sinks like thistle-down
behind the woods.

It is all over. The Fair is over. Let's go home. Isn't it wonderful
though, what men can do? You'll see; they'll be flying like birds, one
of these days. That's what we little boys think, but we overhear old
Nate Wells say to Tom Slaymaker, as we pass them: "Well, I d' know. I
d' know 's these here b'loon ascensions is worth the money they cost
the 'Sociation. I seen so many of 'em, they don't interest me nummore.
'Less, o' course, sumpun should happen to the feller."

CHRISTMAS BACK HOME

It was the time of year when the store windows are mighty interesting.
Plotner's bakery, that away, 'way back in the summer-time, was an
ice-cream saloon, showed a plaster man in the window, with long, white
whiskers, in top boots and a brown coat and peaked hat, all trimmed with
fur, and carrying a little pinetree with arsenical foliage. Over his
head dangled a thicket of canes hanging by their crooks from a twine
string stretched across. They were made of candy striped spirally in red
and white. There were candy men and women in the window, and chocolate
mice with red eyes, and a big cake, all over frosting, with a candy
preacher on it marrying a candy man and lady. The little children stood
outside, with their joggerfies, and arithmetics, and spellers, and
slates bound in red flannel under their arms, and swallowed hard as they
looked. Whenever anybody went in for a penny's worth of yeast and opened
the door, that had a bell fastened to it so that Mrs. Plotner could
hear in the back room, and come to wait on the customer, the smell of
wintergreen and peppermint and lemonsticks and hot taffy gushed out so
strong that they couldn't swallow fast enough, but stood there choking
and dribbling at the mouth.

Brown's shoe store exhibited green velvet slippers with deers' heads
on them, and Galbraith's windows were hung with fancy dressgoods, and
handkerchiefs with dogs' heads in the corners; but, next to Plotner's,
Case's drug-and-book store was the nicest. When you first went in, it
smelled of cough candy and orris root, but pretty soon you could notice
the smell of drums and new sleds, and about the last smell, (sort of
down at the bottom of things) was the smell of new books, the fish-glue
on the binding, and the muslin covers, and the printer's ink, and that
is a smell that if it ever gets a good hold of you, never lets go. There
were the "Rollo" books, and the "Little Prudy" boo