*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:SNOWY~·~ﾟ･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

“That was a cold, late spring. The dawns were chilly, and at noon the sunlight was cool. The trees unfolded their leaves slowly; the peas and beans, the carrots and corn, stood waiting for warmth and did not grow. When the rush of spring’s work was over, Almanzo had to go to school again. Only small children went to the spring term of school, and he wished he were old enough to stay home. He didn’t like to sit and study a book when there were so many interesting things to do. Father hauled the fleeces to the carding-machine in Malone, and brought home the soft, long rolls of wool, combed out straight and fine. Mother didn’t card her own wool any more, since there was a machine that did it on shares. But she dyed it. Alice and Eliza Jane were gathering roots and barks in the woods, and Royal was building huge bonfires in the yard. They boiled the roots and the bark in big caldrons over the fires, and they dipped the long skeins of wool thread that Mother had spun, and lifted them”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy: Little House on the Prairie #2

“While he turned and twisted the strips, the thin outer bark fell off in flakes, leaving the soft, white, inside bark. The whip would have been white, except that Almanzo’s hands left a few smudges. He could not finish it before chore-time, and the next day he had to go to school. But he braided his whip every evening by the heater, till the lash was five feet long. Then Father lent him his jack-knife, and Almanzo whittled a wooden handle, and bound the lash to it with strips of moosewood bark. The whip was done. It would be a perfectly good whip until it dried brittle in the hot summer. Almanzo could crack it almost as loudly as Father cracked a blacksnake whip. And he did not finish it a minute too soon, for already he needed it to give the calves their next lesson. Now he had to teach them to turn to the left when he shouted, “Haw!” and to turn to the right when he shouted “Gee!” As soon as the whip was ready, he began. Every Saturday morning he spent in the barnyard, teaching Star and Bright. He never whipped them; he only cracked the whip.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy: Little House on the Prairie #2

“Flags were everywhere, and in the Square the band was playing “Yankee Doodle.” The fifes tooted and the flutes shrilled and the drums came in with rub-a-dub-dub. Yankee Doodle went to town, Riding on a pony, He stuck a feather in his hat And called it macaroni!”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy: Little House on the Prairie #2

“The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.... But little did the infant dream That all the treasures of the world were by; And that himself was so the cream And crown of all which round about did lie. Yet thus it was: the Gem, The Diadem, The ring enclosing all That stood upon this earthly ball, The heavenly Eye, Much wider than the sky Wherein they all included were, The glorious soul that was the King,”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Poetry