"What is that?" asked the same curious little girl.
"Gunpowder for the heels of their boots," he answered, and went on.
And a spark of fire from one of the seventy-seven chimneys fell into the
keg, and there was a frightful explosion.
But I don't think it was the Panjandrum's house that got blown up, but we
ourselves, for we found ourselves outside in the woods going home from
Shuteyetown. I for one resolved that the next time I came to the rainbow
with one foot in the valley and the other in the mountain. I should climb
to the upper end of it.
Stories Told on a Cellar-door.
THE STORY OF A FLUTTER-WHEEL.
What queer places boys have of assembling. Sometimes in one place,
sometimes in another. Hay-mows, river-banks, threshing-floors, these were
the old places of resort for country boys. And nothing was so sweet to
me, when I was a boy, as the newly cut clover-hay where I sat with two or
three companions, watching the barn swallows chattering their
incomprehensible gabble and gossip from the doors of their mud houses in
the rafters. And what stories we told and what talks we had. In the city
who does not remember the old-fashioned cellar-door, sloping down to the
ground? These were always places of resort.
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