128 PASTORAL DAYS. 



memory the space to fill. I look upon a blank, whereon my fancy paints, 

 as could no hand of mine, the pictures and the poems of a boyhood 

 life ; and even as the undertone of a painting, be it warm or cool, shall 

 modify or change the color laid upon it, so this cold and frosty back- 

 ground through the window transfigures all my thoughts, and forms them 

 into winter memories legion like the snow. Oh that I could translate for 

 other eyes the winter idyl painted there ! I see a living past whose coun- 

 terpart I well could wish might be a common fortune. I see in all its 

 joyous phases the gladsome winter in New England, the snow-clad hills 

 with bare and shivering trees, the homestead dear, the old gray barn 

 hemmed in with peaked drifts. I see the skating-pond, and hear the ring- 

 ing, intermingled shouts of the noisy, shuffling game, the black ice written 

 full with testimony of the winter's brisk hilarity. Down the hard-packed 

 road with glancing sled I speed, past frightened team and startled way- 

 side groups ; o'er " thank you, marms," I fly in clear mid-air, and crouch- 

 ing low, with sidelong spurts of snowy spray, I sweep the sliding curve. 

 Now past the village church and cosy parsonage. Now scudding close 

 beneath the hemlocks, hanging low with their piled and tufted weight of 

 snow. The way-side bits like dizzy streaks whiz by, the old rail fence 

 becomes a quivering tint of gray. The road-side weeds bow after me, and 

 in the swirling eddy chasing close upon my feet, sway to and fro. Soon, 

 like an arrow from the bow, I shoot across the " Town Brook " bridge, 

 and, jumping out beyond, skip the sinking ground, and with an anxious 

 eye and careful poise I " trim the ship," and, hoping, leave the rest to 

 fate. 



Perhaps I land On both runners, perhaps I don't ; that depends. I've 

 tried both ways I know, and if I remember rightly, I always found it royal 

 jolly fun ; for what cared I at a bruise, or a pint of snow down my back, 

 when I got it there myself ? 



The average New England boy is hard to kill, and I was one of that 

 kind. Any boy who could brave the hidden mysteries and capricious 

 favoritism of those fifteen dislocating " thank you, marms," and hang to- 

 gether through it all, and, having so done, finish that experience with a 

 plunging double somersault into a crusted snow-bank, or, perchance, into 

 a stone wall — if he can do this, I say, and survive the fun, then there 

 is no reason why he should not live to tell of it in old age, for never in 

 the flesh will he go through a rougher ordeal. I've known a boy who 

 " hated the old district school because the hard benches hurt him so." 



