132 PASTORAL DAYS. 



scene ensues ; another falls, and all are trampled under foot by the en- 

 thusiastic crowd. Ye gods ! will any one come out alive ? I hear the 

 old familiar sounds vibrating: on the air : whack ! whack ! " Ouch !" 

 " Get out of the way, then !" " Now I've got it !" " Shinney on yer own 

 side !" and now a heavy thud ! which means a sudden damper on some 

 one's wild enthusiasm. And so it goes until the game is won. The 

 mob disperses, and the riotous spectacle gives place to uproarious jollity. 



There are other more tranquil reflections from that old mill-pond. Do 

 you not remember the little pair of dainty skates whose straps you clasped 

 on daintier feet ; the quiet, gliding strolls through the secluded nooks ; the 

 small, refractory buckle which you so often stooped to conquer ; and the 

 sidelong grimaces of less fortunate swains — sneers that brought the color 

 tingling to your cheeks with mingled pride and anger ? Ah ! things so 

 near the heart as these can never freeze. 



Yonder, just below that clustered group of pines, where the water- 

 weeds and lily-pads are frozen in the ice, we chopped our fishing holes, 

 and with baited lines and tip-ups set, we waited, wondering what our luck 

 would be. With eager eyes we watched the line play out, or saw the tip- 

 up give the warning sign. And as with anxious pull we neared the end 

 of the tightening cord, who shall describe that tingling sense of joy at the 

 first glimpse of the gaping pickerel ? 



Near by I see the yellow-fringed witch-hazel bending in graceful spray 

 over the flaky, bordering ice, that mystic shrub whose feathery winter 

 blooms we gathered as a token for the little one with dainty skates. 



Still farther up the pond the marbled button-wood-tree, with spreading 

 limbs and knotty brooms of branchlets, rises clear against the sky, its little 

 pendulums swinging away the winter moments. At its very roots the 

 dam spreads into a tufted swamp, thick-set with alders. How often have 

 I picked my way through that wheezing, soggy marsh in quest of the rare 

 Cecropia cocoons ; treading among glazed air-chambers, whose roof of ice, 

 like a pane of brittle glass, falls in at my approach — a crystal fairy grotto, 

 set with diamonds and frost ferns, annihilated at a step. 



Here," too, the sagacious musk-rat built his cemented dome, and along 

 the neighboring shore we set the chained steel-traps, or made the pon- 

 derous dead-fall from nature's rude materials. Yonder, in the side-hill 

 woods, I set the big box rabbit-traps ; with keen-edged jack-knife trimmed 

 the slender hickory poles, and on the ground near by, with sharpened, 

 branching sticks, I built the little pens for my twitch -up snares. Can 



