A Tavern in the Pines 
line, with upright, pyramidal clusters of velvety crimson 
berries topping the writhing branches. An armful set in 
a big jar in a sunny corner of the library will fill the 
room all winter long with outdoor memories. 
December 27. —These winter days my lungs pant 
sometimes for a breath of the pines. It is something of 
a journey thither and I like to go down the night before 
and sleep at an old-fashioned hostelry in the woods. There 
sitting for an hour or two before bedtime planted as Tom 
o’ Shanter was, “fast by the ingle bleezing finely,” I like 
to get acquainted with my fellow-men of the pine belt— 
hewers of pine and drawers of cedar, charcoal burners and 
gatherers of peat-moss; doughty Nimrods all, full of 
strange stories of great game killed and of greater that got 
away. Then, when 10 o’clock comes, I take my lamp up to 
a fireless room and tuck myself away under covers a foot 
thick, while the northwest wind, battling against the 
rampart of pines that hem the inn about, roars me to 
sleep. 
The stars are still shining in the sky when a pounding 
at the door calls me downstairs, where I perform my ablu¬ 
tions in a tin basin at the kitchen door, rub my face into 
a glow with a crash towel, and sleek my locks with a 
veteran comb that hangs by the bit of looking-glass near 
the window. I am the only guest, so I am sure of the 
warm seat by the stove at breakfast—and such a break¬ 
fast! There are for piece de resistance fat, juicy saus¬ 
ages, cracking their chestnut sides with geniality, and 
brown buckwheat cakes hot off the griddle and almost 
as round as the same, their entrancing vapors mingling in 
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