of it, and consider that very
likely a nice, warm fire is making all that smoke, and you snuffle
again, and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride
and 'ride. And about an hour and a half after you have given up all
hopes, and are getting resigned to your fate, you turn off the big road
and up the lane to the house where you are going on your pleasure-trip,
and you hop out as nimble as a sack of potatoes, and hobble into the
house, and don't say how-de-do or anything, but just make right for the
stove. The people all squall out: "Why, ain't you 'most froze?" and
if you answer, "Yes sum," it's as much as ever. Generally you can't do
anything but just stand and snuffle and look as if you hadn't a friend
on earth. And about the time you get so that some spots are pretty warm,
and other spots aren't as cold as they were, why then you wrap up, and
go home again with the same experience, only more so. Fine! fine!

It's nice, too, when there's a whole crowd out together in a wagon-bed
with straw in it. There's something so cozy in straw! And the tin horns
you blow in each other's ear, and the songs you sing: "Jingle bells,
jingle bells, jingle all the way," and "Waw-unneeta! Waw-unneeta, ay-usk
thy sowl if we shud part," and "Nearer, my God, to Thee," and "Johnny
Shmoker," and that variation of "John Brown's Body," where every time
you sing over the verse you leave off one more word, and somebody always
forgets, and you laugh fit to kill yourself, and just have a grand time.
And maybe you take a whole lot of canned cove oysters with you, and when
you get out to Makemson's, or wherever it is you're going, Mrs. Makemson
puts the kettle on and makes a stew, cooking the oysters till they are
thoroughly done. And she makes coffee, the kind you can't tell from tea
by the looks, and have to try twice before you can tell by the taste.
Ah! winter brings many joyous sports and pastimes. And you get back home
along about half-past two, and the fire's out, and the folks are in bed,
and you have to be at the store to open up at seven--Laws! I wish it was
so I could go sleigh-riding once more in the long winter evenings,
when the pitcher in the spare bedroom bursts, and makes a noise like a
cannon.

And sliding down hill, I like that.

What? Coasting? Never heard of it. If it's anything like sliding down
hill, it's all right. For a joke you can take a barrel-stave and hold on
to that and slide down. It goes like a scare