When the snows came, two and three feet deep, we got out the family
sled from its summer lodging in the barn and went forth, muffled in
interminable knit tippets and other woollen armor, to coast down the
long slope. Our father sat in front with the reins in his hands and
his feet thrust out to steer, and away we went clinging fast behind
him. Sometimes we swept triumphantly to the bottom; at other times we
would collide with some hidden obstacle, and describe each a separate
trajectory into the snow-banks. We made enormous snow-balls by
beginning with a small one and rolling it over and over in the soft
snow till it waxed too vast for our strength; two or three of these
piled one on another would be sculptured by the author of The Scarlet
Letter into a snow-man, who would stand stanch for weeks. Snow-storms
in Lenox began early and lasted till far into April. The little red
house had all it could do, sometimes, to lift its upper windows above
them. In the front yard there was a symmetrical balsam fir-tree,
tapering like a Chinese pagoda. One winter morning we found upon one
of its lower boughs a little brown sparrow frozen stiff. We put it in
a card-board coffin, and dug out a grave for it beneath the fir, with
a shingle head-stone. The funeral ceremonies had for the two mourners
a solemnity such as is not always felt at such functions in later
life.

Of the regular daily routine was the journey to Luther Butler's,
quarter of a mile up the road, for milk and butter. I generally
accompanied my father, and saw placid Luther's cows, placid as
himself, with their broad, wet noses, amiable dark eyes, questionable
horns, and ambrosial breath. Mr. Tappan, our landlord, had horses,
and once he mounted me on the bare back of one of the largest of these
quadrupeds, which, to the stupefaction of everybody, instantly set off
at full gallop. Down the road we thundered, the rider, with his legs