My Boyhood and Youth 



on our lake, from its shrinking and expanding 

 with the changes of the weather. The fisher- 

 men who were catching pickerel said that they 

 had no luck when this roaring was going on 

 above the fish. I remember how frightened we 

 boys were when on one of our New Year holi- 

 days we were taking a walk on the ice and 

 heard for the first time the sudden rumbling 

 roar beneath our feet and running on ahead 

 of us, creaking and whooping as if all the ice 

 eighteen or twenty inches thick was breaking. 

 In the neighborhood of our Wisconsin farm 

 there were extensive swamps consisting in great 

 part of a thick sod of very tough carex roots 

 covering thin, watery lakes of mud. They 

 originated in glacier lakes that were gradually 

 overgrown. This sod was so tough that oxen 

 with loaded wagons could be driven over it 

 without cutting down through it, although it 

 was afloat. The carpenters who came to build 

 our frame house, noticing how the sedges sunk 

 beneath their feet, said that if they should 

 break through, they would probably be well on 

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