I rather pity a fellow, too, who eats grocer's apples, and confectioner's nuts, and baker's cream cakes, who never knows the fun of going down cellar to the apple bins to fill his pockets for school, and who owns no right in a pile of butternuts on the garret floor. I am sorry for a boy that knows nothing of the manly freedom of trowsers tucked in boots, hands and feet both cased in home-knit mittens and home-knit socks--I cannot believe his blood is as red, or can possibly flow so deep and strong in his sidewalk sort of life, as the young fellows who chop wood and ply the snow-shovel, and turn out _en masse_ with snow-ploughs after a long storm--the sound of the future strength of the land is in the sturdy stamp of their snowy boots at the door as they come in from their hearty work. I am not writing of country boys that want to be clerks,--they are spoiled for fun anyhow,--but of the boys that expect, if they expect anything in particular, to stay on the farm and own it themselves some day. This stinging cold morning the boys at the schoolhouse door are not discussing the play-bills of the _Globe_ or the _Museum_, but how the river froze last night, turning the long quiet surface to blue-black ice, as smooth as a looking-glass. Now what skating! what grand noonings, what glorious evenings! No rink or frog-pond, where one no sooner gets under headway than he must turn about, but miles and miles of curving reaches leading him forward between rustling sedges, till he sees the white caps of the open lake dancing before him. Presently the snow comes and puts an end to the sport; for sweeping miles and miles of ice is out of the question. After the snow, a thaw; and then the jolly snow-balling. There is not enough of a thaw to take the snow off; only enough to make it just sufficiently sloppy and soft for the freeze-up that follows to give it a crust almost as hard and smooth as the ice lately covered up. Then such coasting! Just think of dragging your sled of a moonlight night up a mile of easy tramping to the foot of the mountain, whence you come down again, now fast, now slow, now "like a streak" down a sharp incline, now running over a even-rail fence buried in the glittering drifts, and bringing up at last at a neighbor's door, or at the back side of your own barnyard! It is great fun, too, to slide on the drifts with "slews" or "jump-ers." These are made sometimes of one, sometimes of two barrel-staves, and are sure to give you many a jolly bump and wintersault. There is fun to be had _in_ the drifts too, digging caves or under-snow houses, wherein you may build a fire without the least danger. Here you can be Esquimaux, and your whole tribe sally forth from the igloë and attack a terrible white bear, if one of the party will kindly consent to be a bear for awhile. You can make him white enough by pelting him with snow, and he will _bear_ enough before he is finally killed. [Illustration: THE IMPROVISED SLEIGH.]