The young woman of this picture is a “high-kicker” who evidently has made a hit with the audience at a modern Christmas ballet. When she gets behind the scenes among “properties” left over from the ancient days, she gives a frisky vent to her feelings by flashing her heels in the faces of the grinning old masks. In short, she represents pantomime in its most modern development, the ballet, as contrasted with the grotesque humors of the past. You may find food for both humor and pathos, in the idea which Mr. Potter has worked out in this pretty and ingenious manner. CHAPTER XVI SAINT NICHOLAS IN EUROPE There is no country in Europe where Saint Nicholas is more honored than in Holland. Even before his festival arrives--during all the first five days of December--the shops in town and city put on their most festive array. All the people in shop and street assume a brisk and bustling air. Dutch men and Dutch women, usually silent and stolid, hail one another with noisy greetings as they meet. Everybody, in short, has his best foot foremost. Amsterdam, one of many cities which claim Saint Nicholas as their patron saint, is especially wideawake. During the first week of December the confectioners’ shops are ablaze with all sorts of splendors in cake and candy. Sugar rabbits, sugar cats and sugar mice disport themselves amid scenery of sugar and chocolate and wood shavings. The shavings (painted a vivid green), supply the foliage for chocolate trees and candied fruits. In all shapes and sizes are figures of men and women made out of crisp brown gingerbread, called Saint Nicholas cake, which is specially prepared for the holiday. These figures are sometimes known as “sweethearts” and it is a merry jest to send a girl figure to a boy and a boy figure to a girl. Nay the elders themselves are not forgotten if they are unmarried. It is good fun, we are told, to have a servant burst into a roomful of people and say to the lady of the house: [Illustration: Mute admiration. By Raymond Potter.] “If you please ma’am, here is Miss Annie’s sweetheart,” and hand over to mamma a gingerbread man for her little girl.[6] Other jokes of the same kind are played with so-called “hearts,” large and luscious pieces of march-pane moulded into the familiar shape supposed to resemble the organ that is supposed to be the seat of human affection. These are exchanged among the young people much as valentines, with us, are exchanged on February 14th. “Of course,” says the authority I have already quoted, a lady of Holland birth who speaks of what she herself has seen and experienced, “most girls like having such an innocent heart sent to them, and it is funny to see the mysterious look with which one tells another: “‘I had a large heart sent to me last night. I cannot possibly think who sent it.’”