Bangs John Kendrick - Half-Hours with Jimmieboy стр 12.

"'Hi! What have you done with your leg?'

"'I brought it in with me, didn't I?' I said, looking down to where the leg ought to be, and noticing much to my concern that it was gone.

"'I thought so,' said the boy. 'Maybe you left it down on the hat-rack with your hat and cane.'

"'Well I wish you'd go and see,' said I, very nervously. 'I don't want to lose that leg if I can help it.'

"So off the boy went," continued the snowman, "and I waited there before the fire wondering what on earth had become of the missing limb. The boy soon came back and announced that he couldn't find it.

"'Then I must hop around until I do find it,' I put in, starting up. Would you believe it, Jimmieboy, that the minute I tried to rise and hop off on the search I discovered that my other leg was gone too?"

"Dear me!" said Jimmieboy. "How dreadful."

"It was fearful," returned the snowman, "but that wasn't half. I raised my hand to my forehead so as to think better, when off dropped my right arm, and as I reached out with my left to pick it up again that dropped off too. Then as my vest also disappeared, the boy cried out:

"'Why, I know what's the matter. You are melting away!'

"He was right. The heat of the log fire was just withering me right up. Fortunately as my neck began to go and my head rolled off the chair onto the floor, the boy had presence of mind enough to pick it up it was all that was left of me and throw it out of the window. If it hadn't been for that timely act of his I should have met the horrid fate of my cousin the iceberg."

"What was that?" asked Jimmieboy.

"Oh, he wanted to travel," said the snowman, "so he floated off down to South America and waked up one morning to find himself nothing but a tankful of the Gulf of Mexico. We never saw the poor fellow again."

"I understand now why you didn't want to come in," said Jimmieboy, "and I'm glad you didn't do as I asked you, for I don't think mamma would have been pleased if you'd melted away in the parlor."

"I know she wouldn't," said the snowman. "She's like the woman mentioned in the poem, who

"Well," replied the snowman, "I do, and I don't. When I do, I do, and when I don't, it's otherwise. This climate doesn't agree with me in the summer, and so when summer comes I move up to the North Pole. Ever been there?"

"No," said Jimmieboy, "what sort of a place is it?"

"Fine," returned the snowman. "The thermometer is always at least twenty miles below zero, even on the hottest days, and fire can't by any possibility come near us. Only one fire ever tried to and it was frozen stiff before it got within a hundred leagues of us. In winter, however, I come to places like this, and bring my little boys with me. We hire a convenient snow-drift and live in that. There's mine now right ahead of you."

Jimmieboy peered curiously along the road, at the far end of which he could see a huge mound of snow like the one the famous blizzard had piled up in front of his father's house some time before Jimmieboy and the world came to know each other.

"Do you live in that?" he asked.

"Yes," said the snowman. "And I will say that it's one of the most conveniently arranged snow-drifts I ever lived in. The house part of it is always as cold as ice it's cooled by a special kind of refrigerator I had put in, which consumes about half a ton of ice a week."

Jimmieboy laughed.

"It's a cold furnace, eh?" he said.

"Precisely,"

answered the snowman. "And besides that the house is deliciously draughty so that we have no difficulty in keeping cold. Once in a while my boys run in the sun and get warmed through, but I dose 'em up with ice-water and cold cream and they soon get chilled again. But come, shall we go in?"

The pedestrians had by this time reached the side of the snow-drift, and Jimmieboy was pleased to see a door at one side of it. This the snowman opened, and they entered together a marvelously beautiful and extensive garden glistening with frosty flowers and snow-clad trees. At the end of the garden was a little white house that looked like the icing on Jimmieboy's birthday cake. As they approached it, the door of the little house was thrown open and a dozen small-sized snow boys rushed out and began to pelt the snowman and Jimmieboy with tennis balls.

"Hold up, boys," cried the snowman. "I've brought a friend home to see you."

The boys stopped at once, and Jimmieboy was introduced to them. For hours they entertained him in the gardens and in the house. They showed him wondrous snow toys, among which were rocking horses, railway trains, soldiers all made of the same soft fleecy substance from which the snowman and his children were constructed. When he had played for a long time with these they gave him caramels and taffy and cream cakes, these also made of snow, though as far as their taste went they were better than those made of sugar and chocolate and cream, or, at least, it seemed so to Jimmieboy at the time.