“'It snows!' cries the schoolboy, 'Hurrah!'
And his shout is heard through parlor and hall.”
MCGUFFEY's THIRD READER.
(Well, maybe it was the Second Reader. And if it was the Fourth, what
difference does it make? And, furthermore, who 's doing this thing, you
or me?)
Had it not been that never in my life have I ever heard anybody say
either “It snows!” or “Hurrah!” it is improbable that I should have
remembered the first line of a poem describing the effect produced upon
different kinds of people by the sight of the first snowstorm of winter.
Had it not been for the plucky (not to say heroic) effort to rhyme
“hall” with “hurrah” I should not have remembered the second, and still
another line of it, depicting the emotions of a poor widow with a large
family and a small woodpile, is burned into my memory only by reason
of the shocking language it contains, the more shocking in that it was
deliberately put forth to be read by innocent-minded children. Poor
Carrie Rinehart! When she stood up to read that, she got as red as a
beet, and I believed her when she told me afterward that she thought she
would sink right through that floor. Of course, some had to snicker, but
the most of us, I am thankful to say, were a credit to our bringing up,
and never let on we heard it. All the same it was a terrible thing to
have to speak right out loud before everybody. If any of the boys (let
alone the girls), had said that because he felt like saying it, he would
have been sent in to the principal, and that night his daddy would have
given him another licking.
Even now I cannot bring myself to write the line without toning it down.
“'It snows!' cries the widow. 'Oh G--d!'”
At the beginning of winter, I will not deny, that the schoolboy might
have shouted: “It's snowin'! Hooee!” when he saw the first snow flakes
sifting down, and realized that the Old Woman was picking her geese.
A change is always exciting, and winter brings many joyous sports
and pastimes, skating, and snowballing, and sliding down hill,
and--er--er--I said skating didn't I? and--er--Oh, yes, sleigh-riding,
and--er--Well, I guess that's about all.
Skating, now, that's fine. I know a boy who, when the red ball goes up
in the street-cars, sneaks under his coat a pair of wooden-soled skates,
with runners that curl up over the toes like the stems of capital
letters in the Spencerian copy-book. He is ashamed of the old-fashioned
things, which went out of date long and long before my day, but he says
that they are better than the hockeys. Well, you take a pair of such
skates and strap them on tightly until you can't tell by the feel which
is feet and which is wooden soles, and you glide out upon the ice above
the dam for, say about four hours, with the wind from the northwest and
the temperature about nine below, and I tell you it is something grand.
And if you run over a stick that is frozen in the ice, or somebody bumps
into you, or your feet slide out from under you, and you strike on your
ear and part of your face on the ice, and go about ten feet ah, it's
great! Simply great. And it's nice too, to skate into an air-hole into
water about up to your neck, and have the whole mob around you whooping
and “hollering” and slapping their legs with glee, because they know it
isn't deep enough to drown you, and you look so comical trying to claw
out. And when you do get out, it takes such along time to get your
skates of, and you feel so kind of chilly like, and when you get home
your clothes are frozen stiff on you--Oh, who would willingly miss such
sport?
And sleigh-riding! Me for sleigh-riding! You take a nice, sharp day in
winter, when the sky is as blue as can be because all the moisture is
frozen out of the air, a day when the snow under the sleigh runners
whines and creaks, as if thousands of tiny wineglasses were being
crushed by them, and the bells go jing-jing, jing-jing on the frosty
air which just about takes the hide off your face; when you hold your
mittens up to your ears and then have to take them down to slap yourself
across the chest to get the blood agoing in your fingers; when you kick
your feet together and dumbly wonder why it is your toes don't click
like marbles; when the cold creeps up under your knitted pulse-warmers,
and in at every possible little leak until it has soaked into your very
bones; when you snuggle down under the lap-robe where it is warm as
toast (day before yesterday's toast) and try to pull your shoulders up
over your head; when a little drop hangs on the end of your nose,
which has ceased to feel like a living, human nose, and now resembles
something whittled to a point; when you hold your breath as long as
you can, and your jaw waggles as if you were playing chin-chopper with
it--Ah, that's the sport of kings! And after you have got as cold as you
possibly can get, and simply cannot stand it a minute longer, you ride
and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride.
Once in a while you turn out for another sleigh, and nearly upset in the
process, and you can see that in all points its occupants are exactly as
you are, just as happy and contented. There aren't any dogs to run out
and bark at you. Old Maje and Tige, and even little Bounce and Guess
are snoozing behind the kitchen stove. All there is is just jing-jing,
jing-jing, jing-jing, not a bird-cry or a sound of living creature.
jing-jing, jing-jing..... Well, yes, kind o' monotonous, but still....
You pass a house, and a woman comes out to scrape off a plate to the
chickens standing on one foot in a corner where the sun can get at them,
and the wind cannot. She scrapes slowly, and looks at you as much as to
say: “I wonder who's sick. Must be somebody going for the doctor, day
like this.” And then she shudders: “B-b-b-oo-oo-oo!” and runs back into
the house and slams the door hard. You snuffle and look at the chimney
that has thick white smoke coming out of it, and consider that very
likely a nice, warm fire is making all that smoke, and you snuffle
again, and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride
and 'ride. And about an hour and a half after you have given up all
hopes, and are getting resigned to your fate, you turn off the big road
and up the lane to the house where you are going on your pleasure-trip,
and you hop out as nimble as a sack of potatoes, and hobble into the
house, and don't say how-de-do or anything, but just make right for the
stove. The people all squall out: “Why, ain't you 'most froze?” and
if you answer, “Yes sum,” it's as much as ever. Generally you can't do
anything but just stand and snuffle and look as if you hadn't a friend
on earth. And about the time you get so that some spots are pretty warm,
and other spots aren't as cold as they were, why then you wrap up, and
go home again with the same experience, only more so. Fine! fine!
It's nice, too, when there's a whole crowd out together in a wagon-bed
with straw in it. There's something so cozy in straw! And the tin horns
you blow in each other's ear, and the songs you sing: “Jingle bells,
jingle bells, jingle all the way,” and “Waw-unneeta! Waw-unneeta, ay-usk
thy sowl if we shud part,” and “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and “Johnny
Shmoker,” and that variation of “John Brown's Body,” where every time
you sing over the verse you leave off one more word, and somebody always
forgets, and you laugh fit to kill yourself, and just have a grand time.
And maybe you take a whole lot of canned cove oysters with you, and when
you get out to Makemson's, or wherever it is you're going, Mrs. Makemson
puts the kettle on and makes a stew, cooking the oysters till they are
thoroughly done. And she makes coffee, the kind you can't tell from tea
by the looks, and have to try twice before you can tell by the taste.
Ah! winter brings many joyous sports and pastimes. And you get back home
along about half-past two, and the fire's out, and the folks are in bed,
and you have to be at the store to open up at seven--Laws! I wish it was
so I could go sleigh-riding once more in the long winter evenings,
when the pitcher in the spare bedroom bursts, and makes a noise like a
cannon.
And sliding down hill, I like that.
What? Coasting? Never heard of it. If it's anything like sliding down
hill, it's all right. For a joke you can take a barrel-stave and hold on
to that and slide down. It goes like a scared rabbit, but that isn't
so much the point as that it slews around and spills you into a drift.
Sleds are lower and narrower than they used to be, and they also lack
the artistic adornment of a pink, or a blue, or a black horse, painted
with the same stencil but in different colors, and named “Dexter,” or
“Rarus,” or “Goldsmith Maid.” These are good names, but nobody ever
called his sled by a name. Boggs's hill, back of the lady's house that
taught the infant-class in Sunday-school, was a good hill. It had a
creek at the bottom, and a fine, long ride, eight or ten feet, on the
ice. But Dangler's hill was the boss. It was the one we all made up our
minds we would ride down some day when the snow was just right. We'd
go over there' and look up to the brow of the hill and say: “Gee! But
wouldn't a fellow come down like sixty, though?”
“Betchy!”
We'd look up again, and somebody would say: “Aw, come on. Less go over
to Boggs's hill.”
“Thought you was goin' down Dangler's.”
“Yes, I know, but all the other fellows is over to Boggs's.”
“A-ah, ye're afraid.”
“Ain't either.”
“Y' are teether.”
“I dare you.”
“Oh, well now--”
“I double dare you.”
“All right. I will if you will. You go first.”
“Nah, you go first. The fellow that's dared has got to go first. Ain't
that so, Chuck? Ain't that so, Monkey?”
“I'll go down if you will, on'y you gotta go first.”
“Er--er--Who all 's over at Boggs's hill?”
“Oh, the whole crowd of 'em, Turkey-egg McLaughlin, and Ducky
Harshberger, and--Oh, I don' know who all.”
“Tell you what less do. Less wait till it gets all covered with ice, and
all slick and smooth. Then less come over and go down.”
“Say, won't she go like sixty then! Jeemses Rivers! Come on, I'll beat
you to the corner.”
That was the closest we ever came to going down Dangler's hill. Railroad
hill wasn't so bad, over there by the soap-factory, because they didn't
run trains all the time, and you stood a good chance of missing being
run over by the engine, but Dangler's Well, now, I want to tell you
Dangler's was an awful steep hill, and a long one, and when you think
that it was so steep nobody ever pretended to drive up it even in the
summer-time, and you slide down the hill and think that, once you got to
going.
Fun's fun, I know, but nobody wants to go home with half his scalp
hanging over one eye, and dripping all over the back porch. Because,
you know, a fellow's mother gets crosser about blood on wood-work than
anything else. Scrubbing doesn't do the least bit of good; it has to be
planed off, or else painted.
Let me see, now. Have I missed anything? I'll count 'em off on my
fingers. There's skating, and sleigh-riding, and sliding down hill, and
Oh, yes. Snowballing and making snow-men. Nobody makes a snow-man but
once, and nobody makes a snow-house after it has caved in on him once
and like to killed him. And as for snowballing--Look here. Do you know
what's the nicest thing about winter? Get your feet on a hot stove,
and have the lamp over your left shoulder, and a pan of apples, and
something exciting to read, like “Frank Among the Indians.” Eh, how
about it? In other words, the best thing about winter is when you can
forget that it is winter.
The excitement that prompts “It snows!” and “Hurrah!” mighty soon peters
out, and along about the latter part of February, when you go to the
window and see that it is snowing again--again? Consarn the luck!--you
and the poor widow with the large family and the small woodpile are
absolutely at one.
You do get so sick and tired of winter. School lets out at four o'clock,
and it's almost dark then. There's no time for play, for there's all
that wood and kindling to get in, and Pap's awful cranky when he hops
out of bed these frosty mornings to light the fire, and finds you've
been skimpy with the kindling. And the pump freezes up, and you've got
to shovel snow off the walks and out in the back-yard so Tilly can hang
up the clothes when she comes to do the washing. And your mother is just
as particular about your neck being clean as she is in summer when
the water doesn't make you feel so shivery. And there's the bottle
of goose-grease always handy, and the red flannel to pin around your
throat, and your feet in the bucket of hot water before you go to
bed--Aw, put 'em right in. Yes, I know it's hot. That's what going to
make you well. In with 'em. Aw, child, it isn't going to scald you. Go
on now. The water'll be stone-cold in a minute. “Oh, I don't like winter
for a cent. Kitchoo! There, I've gone and caught fresh cold.
“I wish it would hurry up and come spring.
“When the days begin to lengthen,
The cold begins to strengthen.”
Now, you know that doesn't stand to reason. Every day the sun inches a
little higher in the heavens. His rays strike us more directly and for a
longer time each day. But it's the cantankerous fact, and it simply has
to stand to reason. That's the answer, and the sum has to be figured out
somehow in accordance with it. Like one time, when I was about sixteen
years old, and in the possession of positive and definite information
about the way the earth went around the sun and all, I was arguing with
one of these old codgers that think they know it all, one of these
men that think it is so smart to tell you: “Sonny, when you get older,
you'll know more 'n you do now--I hope.” Well, he was trying to tell me
that the day lengthened at one end before it did at the other. I did my
best to dispel the foolish notion from his mind, and explained to him
how it simply could not be, but no, sir! he stood me down. Finally,
since pure reasoning was wasted on him, I took the almanac off the nail
it hung by, and--I bedog my riggin's if the old skidama link wasn't
right after all. Sundown keeps coming a minute later every day, while,
for quite a while there, sun-up sticks at the same old time, 7:30 A.M.
Did you ever hear of anything so foolish?
“Very early, while it is yet dark,” the alarm clock of old Dame Nature
begins to buzz. It may snow and blow, and winter may seem to have
settled in in earnest, but deep down in the earth, the root-tips, where
lie the brains of vegetables, are gaping and stretching, and ho-humming,
and wishing they could snooze a little longer. When it thaws in the
afternoon and freezes up at sunset as tight as bricks, they tell me
that out in the sugar-camp there are great doings. I don't know about
it myself, but I have heard tell of boring a hole in the maple-tree,
and sticking in a spout, and setting a bucket to catch the drip, and
collecting the sap, and boiling down, and sugaring off. I have heard
tell of taffy-pullings, and how Joe Hendricks stuck a whole gob of
maple-wax in Sally Miller's hair, and how she got even with him by
rubbing his face with soot. It is only hearsay with me, but I'll tell
you what I have done: I have eaten real maple sugar, and nearly pulled
out every tooth I had in my head with maple-wax, and I have even gone so
far as to have maple syrup on pancakes. It's good, too. The maple syrup
came on the table in a sort of a glass flagon with a metal lid to it,
and it was considered the height of bad manners to lick off the last
drop of syrup that hung on the nose of the flagon. And yet it must not
be allowed to drip on the table-cloth. It is a pity we can't get any
more maple syrup nowadays, but I don't feel so bad about the loss of it,
as I do to think what awful liars people can be, declaring on the label
that 'deed and double, 'pon their word and honor, it is pure, genuine,
unadulterated maple syrup, when they know just as well as they know
anything that it is only store-sugar boiled up with maple chips.
Along about the same time, the boys come home with a ring of mud around
their mouths, and exhaling spicy breaths like those which blow o'er
Ceylon's isle in the hymn-book. They bear a bundle of roots, whose
thick, pink hide mother whittles off with the butcher-knife and sets
to steep. Put away the store tea and coffee. To-night as we drink the
reddish aromatic brew we return, not only to our own young days, but
to the young days of the nation when our folks moved to the West in a
covered wagon; when grandpap, only a little boy then, about as big as
Charley there, got down the rifle and killed the bear that had climbed
into the hog-pen; when they found old Cherry out in the timber with her
calf between her legs, and two wolves lying where she had horned them
to death--we return to-night to the high, heroic days of old, when our
forefathers conquered the wilderness and our foremothers reared the
families that peopled it. This cup of sassafras to-night in their loving
memory! Earth, rest easy on their moldering bones!
Some there be that still take stock in the groundhog. I don't believe
he knows anything about it. And I believe that any animal that had
the sense that he is reputed to have would not have remained a mere
ground-hog all these years. At least not in this country. Anyhow, it's
a long ways ahead, six weeks is, especially at the time when you do wish
so fervently that it would come spring. We keep on shoveling coal in the
furnace, and carrying out ashes, and longing and crying: “Oh, for pity's
sakes! When is this going to stop?” And then, one morning, we awaken
with a start Wha--what? Sh! Keep still, can't you? There is a more
canorous and horn-like quality to the crowing of Gildersleeve's rooster,
and his hens chant cheerily as they kick the litter about. But it wasn't
these cheerful sounds that wakened us with a start. There! Hear that?
Hear it? Two or three long-drawn, reedy notes, and an awkward boggle at
a trill, but oh, how sweet! How sweet! It is the song-sparrow, blessed
bird! It won't be long now; it won't be long.
The snow fort in the back-yard still sulks there black and dirty. “I'll
go when I get good and ready, and not before,” it seems to say. Other
places the thinner snow has departed and left behind it mud that seizes
upon your overshoe with an “Oh, what's your rush?” In the middle of
the road it lies as smooth as pancake-batter. A load of building stone
stalls, and people gather on the sidewalk to tell the teamster quietly
and unostentatiously that he ought to have had more sense than to pile
it on like that with the roads the way they are. Every time the cruel
whip comes down and the horses dance under it, the women peering out of
the front windows wince, and cluck “Tchk! Ain't it terrible? He ought
to be arrested.” This way and that the team turns and tugs, but all in
vain. Somebody puts on his rubber boots and wades out to help, fearing
not the muddy spokes. Yo hee! Yo hee! No use. He talks it over with the
teamster. You can hear him say: “Well, suit yourself. If you want to
stay here all night.”
And then the women exult: “Goody! Goody! Serves him right. Now he has to
take off some of the stone. Lazy man's load!”
The mother of children flies to the back-door when school lets out.
“Don't you come in here with all that mud!” she squalls excitedly. “Look
at you! A peck o' dirt on each foot. Right in my nice clean kitchen that
I just scrubbed. Go 'long now and clean your shoes. Go 'long, I tell
you. Slave and slave for you and that's all the thanks I get. You'd
keep the place looking like a hogpen, if I wasn't at you all the time. I
never saw such young ones since the day I was made. Never. Whoopin' and
hollerin' and trackin' in and out. It's enough to drive a body crazy.”
(Don't you care. It's just her talk. If it isn't one thing it's another,
cleaning your shoes, or combing your hair, or brushing your clothes, or
using your handkerchief, or shutting the door softly, or holding your
spoon with your fingers and not in your fist, or keeping your finger out
of your glass when you drink--something the whole blessed time. Forever
and eternally picking at a fellow about something. And saying the same
thing over and over so many times. That's the worst of it!)
Pap and mother read over the seed catalogues, all about “warm, light
soils,” and “hardy annuals,” and “sow in drills four inches apart.” It
kind of hurries things along when you do that. In the south window of
the kitchen is a box full of black dirt in which will you look out what
you're doing? Little more and you'd have upset it. There are tomato
seeds in that, I'll have you know. Oh, yes, government seeds. Somebody
sends 'em, I don't know who. Congressman, I guess, whoever he is. I
don't pretend to keep track of 'em. And say. When was this watered last?
There it is. Unless I stand over you every minute--My land! If there's
anything done about this house I've got to do it.
Between the days when it can't make up its mind whether to snow or to
rain, and tries to do both at once, comes a day when it is warm enough
(almost) to go without an overcoat. The Sunday following you can hardly
hear what the preacher has to say for the whooping and barking. The
choir members have cough drops in their cheeks when they stand up to
sing, and everybody stops in at the drug store with: “Say, Doc, what's
good for a cold?”
Eggs have come down. Yesterday they were nine for a quarter; to-day
they're ten. Gildersleeve wants a dollar for a setting of eggs, but
he'll let you have the same number of eggs for thirty cents if you'll
wait till he can run a needle into each one. So afraid you'll raise
chickens of your own.
Excited groups gather about rude circles scratched in the mud, and there
is talk of “pureys,” and “reals,” and “aggies,” and “commies,” and “fen
dubs!” There is a rich click about the bulging pockets of the boys, and
every so often in school time something drops on the floor and rolls
noisily across the room. When Miss Daniels asks: “Who did that?” the
boys all look so astonished. Who did what, pray tell? And when she picks
up a marble and inquires: “Whose is this?” nobody can possibly imagine
whose it might be, least of all the boy whose most highly-prized shooter
it is. At this season of the year, too, there is much serious talk as
to the exceeding sinfulness of “playing for keeps.” The little boys, in
whose thumbs lingers the weakness of the arboreal ape, their ancestor,
and who “poke” their marbles, drink in eagerly the doctrine that when
you win a marble you ought to give it back, but the hard-eyed fellows,
who can plunk it every time, sit there and let it go in one ear and out
the other, there being a hole drilled through expressly for the purpose.
What? Give up the rewards of skill? Ah, g'wan!
The girls, even to those who have begun to turn their hair up under, are
turning the rope and dismally chanting: “All in together, pigs in the
meadow, nineteen twenty, leave the rope empty,” or whatever the rune is.
It won't be long now. It won't be long.
“For lo; the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the
flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds
is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the
fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the
tender grape give a good smell. Arise my love, my fair one
and come away.”