ead that, she got as red as a
beet, and I believed her when she told me afterward that she thought she
would sink right through that floor. Of course, some had to snicker, but
the most of us, I am thankful to say, were a credit to our bringing up,
and never let on we heard it. All the same it was a terrible thing to
have to speak right out loud before everybody. If any of the boys (let
alone the girls), had said that because he felt like saying it, he would
have been sent in to the principal, and that night his daddy would have
given him another licking.

Even now I cannot bring myself to write the line without toning it down.

"'It snows!' cries the widow. 'Oh G--d!'"

At the beginning of winter, I will not deny, that the schoolboy might
have shouted: "It's snowin'! Hooee!" when he saw the first snow flakes
sifting down, and realized that the Old Woman was picking her geese.
A change is always exciting, and winter brings many joyous sports
and pastimes, skating, and snowballing, and sliding down hill,
and--er--er--I said skating didn't I? and--er--Oh, yes, sleigh-riding,
and--er--Well, I guess that's about all.

Skating, now, that's fine. I know a boy who, when the red ball goes up
in the street-cars, sneaks under his coat a pair of wooden-soled skates,
with runners that curl up over the toes like the stems of capital
letters in the Spencerian copy-book. He is ashamed of the old-fashioned
things, which went out of date long and long before my day, but he says
that they are better than the hockeys. Well, you take a pair of such
skates and strap them on tightly until you can't tell by the feel which
is feet and which is wooden soles, and you glide out upon the ice above
the dam for, say about four hours, with the wind from the northwest and
the temperature about nine below, and I tell you it is something grand.
And if you run over a stick that is frozen in the ice, or somebody bumps
into you, or your feet slide out from under you, and you strike on your
ear and part of your face on the ice, and go about ten feet ah, it's
great! Simply great. And it's nice too, to skate into an air-hole into
water about up to your neck, and have the whole mob around you whooping
and "hollering" and slapping their legs with glee, because they know it
isn't deep enough to drown you, and you look so comical trying to claw
out. And when you do get out, it takes such along time to get your
skates of, and you feel so kind of chilly like, and