WINTER. 



129 



and who would rest his aching limbs for hours together 

 in this gentle sort of exercise. " The fine print made his 

 eyes ache, and he couldn't study ;" and yet when one day 

 he comes home with one eye all colors of the rainbow, 

 " it's nothing." " Consistency is a jewel." Boys don't 

 generally wear jewels. But they are all alike. Boys will 

 be boys, and if they only live through it, they will some 

 clay look back and wonder at their good fortune. 



At the foot of that long hill the ," Town Brook " gur- 

 gles on its winding way, and passing beneath the weather- 

 beaten bridge, it makes a sudden turn, and spreads into 

 a glassy pond behind the bulwarks of the saw-mill dam. 

 In summer, were we as near as this, we would hear the 

 intermittent ring of the whizzing saw, the clanking cogs, 

 and the tuneful sounds of the falling bark-bound slabs ; 

 but now, like its bare willows that were wont to wave 

 their leafy boughs with caressing touch upon the mossy 

 roof, the old mill shows no sign of life. Its pulse is 

 frozen, and the silent wheel is resting from its labors 

 beneath a coverlet of snow. Who is there who has not 

 in some recess of the memory a dear old haunt like 

 this, some such sleeping pond radiant with reflections 

 of the scenes of early life ? Thither in those win- 

 ter days we came, our numbers swelled from .,-^- ' ,*^. 

 right and left with eas;er volunteers for the - '"- \ rUfe 



game, till at last, almost a hundred strong, we : ,; ;: 

 rally on the smooth black ice. * 



The opposing leaders choose their _ ^ V" ^j 



sides, and with loud hurrahs we 

 penetrate the thickets at the 

 water's edge, each ^,^__ 

 to cut his special ^f 



choice of stick — that ' . -- . 



festive cud- _ <; _ - z^Mm 



gel, with ' _^^r' '"~% 



curved and * " '*$T» • 



club-shaped end, 

 known to the boy as a 





%■'■■£'-'. 



SNOW-FLAKES ill-' MEMORY. 



