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he had a walking bear for Christmas. Besides, when 

 you were a little boy you never had many blocks, and 

 never a walking bear. So you keep the hives. And 

 how suddenly the January day goes ! You hammer 

 on into the deepening dusk, and the chickens go to 

 roost without their supper. You would have ham- 

 mered on all night, but the hives ran out. Five hives 

 won't last very long ; and you sigh as they stand 

 finished. You could wish them all in pieces to do 

 over again, so smooth the stock, so fragrant the piny 

 smell, so accurate and nice the parts from cover to 

 bottom board ! 



Winter ! with January started, and February two 

 days short ! It is all a fiction. You had dreams of 

 long evenings, of books and crackling fires, and of 

 days shut in. It still snows ; there is something 

 still left of the nights, but not half enough, for the 

 seed catalogues are already beginning to arrive. 



The snow lies a foot deep over the strawberry 

 bed and the frozen soil where the potatoes are to 

 be. Yet the garden grows — on paper ? No, not on 

 paper, but in your own eager soul. The joy of a 

 garden is as real in January as in June. 



And so the winter goes. For if it is not the gar- 

 54 



