reeps ran up and down my back! and oh! how
I loved to distinguish myself! I let them bundle me up till I was
nearly smothered. I paused with my mittened hand on the latch. I
shivered, though I could have sat the night out with a Polar bear
without another shawl. I opened the door, and then turned back, to
make a speech.

"I am not afraid," I said, in the noble accents of courage. "I am not
afraid to go. God goes with me."

Pride goeth before a fall. On the step outside I slid down into a
drift, just on the eve of triumph. They picked me up; they brought me
in. They found all of me inside my wrappings. They gave me a piece of
sugar and sent me to bed. And I was very glad. I did hate to go all
the way next door and all the way back, through the white snow, under
the white stars, invisible company keeping step with me.

* * * * *

And I remember my playmates.

There was always a crowd of us girls. We were a mixed set,--rich
little girls, well-to-do little girls, and poor little girls,--but not
because we were so democratic. Rather it came about, if my sister and
I are considered the centre of the ring, because we had suffered the
several grades of fortune. In our best days no little girls had to
stoop to us; in our humbler days we were not so proud that we had to
condescend to our chance neighbors. The granddaughters of Raphael the
Russian, in retaining their breeding and manners, retained a few of
their more exalted friends, and became a link between them and those
whom they later adopted through force of propinquity.

We were human little girls, so our amusements mimicked the life about
us. We played house, we played soldiers, we played Gentiles, we
celebrated weddings and funerals. We copied the life about us
literally. We had not been to a Froebel kindergarten, and learned to
impersonate butterflies and stones. Our elders would have laughed at
us for such nonsense. I remember once standing on the river bank with
a little boy, when a quantity of lumber was floating down on its way
to the distant sawmill. A log and a board crowded each other near
where we stood. The board slipped by first, but presently it swerved
and swung partly around. Then it righted itself with the stream and
kept straight on, the lazy log following behind. Said Zalmen to me,
interpreting: "The board looks back and says, 'Log, log, you will not
go with me? Then I will go on by myself.'" That boy was called simpl