Thursday evening lecture to a very small audience, announced to his
hearers that he should certainly write a discourse against dancing
for the next weekly occasion.

The good doctor was even with his word in the matter, and gave out
some very sonorous discourses, without in the least stopping the
round of gaieties kept up by these dissipated Katy-dids, which ran
on, night after night, till the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic, which
occurred somewhere about the first of September.

Poor Miss Katy, with her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one
of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad
shower of last year's leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however,
avoided Jack Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner of a
nice little cottage that had been built in the wood that summer.

There good old Mr. and Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and
her brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home; and when the
storm howled without, and lashed the poor naked trees, the Crickets
on the warm hearth would chirp out cheery welcome to papa as he came
in from the snowy path, or mamma as she sat at her work-basket.

"Cheep, cheep, cheep!" little Freddy would say. "Mamma, who is it
says 'cheep'?"

"Dear Freddy, it's our own dear little cricket, who loves us and
comes to sing to us when the snow is on the ground."

So when poor Miss Katy-did's satin and lace were all swept away, the
warm home-talents of the Crickets made for them a welcome refuge.