Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host.

Every week, I will read you an old story to help you relax of the stressful day behind you and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I will be reading a short story

from A Little Book of Christmas

by John Kendrick Bangs.

Santa Claus and Little Billy.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story.

One.

He was only a little bit of a chap, and so when for the first time in his life he came

into close contact with the endless current of human things, it was as hard for him to stay put

as for some wayward little atom of flotsam and jetsam to keep from tossing about in the surging tides of the sea.

His mother had left him there in the big toy shop with instructions not to move until she came back

while she went off to do some mysterious errand. She thought, no doubt, that with so many beautiful things on every side to delight his eye

and hold his attention, strict obedience to her commands would not be hard.

But alas, the good lady reckoned not upon the magnetic power of attraction of all those lovely objects in detail.

She saw them only as a mass of wonders, which in all probability would so dazzle his vision

as to leave him incapable of movement. But little Billy was not so indifferent as all to that.

When a photograph at the other end of the shop

...