HOUSE AND GARDEN 
February, 
1913 
The sparkling water pours from the dark cavern forming tier upon tier 
of flashing icicles as it plunges downward 
meal was ended, we sat around the 
library table with cheese and coffee, but¬ 
ternuts, apples and cider, while Harry 
recited bis epic on the Passage of the 
Gulf. He pictured Scylla in one of 
the caves of the precipice on the north 
side of the narrow passage and likened 
the projecting tree trunks to the long 
necks of the snaky monster, while the 
chasm on the south side proclaimed itself 
Charybdis. The drifts which they en¬ 
countered were treated as dragons and the 
shovels with which they were reduced 
were accounted spears and javelins. 
There were interruptions at first by his 
fellow-voyagers, who fancied the narra¬ 
tor had forgotten something, but later all 
sat in silent admiration of his imagination. 
When the story was finished and the ap¬ 
plause had subsided, Marian demurely in¬ 
quired : 
“Did you recite the whole of Virgil, Mr. 
Forsyth ?” 
“All I could remember, and then some 
was the prompt reply. 
The hours of a winter’s day in the 
Happy Talley are so few and so precious that it is our custom to 
breakfast at daylight. Yet when I came down to that meal the 
next morning I found Marian and Harry in the library studying 
out the mystery of an Indian snowshoe knot. 
“Where are the other infants?” I inquired. 
“Madge says she can stand up longer on skis than Jack, and 
they are having a contest to prove it.” 
When they came in to breakfast a little 
later their appearance indicated that nei¬ 
ther of them had succeeded in standing up 
at all. More snow had fallen during the 
night, of the powdery, blowy kind, with 
which the north wind playing: 
“Curves his white bastions with pro¬ 
jected roof, 
Round every windward stake, or tree or 
door.” 
“It snowed a lot, last night, didn't it?” 
inquired Marian, between bites of her 
buckwheat cakes. 
“Yes, young woman,” I replied, “and 
that Gulf you came through last night is 
closed for the winter.” 
“Hurrah!” exclaimed the child, laying 
down her fork to clap her hands. “Then 
t can stay here for three months!” 
“How do people know when the Gulf 
is open so that they can get through?” 
inquired Harry. 
“They don’t. The first to try it last 
spring got into trouble. It was the middle 
of March when a man came to the cabin to borrow a shovel to 
dig his horse and sleigh out of drifts. He had started with his 
wife from Shokan in a sleigh. Half way through the Gulf he 
abandoned the sleigh. A little farther along the horse stuck in a 
drift. I don’t know where he left his wife. Probably somewhere 
(Continued on page 137) 
in a moonlight photograph the lantern made 
a snaky trail, but, strangely enough, the 
bearer’s form was wholly invisible 
Winter’s magic transformed the grotto into a crystal cave of fairyland, 
covering its entrance with silver stalactites 
