It was about the middle of the nineteenth century that the funny men of America took the Saint under their special patronage. In Holland he had been austere and dignified, as became a bishop and a saint. In America he developed into the fat, jolly, pot-bellied old roysterer whom we all know and love and who reminds us at so many points of the fun loving Silenus of Pagan times. Undoubtedly it was the American Clement C. Moore who immortalized the figure and decided the model which all succeeding poets and artists have ever followed. This is how Santa Klaus is described in Mr. Moore’s very popular poem entitled “A Visit from Santa Klaus”: He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedlar just opening his pack, His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath, He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook, when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly, He was chubby and plump--a right jolly old elf-- And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. Year by year the funny men of the pencil and the pen do their best to add to his eccentricities yet always they retain a measure of respect for the dear old gentleman. [Illustration: French children gazing up the chimney for gifts. Old French print.] One comic artist sends him to Wall Street among the brokers and the bankers, yet he preserves his dignity even among those shrewd and clever men, and is ready to teach them more than they can hope to teach him. Other artists make him turn to account the latest inventions of our inventors and scientists. Even if one picture does show him coming to grief on an automobile, another catches him in the very act of utilizing a flying machine. Again we are shown another side of the matter. We are brought face to face with the unbelief of the child who is ripening into boyhood or girlhood. At six years old or sometimes later doubts begin to visit the youthful mind. These doubts are carried very far by the little girl--a juvenile Saint Thomas in pantalettes--who in Mr. J. R. Shaver’s picture, meets Santa Klaus face to face, yet tells him to his face that she doesn’t believe in him. At this period in their lives young folks of both sexes will sympathize with the spirit of inquiry that summons Saint Nicholas, as in Mr. O’Malley’s cartoon, to answer before a judge and jury of their own age the question as to whether he has any real existence.