"Fergy," said the city editor, "here's a beaut for you--right in your line. Full of that heart-throb junk nine ways from the jack. Those idiots upstairs gave it ten lines when it was worth six sticks all by itself--buried it when they should have played it up. You run down to this number and get a good, gummy, pathetic yarn. We'll play it up for to-morrow, with a strong picture layout and a three-col. head. Might call it: 'What Christmas Means for the Whatyoumaycall'em Family and What Christmas Might Mean for Them!' Get me?" He passed over the clipping. In a glance his star comprehended the pencilled passage. "Judging from the name and the neighbourhood Christmas wouldn't excite this family much, anyhow," she said. "What do you care?" said her chief crisply. "There's a story there--go get it!" Doubtlessly the Christmas spirit got into Betty Gwin's typewriter keys. Certainly it got into her inkpot and deposited the real essence of the real sob stuff there. The story she wrote trickled pathos from every balanced paragraph; there was pity in the periods and sentiment in the semicolons. As for the exclamation-points, they simply were elongated tear drops. It was one of the best stories Betty Gwin ever wrote. She said so herself--openly. But the picture that went with the story was absolutely diademic; it crowned figures of speech with tiaras of the graphic art. It showed Mamma Finkelstein seated on an upended box, which once had contained pickled herrings, surrounded by the eight little Finkelsteins. The children looked like ragged cherubs. To accomplish this result it had been necessary for Miss Gwin to depart somewhat from a faithful delineation of the originals. But of what value is the creative ability unless it be used to create? I ask you that and pause for a reply. Not that the junior Finkelsteins were homely; without an exception they were handsome and well-formed. A millionaire might have been proud to own them. But the trouble was, the Old Masters, who first painted cherubim, were mainly Italians, and for a variety of reasons chose their models from a race other than that to which the Finkelsteins appertained. To make her portraits conform with the popular conceptions of cherubs Miss Gwin saw fit to--shall we say?--conventionalise certain features. Indeed, when it came to reproducing for publication the physical aspect of Master Solly Finkelstein she did more than conventionalise--she idealised. Otherwise subscribers, giving the picture a cursory inspection, might have been led to believe that this cherub's wings had sprouted mighty high up on him. For Solly, eldest man child of the Finkelstein brood, had inherited the paternal ear--not all of it, as we know, but an ample and conspicuous sufficiency. Yet, with his ears trimmed, he, on his own merits, had enough of sombre child beauty for any seven-year-older anywhere. So Betty Gwin trimmed them--with her drawing pencil.