Here is a way of making jolly entertainment of nothing more than a forest. Coniferous or deciduous, it is of no moment. Summer or winter or in betwixt, is likewise immaterial to the didoes. It must only be a forest. Having found a forest, do you have a friend? Then bring him, for the game can only work with two. Entering the wood primeval, inquire of your friend, “Harry, how many trees do you suppose there to grow all around?” Harry, if true friend he be, will enter in the spirit of the thing with alacrity. “Oh! A counting bee!” he will exclaim, or some such thing. “Oh! Me first!” Now, there is barely time enough for all the “high-jinks” to be had ‘neath Nature’s canopy. Each count all the trees within eyeshot, in his head. Before tea time, in this wise, yon woods will echo with the most amusing of exclamations and excitations. “I am already at fifty-three thousand, six hundred and six, no, six hundred and five—oh, d___, I have lost track, and must return to the forest edge to start quite from ‘scratch’ again!”
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January 2011
Synopsis: ALL now must be lost. The portmanteau was last spied tumbling down the ravine-side, with good Dr. Mudlow close behind. Not a trice later, the sounds of gunplay were to be heard echoing from Bad Man’s Rock. In camp, Miss Eulalie read and read again the billet-doux, writ in Indian code and wrapped around a rock, that the mysterious Dragoman had delivered. And whatever, wondered she, had become of Huckstep? • “Never fear,” a strong voice boomed. “I aver that by this same time tomorrow, Grady and his entire gang will be safely delivered into the hands of John Law, and you and your Father will need have no fear again from that quarter. Will it be back to Arkansas, then?”
Have you an old Spanish mandolin in the attic? Have you two? Then, a fine pair of snow shoes can be easily made of them. They are Musical Snow Shoes, made so by the rubbing of your boots upon their strings as o’er Winters blank “snow white music sheet you tread. Simply lay down the mandolins on the snow, one under each toot, and bind each toot to each mandolin with a length of stout twine. But step lightly on your Musical Snow Shoes, and keep moving. “It is the wise man who never stands on a mandolin.
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If you are under an avalanche, did you know that your watch may be saved, it you will but smartly tuck it into the pit of an arm? But act quickly, as “Snow waits tor no man,” in particular an avalanche of it.
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Why do logs float? It has to do with the principle of flotation, worked out in the long ago by Archimedes, of the ancient Greeks, tine sailors all.
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Ambled I ‘mid crepuscular gloaming Thru’ that bower ‘neath the old pine stand When with snowflake stealth unnoticed— Fell the mitten, from my hand!
Half a hectare had I wander’d Ere St. Chilblain’s frosty bite Told the chill tale to my digits— My dear mitten, lost from sight!
Bid I Spot to fetch yon yarnwork; “Go, cur, scour ye dell and bog! Dark is nigh and frost comes creeping— Bring me back my mitten, dog!”
A young man came to see me. He had the pallor. “I would fain to know the cause, he complained, “for a tew fellows and me have only just lately taken such fun, playing with a length of string at the horse water trough down by the Old Farmer’s.” Dismissing him from my rooms without further word, I swiftly dispatched a boy to the house of his parents with a note. The parents did as I commanded. The young man was locked in the house for six fortnights and giyen benzoate of lard only at meals. Unsurprised was I at the following Yule, when came this billet-doux: “I am now President of the Mercantile Exchange in my town, from a clerk only six months previous. Fellows take me for a man of my Father’s years. I am glad of every chance to trade play for work, and indeed will close this now, tor too much tun may be thus generated by the composing of it!” Do you see the metamorphosis herewith adumbrated? Would you yet aver that a game of Stick-in-the-Dirt, or a round ot the Indian clubs, is the thing?
A month or so ago, I found myself having lunch with a group of television executives at the Pen & Pencil, a classic 60-year-old Manhattan steakhouse that survives and, indeed, seems to prevail in a pallid age of tofu and turkey burgers. The venue was appropriate, because we were there to discuss progress in the founding of the History Channel—a 24-hour network entirely given over to history.
As you might suspect, American Heritage editors are always on the lookout for a “revival of interest in history” (rumors of such a groundswell have over the years been fomented by things as diverse as the success of the movie The Sting with its scrupulous 1930s settings and 1900s soundtrack and the all-vanquishing PBS Civil War series). But if the hoped-for delirium never quite materialized, the History Channel is certainly an impressive straw in the wind—the more so since it is being put together by real pros, the people who set up the Arts & Entertainment network.
It is dawn in Washington as General Gordon R. Sullivan, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, walks quickly from his helicopter at Andrews Air Force Base to board the jet bound for Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Waiting for him there is a classroom full of the Army’s most successful and promising officers, colonels, and lieutenant colonels newly chosen to command brigades and battalions. Some of these officers will have fought in Grenada, in Panama, in the Gulf War, or all three. It is possible they will have to lead their soldiers in some other conflict before they leave command. Sullivan wants them to know who leads them.
Not many people appreciate a military base closing. Like the shutting of a factory, it can devastate nearby towns, throwing thousands of people out of work. Merchants face losses and even bankruptcy as sales fall off. Home-owners put their houses on the market at distress prices and sometimes simply walk away from their mortgages. Even long-established military centers are not immune; the current round of closings includes the Mare Island Naval Base near San Francisco, which has operated since 1854.
Yet today’s base closings involve more than the end of the Cold War, more than the Pentagon’s present downsizing. They represent a turning point, as our military leaders work to redefine their missions and to establish new roles. Nor has this been the only such turning point. Time and again during the past two centuries our leaders have faced similar issues.