When I told Alger Hiss that our Christmas would probably be bleak, it was the children, of course, that I was thinking of. It was a Christmas bleak for the children that troubled me. But Christmas, 1938, was not bleak. My mother came to spend the holidays with us and with her the spirit of Christmas entered the house. Our friends, everybody who knew about us, and by then such people were more numerous, seemed to have had the children in mind too. Presents for them began to arrive by mail. On Christmas Eve, we heaped them under the ...