For he feels the coming snow—
For he feels the coming snow.”
“Well, he wouldn’t be likely to go at a gallop, would he? Was he supposed to be a race-horse? He was a hack, a broken-down old hack! Foolish, drunken peasants always want to go at breakneck speed, and then, when they fall into an ice-hole, or down a precipice, some one has to haul them out and doctor them. If I had my way, I’d prescribe a kind of turpentine for them that they wouldn’t forget in a hurry! And why did I lead a low card? If I had led the ace of clubs, I wouldn’t have fallen into a hole myself——”
“O’er the furrows soft and crumbling
Flies the sleigh so free and wild—
O’er the furrows soft and crumbling——”
“Crumbling—crumbling furrows—what stuff that is! People will let those writers scribble anything. It was that ten-spot that made all the trouble. Why the devil did it have to turn up just at that moment?”
“When a little boy comes tumbling—comes tumbling
Down the road a merry child—a merry child.”
“If the boy was running he must have been overeating himself and been naughty. Parents never will put their children to work. Instead of playing, that boy ought to have been splitting kindling, or reading the Bible—and I hadn’t the sense to come away! What an ass I was to stay after supper! Why didn’t I have my meal and go home?”