Frosty

“ It’s always cold in summer, warm in winter.
One of the great sights going is to see
It steam in winter like an ox’s breath,
Until the bushes all along its banks
Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles—
You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it! ”

“ And Frisco was a long way off!
"You'd better take the rest of the boys part way," Potter greeted dryly as I came up.
I brushed past him and swung up into the saddle, feeling that if I stopped to answer I might be too late. I had a foolish notion that even a long breath would conspire to delay me. Frosty was already on his horse, and I noticed, without thinking about it at the time, that he was riding a long-legged sorrel, "Spikes," that could match Shylock on a long chase—as this was like to be. ”

“ To begin with, not all of them stand six-feet-one in their stocking-feet, or tip the scales at a hundred and eighty odd; likewise their shoulders lacked the breadth that goes with the other measurements. Hence my tailor would doubtless have wept at the sight; shoulders drooping spiritlessly, and sleeves turned up, and trousers likewise. Frosty Miller, though, was like a man with his mask off; he stood there looking the gentleman born, and I couldn't help staring at him.
"You've been broken to society harness, old man, and are bridle-wise," I said, slapping him on the shoulder. ”

“ A wire had been stretched across Comanche Street from the top of the Roundup to the top of the Wagon-Tire House, and upon this was to be given the most ambitious performance of the evening, "Columbia Enlightening the World."
All day long on the Fourth, the town was full of rejoicing young Texas masculinity, mounted upon Texas ponies, careering about the streets in conspicuously full enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Pg 1591] And all day long Frosty La Rue's tent-show did a land-office business.
Poor old Frosty! Many of the cowboys could shoot better than he ”

“ This was not unexpected, for midway the rockets fastened about her waist, and upon her crown were to be discharged. The manner in which these latter went off brought shrieks and groans from the crowd below. They fizzed up into Columbia's face, they burned against her bodice, they struck her arms. "Oh! oh! Poor soul! she'll have her eyes put out! She'll be killed!" cried a woman's voice from the street.
"I might 'a' known better than to trust that fool Gilbert with them fireworks," groaned old Frosty. "That there girl is worth more'n a hundred dollars a month to me. ”

“ Then they began blowing on their fingers.
Nearer and nearer came Frost. At length he appeared on the pine, above the heads of the girls, and said to them:
“Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones? Are ye warm, my darlings?”
“Oh, Frost, it’s awfully cold! We’re utterly perished! We’re expecting a bridegroom, but the confounded fellow has disappeared.”
Frost slid lower down the tree, cracked away more, snapped his fingers oftener than before.
“Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones?”
“Get along with you! Are you blind that you can’t see our hands and feet are quite dead?” ”

“ He tried to get up, but the gardener got hold of him by the collar and shook and beat him with his big stick till he prayed for mercy. Then he took him by the ear and dragged him out of the garden.
At last Jack Frost wriggled out of his grasp and ran for his life; he dashed into the larch-tree and climbed up the branches to the topmost bough where the weathercock was. There was no moon for him to get on to, for she had gone to bed and the sky was so high that he could not jump up all the way at once, so he was obliged to sit hidden in the tree until the next night. ”

“ For answer Jack Frost kicked up his heels very rudely in the owl’s face. The bird flew silently away, but he did not go far; he knew Jack Frost was up to no good, so he perched hard by and watched him with his round, burning eyes.
When all was quiet again, Jack Frost went hopping from tree to tree till he got close to the garden wall, where he could see over into the flower-beds; he did not know that the robin, the squirrel, and the owl were all looking at him from the places in which they had hidden themselves. ”

“ Look at one more side of my ball, as it turns around. Jack Frost must have spent all his longest winter nights here, for see what a palace of ice he has built for himself. Brave men have gone to those lonely places, to come back and tell us about them; and, alas! some heroes have not returned, but have lain down there to perish of cold and hunger. Doesn't it look cold, the clear blue ice, almost as blue as the air? And look at the snow, drifts upon drifts, and the air filled with feathery flakes even now. ”

“ These sounds, let in from the vernacular, are full of a robust, creative energy; they share the blood and bones of the people they represent.
But Frost is by no means the dark naturalist that many suspect. Behind the mask of “grimness” which many of his critics have fastened upon him, there is a continual elfin pucker; a whimsical smile, a half-disclosed raillery glints beneath his most somber monologues. His most concrete facts are symbols of spiritual values; through his very reticence one hears more than the voice of New England. ”

“ I'll look into her eyes, their love light showing,
Small need of words we'll know;
For tender glances sprung from hearts aglowing,
With meaning overflow.
Cupid—
Such sentiments as these I quite approve:
I'm hopeful for the outcome of your love.
Cupid (turning to Frosties) —
Who are these furry folk that round us stand?
They seem like members of the Frosties' band.
Frosties (in chorus) —
We are the elves of the Northern Light,
Of the ice blink and the snow ”

“ Almost at once snow begins to fall from the sky, slowly at first, then more and more. Jack Frost looks up at it and nods his head approvingly. When it is snowing very hard, in come on tip-toe, very softly, the Snow Fairies, dressed in snowy white, with white hoods and muffs. Some of them quietly spread snow on the boughs of the trees, taking it out of their muffs; others hang flakes on the Chimney, in such a way as to make eyebrows, mustache, and beard for the face. ”

“ Along through the snow jogged the woodcutter's horse, his bells jingling as he hauled the sled over the road that led along the shore of the lake.
"What'll we do about Bert's ice-boat?" asked Flossie.
"I'll look after it until he comes for it," said Uncle Jack. "It isn't damaged any, and it will be all right. Few folks come down to this end of the lake in Winter. I have it all to myself."
"You must be lonesome," remarked Freddie.
"I am, sometimes. Often I wish I had folks, like other men. ”

“ Frost’s life seems to have run smoothly and prosperously; a happy husband and father, and a prosperous tradesman, he seemed destined to go through life without a cloud on his fortunes, when he unfortunately became involved in law proceedings with a Mr. Protheroe, town-clerk of Newport, and land-steward to Sir Charles Morgan, a man of great influence in the neighbourhood. ”

“ In the Summer a few men cut a coarse kind of hay that grew on the meadows, but as hay-cutting is not done in Winter no one now had any reason for going to the meadows.
"Well, we mustn't stand still," said Flossie, after a bit.
"Why not?" asked Freddie. "Can't you stand still when you're tired?"
"Not in a snowstorm," Flossie went on with a shake of her head. "If you stand still or lie down you may go to sleep, and when you sleep in the snow you freeze to death. ”

“ Just as soon as it is frozen, however—right away!—put the blankets on the beds, For, of course, they must have blankets, even if they are only garden beds, This seems odd—does it not?—to blanket frozen things; but, you see, the trick is to catch Jack Frost under the blankets, once he comes in, and hold him prisoner until winter is absolutely over, and he is willing—yes, indeed, anxious—to run away and stay away, It is when he is not caught and held fast that he does his damage, for he can slip out sometimes, even in mid-winter ”

“ He saw that Frost did not intend to be pleased with anything he did, and that there was no use in trying to conciliate.
“I hate that boy!” reflected Frost, following Paul with a venomous expression. “My mother is perfectly right. He’s a dangerous visitor. We must get rid of him one way or another.”
Paul drove around to the front of the house and found Mrs. Granville ready at the door—with the housekeeper at her side.
“I do hope you won’t meet with an accident,” said [178] Mrs. Mercer with an air of deep solicitude. “Frost is ready to drive you. It will be safer.” ”

“ To me, the thing that art does for life is to strip it to form.”
In March, 1915, Frost came back to America—to a hill outside of Franconia, New Hampshire, to be precise. North of Boston had been published in the United States and its author, who had left the country an unknown writer, returned to find himself famous. Mountain Interval, containing some of Frost’s most beautiful poems (“Birches,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “The Hill Wife”) , appeared in 1916. The idiom is the same as in the earlier volumes, but the notes are more varied, the convictions are stronger. ”

“ You know how politely he always goes by. But he thought a big thought—I could tell by his eye— Which being expressed, might be this in effect: 'I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect, To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.'" "He's a thriftier person than some I could name." "He seems to be thrifty; and hasn't he need, With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed? He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say, Like birds. They store a great many away. ”

“ Mr. Crow explained. “You don’t have to go into the kitchen at all. All you have to do is to climb that big tree close by the house. And you can hop right through the attic window. There’s nobody upstairs in the daytime. In fact, I should call it one of the safest places to go that I know of.”
When Mr. Crow said that, Frisky believed him. Mr. Crow was so old, and so wise, and so solemn, that Frisky thought that anything he said must be true.
“I’m going past Farmer Green’s house right now,” Mr. Crow told Frisky. ”

“ Frost's parlour, and, awkwardly enough, did what could be done for her by men. It was over an hour before they succeeded in restoring her to consciousness, and when they did so, she awoke to delirium and fever. Distracted by anxiety and by their helplessness, at the first streak of dawn, Dan started for town to get a doctor, and Ezra Manners volunteered to go to the Red Farm and bring back Mrs. Frost, Nancy, and the maids. ”

“ He’s got hay down that’s been rained on three times.
He hoed a little yesterday for me:
I thought the growing things would do him good.
Something went wrong. I saw him throw the hoe
Sky-high with both hands. I can see it now—
Come here—I’ll show you—in that apple tree.
That’s no way for a man to do at his age:
He’s fifty-five, you know, if he’s a day.”
“Aren’t you afraid of him? What’s that gun for?”
“Oh, that’s been there for hawks since chicken-time.
John Hall touch me! Not if he knows his friends.
I’ll say that for him, John’s no threatener
Like some men folk. ”

“ But it was the kind of rain one could not easily forget for very long, and after putting some tin boxes of crackers under an overhanging stump, to keep the food dry, and after eating some, Flossie exclaimed:
"Oh, I don't like it to be so wet!" Then she wept a little.
Freddie did not like it, either, but he made up his mind he must be brave and not cry. Not that Flossie could not be brave, too, but she didn't just then happen to think of it.
"I know what we can do!" Freddie exclaimed. "We can wrap the rubber blanket around us, and that will be like an umbrella—almost!" ”

“ Jack Frost did not tell his mother he had been out before. He did not need to tell her, for the next morning before old Madam North Wind had gone far she knew what had happened. "They are all spoiled," she said as she looked over the landscape; "all black and dead before they had a bit of color."
"Come out and look at your work," she said, going back for her son. "You thought you knew more about it than your old mother."
Jack Frost had no idea what old Madam North Wind meant, but he felt sure something was wrong, so he followed his mother very meekly ”

“ Robin was discerned in a garden, sitting on a bench: possibly to give himself a warming in the sun—as Mrs. Frost expressed it. He sat in a still attitude: his arms folded, his head bowed. Since the miserable occurrence touching Rachel, Robin Frost was a fearfully changed man: never, from the hour that the coroner’s inquest was held and certain evidence had come out, had he been seen to smile. He had now been ill with ague, like Grind. Hearing the approach of footsteps, he turned his head, and rose when he saw it was Lionel. ”

“ Were eyes divine!
[Pg 56]
JACK FROST
In a pixy chariot, drawn,
Not by deer, but elfin fawn,
Thou hast come, Jack Frost and gone.
Silently, unheralded,
O'er the earth thy chariot sped;
Dear Jack Frost, where hast thou fled?
Thou the child's and poet's friend,
Brings't us blessings without end,
Joys the world can not transcend. ”

“ The trees, too, seemed to fight on the Frost King’s side. The bare twigs pulled their hair and the branches ripped their ice clothes wherever they could. So the winter fairies had the worst of it and at last started off at full speed and rushed through the woods, never stopping till they reached the palace, and shut themselves in—leaving their king, who was too proud to run, all alone with King Frost and his fairies. You may be sure they were not very merciful to him. They began to pull his cloak, calling out, “Give us your cloak to keep our trees warm. You stole their pretty leaves ”