I remember that we boys used to argue as to which was better, summer or winter. Each season had its special charms, and each was welcome after the other one had run its course. One reason why we were never sure which was best was that Christmas came in winter and Fourth of July in summer. There were other holidays that counted little with the boy. There was Thanksgiving; but ours was a village of New England people, and Thanksgiving was largely a religious day. The church-bells always rang on Thanksgiving, although usually we were not compelled to go to meeting. Then, too, Thanksgiving was the day for family reunions. Our aunts and uncles and grandfathers and grandmothers came to take dinner with us, or we went to visit them; and we had to comb our hair and dress up, and be told how we had grown, and how much we looked like our father or our 194mother or our aunt, or some other member of the family; and altogether the day was about as stupid as Sunday, and we were glad when it was over.  
Then there was New Year’s day; but this was of little use. No one paid much attention to New Year’s, and generally the people worked that day the same as any other. Sometimes a belated Christmas present was left over to New Year’s day, and we always had a lingering expectation that we might get something then, although our hopes were not strong enough to warrant hanging up our stockings again. Washington’s Birthday was of no account whatever, and in those days Lincoln’s birthday and Labor-day had not yet been made holidays. We managed to get a little fun out of April Fool’s day, but this was not a real holiday, for school kept that day.
 
But Christmas and Fourth of July were really made for boys. No one thought of working on these days, and even my father did not make us study then. Christmas was eagerly looked forward to while it was still a long way off, and a good many of the boys and girls believed in Santa Claus. All the 195children had heard the story, but my parents always told us it was not true, and we knew that Santa Claus was really our father and mother, or sometimes our uncles and aunts and grandparents, and people like that. Of course we hung up our stockings; all boys and girls did that. We went to bed early at night and got up early in the morning, and after comparing our presents at home we started out through the neighborhood to see what the other boys and girls had got. Then there was the Christmas-tree in the evening at the church. This was one occasion when there was no need to make us go to church; and we all got a little paper horn of candy, or a candy , or some such treasure, plucked fresh from the green tree among the little lighted wax candles stuck on every branch. All day long on Christmas we could slide down hill or skate, and sometimes we even had a new pair of skates or a sled for a present. Altogether Christmas was a happy day to us children.
 
Of course there were some boys and girls who got very little at Christmas, and some who got nothing at all, and these must have grieved a great deal; and I wondered not a little why 196it was that things were so and unfair. I know now that it was cruel that this knowledge could not have been kept from the little child until he had grown better able to know and understand. I also realize that even to my parents, who were not the very poorest, with so many children Christmas must have meant a serious burden both for what they gave and what they could not give, and that my mother must have denied herself many things that she should have had, and my father must have been compelled to forego many books that would have brought him comfort and for his buried hopes.
 
As I have grown older, and have seen Christmas-giving develop into a duty and a burden, and often a burden hard to bear, I have come to believe less and less in this sort of indiscriminate matter-of-course gift-making. If one really wishes to make a present, it should be offered freely from the heart as well as from the hand, and given without regard to Christmas day. With care and thoughtfulness on the part of parents, almost any day could be a holiday to little children, and they would soon forget that “Christmas comes but once a year.”
 
But, after all, I think the boys of my time liked the Fourth of July better than Christmas day. This was no doubt largely due to the fact that children love noise. They want “something doing,” and the Fourth of July somehow satisfies this desire more than any other day. Then we boys ourselves had a great deal to do with the Fourth of July. In fact, there could not have been a real Fourth without our effort and assistance. As on Christmas eve, we went to bed early without protest on the night before the Fourth,—so early that we could not go to sleep, and would lie awake for hours wondering if it were not almost time for the Fourth to begin. We always started the celebration before daylight. The night before, we had put our and pennies together and bought all the powder we could get the stores to sell us; and then the blacksmith’s boy had a key to the shop,—and, anyhow, his father was very “clever” to us boys. By the help of this boy we unlocked the door, took out the , and loaded them on a . We got a little stove from the boy whose father had a tin-shop, and with it a long rod of iron; and then we started 198out, before day had dawned, to in the Fourth. We drew the anvils up and down the road, stopping particularly before the houses where we knew that we would not be welcome. Then we unloaded one , turned it upside down, filled the little square hole in the bottom level full of powder, put a damp paper over this, and a little trail of powder to the edge, and put the other anvil on top; then the bravest boy took the rod of iron, one end of which had been heated in the charcoal stove, and while the rest of us put our fingers in our ears and ran away, he boldly touched off the trail of powder,—and a roar down the valley and up the sides of the hills to their very .
 
After the citizens whom we especially wished to favor or annoy, we went to the public square and fired the anvils until day began to break, and then we turned home and crawled into our beds to catch a little sleep before our services should be needed later on.
 
It was generally eight or nine o’clock before we got our hurried breakfast and met again at the public square. We visited the shops and stores, and went up to the little knots of men 199and women to hear what they had to say about the cannonading, and intimated very broadly that we could tell who did it if we only would. Then we lighted our bits of punk and began the fusillade of fire-crackers that was next in order on our programme. At this time the fire-cracker, with all its terrors, had not come; and though here and there some boy had a small cannon or a pistol, the noise was confined almost to fire-crackers. Most of us had to be very saving of them; they were expensive in those days, and our funds were low especially after the heavy firing in the early hours. We always felt that it was not fair that we should be obliged to get up before daylight in the morning and do the shooting, and buy the powder too, and once or twice we carried around a paper to the business-men to raise funds for the powder; but this met with poor success. Farmington never was a very public-spirited place.
 
There were always plenty of boys who could shoot a fire-cracker and hold it in their hands until it went off, and now and then one who could hold it in his teeth with his eyes shut tight. But this last exploit was considered 200dangerous, and generally was done only on condition that we gave a certain number of fire-crackers to the boy who took the risk. While we were all together, to hear someone else shoot fire-crackers was a very different thing from shooting them yourself. Although you did nothing but touch the string to............