“What have you got—for talent?” I asked.
He thought a minute, and then said,
“Why, we’ve got banjo players to spare, club jugglers, a sleight-of-hand performer, four or five male quartettes, a stringed orchestra, two readers, and a ventriloquist. Of course, the night we could give to you would find some of these students unable to go, but tell me what sort of an entertainment you would like and I’ll see what we can do for you. We want to make the evenings brighter in some of these isolated, north country villages. It’s a little bit of social service that brings its own reward, for the boys like to get out and have a good country supper!”
He was able, finally, to make up a program which included a reader, a young professor who would swing flaming clubs, a sleight-of-hand performer and a male quartette.
On the afternoon appointed, these artists, wrapped up in thick clothes, appeared in front of a dormitory and were packed into a huge barge on runners until, including some invited professors and their wives, we numbered twenty or more.
The four horses, with streamers of brass bells hanging in front of them jingled over the packed snow roads of the village and finally brought us into the less used hill roads, which, in places rambled over the hills until the climb seemed interminable. The snow began to fall and we plunged down the steep declivities, half blinded by it, but opposing the storm with jokes, songs and banter.
On a shelf of road, which had been cut from a steep hillside, and which the winds, unhindered by protecting wall or trees, had stripped of snow and left glare ice for the sleigh to cross, our runners skidded to such an angle that we were threatened with an overturn that would have hurled us down the steep bank, had not some of the students leaped to the ground, and by sheer strength, aided by the careful control of the driver, kept the sleigh to the road until we were in safety.
Then as the twilight set in, and there were no sign-posts to guide us, we stopped at the first house and asked how far we were from the village. An old woman, dressed in a greasy print wrapper, and drawing gulps of smoke from a briar pipe, said she guessed we were “nigh four miles this side of it.” We drove through the storm for a quarter of an hour more, and then, thinking that we should be coming in sight of the village, we stopped a man who was going to his barn with milking cans and repeated our request as to how far we were from the village, and, as if he had been in league with the old woman with the pipe, a mile back he said,
“’Bout four mile, I’d say!”
Hopefully, then, we rumbled and scraped down a hill for another half hour, and then, meeting another sleigh, coming in our direction, our driver hailed the man at the reins, who was muffled to his ears in a swathing of crazy-quilt, and shouted,