Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill WHAT HAPPENED IN THE PEN WHAT HAPPENED IN THE PEN I WAS so excited last night at the thought of all the new life entering into mine that I could not sleep. The box has come: a part of that other world coming to me — Lanciani, Hare, Ruskin and Vasari, Browning and Byron, Sand and Dumas. And all these are strangers from over the sea, the names of but one or two known to me, who have come to me here on this " back farm " in New England and are to sit at my fireside and by my bedside to tell me of that other world beyond our mountains; to hearten me in my down hours and hold intimate converse with me in my midnight watches. He said they were his friends — may they abide with me until they become mine. I 've gathered them all into my arms and hugged them close and hard. That's curious! I had forgotten Twiddle, to whom i had given her book, and, on looking around with my arms full of my books, I saw her sitting on the rug before the fire hugging her one, with both arms, too, as tightly as ever she could. She was singing to herself. I listened; it was that old verse she has caught from Aunt Lize. April 5th. I smell the breaking up of winter — snow-water settling in among masses of thawing leaves produces it. Uncle Shim reports a great run of sap. Two Canucks have come over from the Duddses1 to help him; it was too hard for a woman and child. Such leather-skinned, weasel-eyed runts, but tough as pine- knots ! I had them in after supper, and the one they call "Toughheel" broke out suddenly with: " Bah gosh ! Ah 'shamed." "Ashamed of what, Toughheel?" " Ah 'shamed ah mah legs "; and then the honest fellow gripped my hand, wrung it, and went out with a sob, like a child. We used to work together hauling logs and peeling bark. Last night, about ni...