r splitting firewood was our first spring task.

From time to time as the weather permitted, father had been cutting and
hauling maple and hickory logs from the forests of the Cedar River, and
these logs must now be made into stove-wood and piled for summer use.
Even before the school term ended we began to take a hand at this work,
after four o'clock and on Saturdays. While the hired man and father ran
the cross-cut saw, whose pleasant song had much of the seed-time
suggestion which vibrated in the _caw-caw_ of the hens as they burrowed
in the dust of the chip-yard, I split the easy blocks and my brother
helped to pile the finished product.

The place where the wood-pile lay was slightly higher than the barnyard
and was the first dry ground to appear in the almost universal slush and
mud. Delightful memories are associated with this sunny spot and with a
pond which appeared as if by some conjury, on the very field where I had
husked the down-row so painfully in November. From the wood-pile I was
often permitted to go skating and Burton was my constant companion in
these excursions. However, my joy in his companionship was not unmixed
with bitterness, for I deeply envied him the skates which he wore. They
were trimmed with brass and their runners came up over his toes in
beautiful curves and ended in brass acorns which transfigured their
wearer. To own a pair of such skates seemed to me the summit of all
earthly glory.

My own wooden "contraptions" went on with straps and I could not make
the runners stay in the middle of my soles where they belonged, hence my
ankles not only tipped in awkwardly but the stiff outer edges of my boot
counters dug holes in my skin so that my outing was a kind of torture
after all. Nevertheless, I persisted and, while Burton circled and
swooped like a hawk, I sprawled with flapping arms in a mist of ignoble
rage. That I learned to skate fairly well even under these disadvantages
argues a high degree of enthusiasm.

Father was always willing to release us from labor at times when the ice
was fine, and at night we were free to explore the whole country round
about, finding new places for our games. Sometimes the girls joined us,
and we built fires on the edges of the swales and played "gool" and a
kind of "shinny" till hunger drove us home.

We held to this sport to the last--till the ice with prodigious booming
and cracking fell away in the swales and broke through the icy drifts
(which