How It Happened

Carmencita Bell begins her Christmas preparations by stamping on an unwanted hat and tossing it into the stove. Living in a cramped top-floor room with her blind musician father, she longs for beauty, good food and something exciting to interrupt the round of cooking, cleaning and mending. Her lively conversations with herself give Kate Langley Bosher's novel its mixture of defiance and tenderness. Carmencita resents the assumption that poor people should accept any gift gratefully, while asking for help to protect her father from her unhappiness.

Elsewhere in the city, Van Landing searches the tenement streets for Carmencita and begins to notice the hunger and hopes of people he once found disagreeable. A meal offered to a boy and children crowding around a shop's dolls turn Christmas generosity into a matter of personal responsibility. Published in 1914, the story offers readers a close look at childhood pride, household hardship and the changing meaning of charity.