II 
ZERO BIRDS 
Iv 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. 
