I4 S PASTORAL DAYS. 



talizing beckonings tipped your horses with the whip. Away you go 

 through the deep ravine, with a jing, jing, jing on the frosty air, with 

 voices high in merry laughs, amid loud hurrahs from the " boysterous " 

 crowd now far behind. Now you speed through a mist of drifting snow, 

 and the rosy cheeks tingle with the stinging icy flakes flying before the 

 wind. Now comes another chorus of piercing screams, as the laden 

 hemlock bough, tapped with mischievous whip, hurls down its fleecy 

 avalanche on coat and robe, on jaunty little hat — yes, and on a small 

 pink ear, and even clown a pretty neck. Ah me ! How is it possible 

 that a shriek like that could come from a throat so fair? But so you 

 go, with a jing, jing, jing, now past the mill-pond with its game, now up 

 the hill, now through the woods and far away, now farther still, the sil- 

 very bells now scarcely heard, now fainter yet, till lost to sight and sound 

 —but not to memory dear ; for all through life we shall hear those happy 

 jingling bells. 



And when, with ruddy faces and stamping feet, we all rush in and 

 crowd the old fireplace, how welcome the glowing warmth, how keen 

 the relish for the appetizing spread upon the snow-white table-cloth : the 

 smoking dish of beans, with crisp accompaniment of luscious pork ; the 

 hot brown bread so sweet ; and, last of all, the far-famed Indian pudding, 

 fresh and steaming from the old brick oven ! 



How distinctly I recall those long and happy evenings around that 

 radiant hearth, the games, the stories read from welcome magazines ! 

 Little we cared for the howling storm without. I hear the tick of the 

 ancient clock in the corner shadowed by the old arm-chair ; I see the 

 glimmer on the whitewashed wall, the festooned strings of apples, sliced 

 and hung above the fire to dry ; I hear the patient, expectant stroke of 

 hammer on the upturned log, and now the crackling burst of the rough- 

 shelled butternut, yielding up its long and filmy kernel ; I hear the apples 

 sizzling on the hearth, the puffy snap of pop-corn jumping in its fiery cage, 

 the kettle singing on the pendent hook — a thousand things ; and what a 

 precious living picture of sweet home-life they all bring back to me ! 



But look ! there is another hidden picture in the book of life — a 

 shadowed page, which we had well-nigh forgotten. See that crouching 

 figure in the dark, deserted street — that spurned and wretched outcast, 

 without a home, without a friend ! Perhaps if that broken heart has not 

 already ceased to yearn, if the last spark has not yet been smothered by 

 the driving, covering snow, we might still hear the faint and stifled sobs : 



