tatively. I never forgot the
strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little
brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so
jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some
deep Bohemian forest {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

XI

DURING the week before Christmas, Jake was the most important person of
our household, for he was to go to town and do all our Christmas shopping.
But on the 21st of December, the snow began to fall. The flakes came down
so thickly that from the sitting-room windows I could not see beyond the
windmill--its frame looked dim and gray, unsubstantial like a shadow. The
snow did not stop falling all day, or during the night that followed. The
cold was not severe, but the storm was quiet and resistless. The men could
not go farther than the barns and corral. They sat about the house most of
the day as if it were Sunday; greasing their boots, mending their
suspenders, plaiting whiplashes.

On the morning of the 22d, grandfather announced at breakfast that it
would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases. Jake was
sure he could get through on horseback, and bring home our things in
saddle-bags; but grandfather told him the roads would be obliterated, and
a newcomer in the country would be lost ten times over. Anyway, he would
never allow one of his horses to be put to such a strain.

We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town. I had
wanted to get some picture-books for Yulka and Antonia; even Yulka was
able to read a little now. Grandmother took me into the ice-cold
storeroom, where she had some bolts of gingham and sheeting. She cut
squares of cotton cloth and we sewed them together into a book. We bound
it between pasteboards, which I covered with brilliant calico,
representing scenes from a circus. For two days I sat at the dining-room
table, pasting this book full of pictures for Yulka. We had files of those
good old family magazines which used to publish colored lithographs of
popular paintings, and I was allowed to use some of these. I took
"Napoleon Announcing the Divorce to Josephine" for my frontispiece. On the
white pages I grouped Sunday-School cards and advertising cards which I
had brought from my "old country." Fuchs got out the old candle-moulds and
made tallow candles. Grandmother hunted up her fancy cake-cutters and
baked gingerbread men and roosters, which we decora