me with both hands, and I stopped of course; for I could not
bear to shake the child, even in play, for a moment, because her back
was tender. Then she looked up at me with her beautiful eyes, so large,
unhealthy and delicate, and strangely shadowing outward, as if to spread
their meaning; and she said,--

"Now, John, this is no time to joke. I was almost frozen in bed last
night; and Annie like an icicle. Feel how cold my hands are. Now, will
you listen to what I have read about climates ten times worse than this;
and where none but clever men can live?"

"Impossible for me to listen now, I have hundreds of things to see to;
but I will listen after breakfast to your foreign climates, child. Now
attend to mother's hot coffee."

She looked a little disappointed, but she knew what I had to do; and
after all she was not so utterly unreasonable; although she did
read books. And when I had done my morning's work, I listened to her
patiently; and it was out of my power to think that all she said was
foolish.

For I knew common sense pretty well, by this time, whether it happened
to be my own, or any other person's, if clearly laid before me. And
Lizzie had a particular way of setting forth very clearly whatever she
wished to express and enforce. But the queerest part of it all was this,
that if she could but have dreamed for a moment what would be the first
application made me by of her lesson, she would rather have bitten her
tongue off than help me to my purpose.

She told me that in the Arctic Regions, as they call some places, a long
way north, where the Great Bear lies all across the heavens, and no
sun is up, for whole months at a time, and yet where people will go
exploring, out of pure contradiction, and for the sake of novelty, and
love of being frozen--that here they always had such winters as we were
having now. It never ceased to freeze, she said; and it never ceased to
snow; except when it was too cold; and then all the air was choked with
glittering spikes; and a man's skin might come off of him, before he
could ask the reason. Nevertheless the people there (although the snow
was fifty feet deep, and all their breath fell behind them frozen, like
a log of wood dropped from their shoulders), yet they managed to
get along, and make the time of the year to each other, by a little
cleverness. For seeing how the snow was spread, lightly over everything,
covering up the hills and valleys, and the foreskin of the