The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to beso gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became ofage. A remote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked upwith sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockadedwith snow, and flying a white flag of smoke from its chimney, lookslike a besieged fort. 0n cold and stormy winter evenings, to thetraveler wearily dragging along inside his creaking sleigh, the lightfrom its windows suggests a home of refuge and the cheer of ablazing fire. But it is no less a fort, into which the family retirewhen the New England winter on the hills really sets in.