ws as well as joys; and he went on to say that
a journey to Philadelphia was a mere nothing nowadays. Why, one might
start, as for instance, that morning and be at Philadelphia the next
morning at eleven o'clock!

But how glad I was that he did not notice that I was homesick! He did
not even appear to mistrust such a thing. And as for drowning myself,
well, the less said or thought about that now the better.

I walked back to the house with the Old Squire; and I got him to let me
carry the axe, for I wanted Addison and Halse to think that Gramp and I
had been off mending fence together.

At intervals, however, for a month or more, I continued to be afflicted
by transient spasms of homesickness, but none of them were as severe as
these first ones, and they gradually ceased altogether.

Dear boys and girls who are homesick, it is astonishing sometimes how
quickly the spasm will pass off, and how bright and cheery life will
look again a few moments later. So don't jump into deep water without
waiting a bit to think it over. It is a hard old world to live in. I
don't pretend to tell you that it isn't; yet life has a great many
pleasant spots, after all, if only we will have a little patience and
courage to wait and look for them. Scores of poor, desperate young
people have actually drowned themselves, from one cause or another, who
would have scrambled out and lived happily for years afterwards, if only
they had not jumped in where the water was so deep! A safe rule in all
these cases is never try to commit suicide by drowning till after you
have learned to swim.

CHAPTER X

MUG-BREAD, PONES AND JOHNNY-REB TOAST

To this day I recall with what a zest my appetite returned after that
last attack of homesickness, and how good the farm food tasted. That
day, too, Gram had "mug-bread," and for supper pones made into
Johnny-reb toast. But these, perhaps, are unheard-of dishes to many
readers.

The pones were simply large, round, thin corn-meal cakes baked in a
fritter-spider in a hot oven. I have lately written to Cousin Ellen, who
now lives in the far Northwest, to ask her just how they used to make
those pones at the old farm. She has replied lightly that for a batch of
pones, they merely took a quart of yellow corn-meal, two tablespoonfuls
of wheat flour, a teaspoonful of salt and half a teaspoonful of soda,
all well stirred to a thin batter in boiling-hot water. This batter was
then poured into large fritter