.

My mother would have found these winter days very long had it not been
for baby Jessie, for father was busily hauling wood from the Cedar River
some six or seven miles away, and the almost incessant, mournful piping
of the wind in the chimney was dispiriting. Occasionally Mrs. Button,
Mrs. Gammons or some other of the neighbors would drop in for a visit,
but generally mother and Jessie were alone till Harriet and Frank and I
came home from school at half-past four.

Our evenings were more cheerful. My sister Hattie was able to play a few
simple tunes on the melodeon and Cyrus and Eva or Mary Abbie and John
occasionally came in to sing. In this my mother often took part. In
church her clear soprano rose above all the others like the voice of
some serene great bird. Of this gift my father often expressed his open
admiration.

There was very little dancing during our second winter but Fred Jewett
started a singing school which brought the young folks together once a
week. We boys amused ourselves with "Dare Gool" and "Dog and Deer." Cold
had little terror for us, provided the air was still. Often we played
"Hi Spy" around the barn with the thermometer twenty below zero, and not
infrequently we took long walks to visit Burton and other of our boy
friends or to borrow something to read. I was always on the trail of a
book.

Harriet joined me in my search for stories and nothing in the
neighborhood homes escaped us. Anything in print received our most
respectful consideration. Jane Porter's _Scottish Chiefs_ brought to us
both anguish and delight. _Tempest and Sunshine_ was another discovery.
I cannot tell to whom I was indebted for _Ivanhoe_ but I read and
re-read it with the most intense pleasure. At the same time or near it I
borrowed a huge bundle of _The New York Saturday Night_ and _The New
York Ledger_ and from them I derived an almost equal enjoyment. "Old
Sleuth" and "Buckskin Bill" were as admirable in their way as "Cedric
the Saxon."

At this time _Godey's Ladies Book_ and _Peterson's Magazine_ were the
only high-class periodicals known to us. _The Toledo Blade_ and _The New
York Tribune_ were still my father's political advisers and Horace
Greeley and "Petroleum V. Nasby" were equally corporeal in my mind.

Almanacs figured largely in my reading at this time, and were a source
of frequent quotation by my father. They were nothing but small,
badly-printed, patent medicine pamphlets, each with a loop of st