II 



ZERO BIRDS 



It had been a strenuous night. All day the mercury 

 had been flirting with the zero mark, and soon 

 after sunset burrowed down into the bulb below all 

 readings. My bed that night felt like a well-iced 

 tomb. Probably daylight would have found me 

 frozen to death if it had not been for a saving idea. 

 Hurrying into the children's room, I selected two of 

 the warmest and chubbiest. Banking them on either 

 side of me in my bed, I just survived the night. 

 Of course it was hard on them ; but then, any round, 

 warm child of proper sentiments should welcome an 

 opportunity to save the life of an aged parent. 



In spite of my patent heating-plant I woke up 

 toward morning shivering, and remembered with a 

 terrible depression that I had boasted to Mrs. 

 Naturalist and to various and sundry scoffing friends 

 that I would cut down and cut up and haul in one 

 forty-foot hickory tree before the glad New Year. 

 For a while I decided that there was nothing on earth 

 worth exchanging for that warm bed. Finally, 

 however, my better nature conquered, and the dusk 

 before the dawn found me in the woods in front of a 

 dead hickory tree some forty feet high and a couple 

 of rods through — at least that was how its flinty 

 girth impressed me after I had chopped a while. 



