permitted ourselves to buy in the village on
Saturday, and often we wandered on and on, till the sinking sun warned
us of duties at home and sent us hurrying to the open.

It was always hard to go back to the farm after one of these days of
leisure--back to greasy overalls and milk-bespattered boots, back to the
society of fly-bedevilled cows and steaming, salty horses, back to the
curry-comb and swill bucket,--but it was particularly hard during this
our last summer on the prairie. But we did it with a feeling that we
were nearing the end of it. "Next year we'll be living in town!" I said
to the boys exultantly. "No more cow-milking for me!"

I never rebelled at hard, clean work, like haying or harvest, but the
slavery of being nurse to calves and scrub-boy to horses cankered my
spirits more and more, and the thought of living in town filled me with
an incredulous anticipatory delight. A life of leisure, of intellectual
activity seemed about to open up to me, and I met my chums in a
restrained exaltation which must have been trying to their souls. "I'm
sorry to leave you," I jeered, "but so it goes. Some are chosen, others
are left. Some rise to glory, others remain plodders--" such was my airy
attitude. I wonder that they did not roll me in the dust.

Though my own joy and that of my brother was keen and outspoken, I have
no recollection that my mother uttered a single word of pleasure. She
must have been as deeply excited, and as pleased as we, for it meant
more to her than to us, it meant escape from the drudgery of the farm,
from the pain of early rising, and yet I cannot be sure of her feeling.
So far as she knew this move was final. Her life as a farmer's wife was
about to end after twenty years of early rising and never ending labor,
and I think she must have palpitated with joy of her approaching freedom
from it all.

As we were not to move till the following March, and as winter came on
we went to school as usual in the bleak little shack at the corner of
our farm and took part in all the neighborhood festivals. I have
beautiful memories of trotting away across the plain to spelling schools
and "Lyceums" through the sparkling winter nights with Franklin by my
side, while the low-hung sky blazed with stars, and great white owls
went flapping silently away before us.--I am riding in a long sleigh to
the north beneath a wondrous moon to witness a performance of _Lord
Dundreary_ at the Barker school-house.--I a