“Oh, I smell my fun, I smell my fun! Hoorah! Hoorah! Oh, thank you, Miss kind Aunt Emma!”
Swinging Under the Old Elm. Page 127.
Such a hurrahing, hat-waving, and hand-clapping as went up from that Menagerie van, as the hospitable old gates swung out their giant arms to welcome the noisy party to the “old Brown Farm,” Papa’s young Paradise,—the theme of many a thrice-told nursery tale.
The horses, too, “smell their fun,” as they plunge through the open gateway, and, halting under an elm-tree’s shade, bend their glistening necks to seek the sweet morsels at their feet.
Papa looks almost a “boy again,” as with bright, glistening eyes he unpacks and deposits on the soft turf the “two girls, two nurses, three boys, and two dolls.”
Just one minute to straighten out the cramped limbs, one minute of oh! oh! ohing at the gigantic size and wonderful beauty of “the Old Elm” of the “old, old story,” and then Charlie Leonard, whose frequent visits here with Aunt Emma, in her quest of cream and butter, have made him quite at home, gives the marching order, and away fly the “two girls and three boys,” with nurses in the rear, first to the old well, for a drink from the very same
“Moss-covered bucket,”
their Papa had so often uplifted in the days of his boyish thirst,—then for a few high swings to explore the elm’s upper stories,—and then another flutter, and away they all flew, like a flock of chattering magpies, to find out for themselves the beauties and pleasures of the