking Freddy questions. The pig settled back comfortably in his chair.

  “Well, I’ll tell you all about it,” he said. “But don’t sit on the floor. What are all these chairs for?”

  “Animals don’t use chairs,” said Uncle William. “Chairs are for human beings. When I was with the circus, one of my acts had to be done sitting in a chair, and I was never so uncomfortable in my life.”

  “Once you get used to ’em,” said Freddy, “you’ll never go back to the floor. Try that big one there, Mrs. Wiggins.” The cow looked at it doubtfully. “Don’t be afraid,” he continued. “All this furniture is made in Santa Claus’s workshop; it’s none of your flimsy factory-made stuff that falls apart if you breathe on it.”

  So Mrs. Wiggins sat down gingerly; then, as nothing happened, leaned back with a sigh. “My goodness, it is comfortable as all get-out,” she said.

  “Of course it is.—Well, I’ll get on with my story. You know what happened up to the time that Ferdinand left us. After that we sailed north for a time, and then the ice-pack closed in on the ship, so we left it and went on across the ice. We reached here without any trouble, except for Jinx’s head; he had a row with a polar bear. Jinx said something fresh to the bear—you know how Jinx is—and the bear hit him a clip with his paw and took all the hair off Jinx’s head—snatched him bald-headed. It’ll grow again all right, Santa Claus says, but he certainly does look funny.”

  “But where is Jinx?” asked Jack. “And all the rest of them? Why don’t they come say hello to us?”

  “Yes,” said Ferdinand. “After all, we did come to rescue you animals. And now there’s nobody but you to welcome us.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you—they’re all out skiing. They’ll be back by dinner-time. All except Jinx. He spends all his time down in the gymnasium. We’ll go down in a few minutes and find him.—Well, as I was saying, when we got here, Santa Claus was kindness itself. He gave a big dinner-party for us that night, and the next day showed us over his whole place. That’s how the trouble started. While he was showing us the work-rooms where the toys are made, and explaining how he finds out what children want and sees that they get the right toys in their stockings and on their Christmas-trees, I heard Mr. Pomeroy, the mate of the ship, say to the captain: ‘This place wants systematizing, Mr. Hooker.’

  “‘You’re right, as you nearly always are, Mr. Pomeroy,’ said the captain. ‘Efficiency, that’s what’s needed. I never see a place run as inefficient as this is.’

  “They went on talking in the same way, and I didn’t think much about it then; but next day they came into this room and asked if they could talk to Santa Claus about his business—said they had some suggestions to make. Santa Claus said he was always glad to get suggestions, and then they began. I was here and heard all of it. The captain said that they had been greatly interested in going over the plant, but that both he and his friends had been surprised and even alarmed at the old-fashioned way in which things were run.

  “‘Why, what’s the matter with them?’ asked Santa.

  “‘Pretty near everything,’ said Hooker solemnly, and Mr. Pomeroy nodded gloomily. ‘Yes, sir,’ the captain went on, ‘our expert opinion is that in five years, if you keep on runnin’ like this, you’ll have to close down.’

  “‘Suppose you tell me exactly what you think is wrong,’ said Santa.

  “‘Well, sir,’ said the captain, ‘things in America have changed a good deal in the past twenty-five years. Your methods of manufacture and distribution is as out of date as your grandmother’s lace cap—with all due respect. Take the matter of chimneys. You take the toys down the chimney Christmas Eve. You’ve always done it that way, and you’re still doing it that way, in spite of the fact that in modern houses the chimney doesn’t go down to a fireplace where the children hang up their stockings—it goes straight down to the furnace in the cellar. And in big apartment houses you can’t get to some of the children at all.’

  “‘We have our ways of getting round that,’ said Santa Claus.

  “‘Sure you do,’ said the captain. ‘But it’s a lot of trouble. No, sir, Mr. Claus, that’s only one thing, and there’s dozens. Suppose, for instance, you had a hund
red per cent efficient factory here; what good is that if you can’t get rid of your product? What are you doing to make the children of America toy-conscious? Where in this great land of ours will you find another firm which doesn’t spend one penny for advertising? No advertising appropriation at all! Think of it, Mr. Pomeroy!’

  “‘I am,’ said the mate with a groan. ‘It’s suicidal, Mr. Hooker; that’s what it is: suicidal!’

  “Santa Claus tried to say something, but the captain went right on.’ Take the matter of publicity, now, Mr. Claus. I admit you get a lot of free publicity every year at Christmastime. Your picture’s in all the magazines. Yes, but it’s all in other people’s advertisements. And you’re wearin’ the same old suit and drivin’ the same old reindeer you were drivin’ when my dear old grandpa was a dirty-faced kid. You’re too far away, Mr. Claus; you ain’t got your finger on the pulse of the nation.’

  “Well, there was a lot more of it, and every time Santa Claus tried to say something, one or other of ’em would interrupt him and go on. And then they made what they called their proposition to him. They would come in and reorganize his business for him. It wouldn’t cost him a cent, they said—‘And in two months, Mr. Claus,’ said the mate, ‘you won’t know the place.’

  “It surprised us all a lot when we found out he had agreed to do it. I think he did it partly because he was tired of hearing them talk, and partly because they really thought they were doing him a favour. He’s very kind-hearted, and he thought their feelings would be hurt if he wouldn’t let them help him. So what they did was this: they organized a company: Santa Claus, Incorporated—”

  “Why,” exclaimed Jack, “that’s what the ‘S. C., Inc.,’ meant on the sign we saw.”

  “Yes,” said Freddy. “It was incorporated just like our Barnyard Tours at home.”

  “But it said: ‘Hooker, G. M.,’ on the sign, too,” said Charles. “What did that mean? And that other sign that said: ‘By order of the Board’?”

  “‘Hooker, G. M.,’ means ‘Hooker, General Manager,’” said Freddy. “And the Board is the Board of Governors. That consists of Santa Claus and the captain and Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Bashwater. He was the chief harpooner of the whaling ship, and he’s now the efficiency expert.”

  “Good grief!” exclaimed Mrs. Wiggins. “What a lot of big words about nothing! It’s all a pack of nonsense, if you ask me.”

  “That’s what we all think,” said Freddy. “But Santa Claus is worried about it. They’re changing everything, and he doesn’t know what to do. We’ve got to help him get rid of them.”

  “Just what have they done?” asked Ferdinand.

  “Well, they put all those signs round, warning people away. Of course that doesn’t matter, because nobody pays any attention to them. But they’ve started an eight-hour day in the workshops—everybody has to be there at eight and work until five, with an hour out for lunch. You see, these people that make the toys come from all over the United States. They’re people who used to work in offices and factories, and who have got too old, or are not well enough, to work so hard. When Santa Claus hears about anybody like that, he sends for him and brings him up here. He used to let these people work when they wanted to. If they wanted to stop for a while and play games or read or rest, why, they just did it, and then by and by went back and worked some more. But that’s all changed now, and they don’t like it very much. That kind of hard work is just the thing Santa Claus wanted to help them to get away from.

  “Then the people in the workshops used to make the toys any way they wanted to. If they wanted to paint a toy rabbit pink and give him a tail like a squirrel’s, they did it. But now each kind of toy has to be made in just one way, and one workman cuts it out, and the next paints the body and passes it on to the third, who paints in the eyes, and so on. Each workmen does just one thing. Santa didn’t like it, but Mr. Bashwater said that it was mass production, whatever that means. He said that that was how Mr. Henry Ford managed to turn out so many automobiles. But Santa Claus said: ‘Mr. Henry Ford makes toys for grown-ups. Every grown-up likes to have his toys just like every other grown-up’s. But children like their toys different.’”

  “That’s so,” put in Bill. “When Mrs. Bean got that sewing-machine, I heard her tell the man who sold it to her that she wanted it just like the one Mrs. Swazy had.”

  “You’d think she’d want it a little different, wouldn’t you?” said Mrs. Wiggins.

  “People are funny,” said Uncle William.

  Freddy told them some more about the changes that the sailors were making, and then took them upstairs. “This is my room,” he said, throwing open a door. It was a bright and cozy little room. The furniture was painted bright blue with red trimmings, and the chintz window-curtains showed a pattern of small red pigs playing tag in a blue clover field, and over the fireplace was a painting of three very handsome pigs with blue silk bows around their necks, sitting in a row on a sofa and looking very self-conscious, as anyone does when he is having his picture painted.

  “You don’t mean to say you sleep in that bed?” said Bill.

  “Sure, I do,” replied the pig. “You don’t know how comfortable it is until you’ve tried it. Did you ever sleep in one?”

  “Me?” exclaimed the goat disgustedly. “I should say not!”

  “Well,” said Freddy, “I used to think that human beings were softies because they didn’t sleep on bare boards with a little straw, the way most animals do. But I’ve changed my mind. Why shouldn’t we be as comfortable as we can? You wait till you’ve tried that nice soft bed in your room, Bill.”

  The goat snorted and was about to make a sarcastic reply, when Cecil, who had been looking out of the window, shouted: “Oh, look! There come the others!”

  Sure enough, through an opening in the Christmas-tree hedge shot a fur-muffled figure on skis, to be followed by another and then another. The first two, leaning sideways, made a graceful turn and brought up in a flurry of snow close to the palace wall, but the third, who seemed very large and clumsy, turned too sharply and went head over heels in a double somersault, while the skis flew high in the air. The fur cap had fallen off, revealing the kind face and mild brown eyes of Mrs. Wogus, who gazed about with a somewhat dazed and surprised look, and then, catching sight of the grins on the faces of her companions, broke into a loud laugh.

  Freddy threw up the window and called out the news to them, and they tumbled upstairs and greeted their friends with delight. They made a great hubbub with their laughter and questions and answers; and Mrs. Wogus insisted on kissing all the new-comers, which none of them liked very much, for she had a very large wet nose anyway, and now her face was covered with melting snow. The mice were drenched and shivering after she had kissed them, and Freddy had to take them into the bathroom and give them a rub-down with a towel so they wouldn’t catch cold.

  Then he showed them all their rooms. Each one had furniture just the right size for the animal who was to use it. The mice shared a room together, and it looked like a room in a doll house, with its three tiny beds covered with little patchwork quilts, the small rocking-chairs, and the framed photograph of an Edam cheese over the mantel. Each room had its private bath, and although some of them were on different sides of the palace, Freddy assured them that they all had a southern exposure. “It’s the only house in the world,” he said, “in which all the rooms face south.”

  It took some time for the animals to understand this. “Don’t be silly, Freddy,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “How can windows on all sides of a house face in the same direction?”

  “Because this house is built on the north pole. There isn’t any direction but south here.”

  “But suppose I leave here and want to go west,” said Charles.

  “You can’t,” said Freddy. “Because any direction you go from here is straight towards the south pole.”

  The cow thought a minute. “Yes, I see that,” she said. “But it seems funny to me. If we start somewhere, and bo
th go in the same direction, we’re together, aren’t we?”

  Freddy agreed that this must be so.

  “Well, then, if I start out of the back door of this house, and you start out of the front door, and Hank starts out of the side door, we’re all going in the same direction. And yet we aren’t going together at all, and the farther we go, the farther apart we are.”

  “Yes,” said Freddy, “but if we keep on long enough, we’ll all meet in the same place, the south pole, so we must be really getting nearer together all the time.” And he went on with a long explanation, which interested him so much that he never noticed that the others had gradually left the room. Then he looked up and saw that there was no one with him. “Well, well,” he sighed, “that’s what it is to be a poet.” And he went back to his own room, sat down at the little writing-desk by the window, on the wall above which were pinned various sets of verses he was working on, and started another poem. He wrote:

  Oh east is east, and west is west,

  And never the twain shall meet—

  Then he stopped and frowned. “Reminiscent, somehow,” he muttered: “Wonder if it’s too metaphysical. It’s darned good, though.” He went on.

  Until they come to the end of the earth,

  To Santa Claus’ retreat.

  He stopped again. “Oh, yes, I remember,” he said, and grinned. “It’ll make Kipling pretty sore—gives him the lie direct.” Then he continued.

  Where east is south, and west is south

  And north is south also;

  Where all directions are the same,

  Whichever way you go.

  “Hey, Freddy,” came Hank’s voice from the hall. “We’re going down to the gym.”

  Freddy sighed, put in a comma and two exclamation points, then after pinning the paper up beside the others, hurried downstairs to the gymnasium, through the glass door of which the new arrivals were peering with many nudgings and suppressed giggles. For inside, Jinx, as yet unaware of their gaze, was looking at himself in a long mirror. Beside him was a small jar of ointment, and every now and then he would scoop a little out on his paw and rub it carefully into the bald spot on the top of his head, and then he would turn and twist his neck in the effort to see better. He looked very discontented with his appearance while doing this, but pretty soon he backed away from the glass a little and, keeping his chin up so he couldn’t see the bald spot, tried the effect of various expressions. He tried looking dignified, and he tried smiling graciously, and he tried looking nonchalant, and superior, and arch, and imposing, and unconcerned in a thunderstorm. But he was so pleased with all these expressions that gradually they all came to be one expression, and whatever he tried he just succeeded in smirking in a self-satisfied way. And at that moment the pressure against the gymnasium door, against which all the animals were pushing in order to see, got so strong that it flew suddenly open, and they all fell in on the floor.