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Rural School Leaflet 



FIRESIDE TALK 

 Alice G. McCloskey 



It is a year since we were all together sitting around the roaring wood 

 fire. Do you remember how the wind blew and how we listened to the 

 vines striking against the windows? Do you remember how the branches 

 of the trees creaked? I am sure that you do and that you can still recall 

 the starlit sky of the cold January night. Here we are again, you and I, 

 popping corn as before, occasionally looking at the rosy apples in the 

 basket, and telling each other what we arc going to do during the late 

 winter days — the days most interesting of all, when spring draws near. 



You are a year older, those of you who last January watched the fire- 

 light with me. You have been interested in many outdoor things and 

 have come to know many. You have stopped grumbling about the 

 weather and are now enjoying the splendor of wind-swept highways and 

 icebound dooryards. You coast and skate and skee and in every possible 

 way find the comradeship of winter. You fill the woodbox at night and 

 have learned to wonder about the sticks as you make them ready for the 

 home evening. You wake up in the morning and hurry down to the old 

 kitchen stove to get warm, glancing the while at the frost pictures on the 

 windows, and wondering at the strange early morning light that winter 



