He and all his
family have the fever and ague, and shake worse than the people at
Lebanon; but they do not mind it; it makes them lively, in fact. Ed
May is just as jolly as he used to be. He calls his town Mayopolis,
and expects to be mayor of it; his wife, however, calls the town
Maybe.
The farmer-boy likes to have winter come for one thing, because it
freezes up the ground so that he can't dig in it; and it is covered
with snow so that there is no picking up stones, nor driving the cows
to pasture. He would have a very easy time if it were not for the
getting up before daylight to build the fires and do the "chores."
Nature intended the long winter nights for the farmer-boy to sleep;
but in my day he was expected to open his sleepy eyes when the cock
crew, get out of the warm bed and light a candle, struggle into his
cold pantaloons, and pull on boots in which the thermometer would
have gone down to zero, rake open the coals on the hearth and start
the morning fire, and then go to the barn to "fodder.
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