CHRISTMAS STORY (31 pp.) H. L MenckenKnopf ($1).
Just in time for the Christmas trade, this tiny book contains perhaps the nearest thing to piety in Mencken's writings. It is a moral tale, told in the Sage of Baltimore's redolent and contented prose. The storyoriginally printed in the New Yorkerattests to the triumph of Christian reflexes over heathen among the bums of Baltimore 45 years ago.
A local freethinker and scoffer at the Gospel, Fred Ammermeyer. decided he would beat the missions at their own game by giving a big Christmas feast and blowout for outcasts. No hymns, no prayers, not a...