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IX. NEW YEAR To Rockwell who asked what happened on the New Year that everybody sat up to see it come we tried hard to tell all sorts of yarns about explosions and rumblings, but he wouldn't believe a bit of it. He might have said, "How can anything like that happen here where nothing ever comes from the sky except rain?" So far the new year is just exactly like the old's latter end but that it is more joyous. And the joy came at eleven-thirty P.M. of January first, gliding by about two miles out in the bay, a dazzle of lights like a fairy citadel, the STEAMER! At my cry Rockwell sat up in bed and gazed too. Olson unfortunately was in bed and we did not call him. So I set at once to work writing, tying up parcels, making lists, until two o'clock of this morning. At eight we had Olson out of bed. I hung about there threatening him, ordering him, begging him to hurry. Old men are hard to move fast. He shaved standing up there in his cabin with the door wide open and the goats playing about him. I let him have a bite of breakfast, but not much. The dory had to be unbound—for we tie them to the ground—and turned right-side up, and loaded and launched,—but all that only after half an hour's cranking of the engine, the infernal things! It would look like snow one minute and be fair the next; but it held fair enough finally for Olson to get off and disappear—to our immense joy. He laughs at our eagerness to get him off for the mail. Yesterday was Olson's day for celebrating and many times we drank to the New Year together. But I would work, to his disgust. Still he understands pretty well the strange madness that possesses me, and is not at *39 all unsympathetic. I explained to him one day the difference between working to suit yourself and working to suit other people. He'd defy the world at any time he chose no matter how poor his fortunes. Well, now we wait for mail. Already I'm impatient for Olson's return and that cannot well be before the day after to-morrow. Rockwell and I walked around the bay in the afternoon more to have a look toward Seward where our mail comes from than for anything else. But Seward was hidden in falling snow. All the bay was shrouded in mist and snow. But our own cove was beautiful to look back upon with its white peaks and dark forest, and far down at the water's edge our tiny cabins from one of which the thick smoke of the smoldering fire curled upwards. SUNDAY, JANUARY FIFTH Olson is still away. It is wearing to wait this way in hope,—for we will hope even if the wind blows and the snow falls. And so it has done. The day following Olson's departure it was wonderfully fair and calm, but the next day, it being the day he should have returned, a heavy snowstorm set in. And to-day with less snow there was more wind,—not so much that he could not have come but enough that he didn't. We walked down the beach and scanned the bay with the glasses, and up to dark I looked continually for the little boat to be rounding the headland. It seems as if that were all the news, but the days have really been full of work and other interest. The snow itself, lying deep and light and over all—even the tree tops—is a delight. Rockwell and I played bear and hunter today tracking each other in the woods. Only the goats are miserable these days with their browse all covered but what they can gnaw from the tree trunks. Billy at this season is a fury. One has really to go armed with a clout. Yesterday he burst in the door of Olson's shed and then inside managed to shut the door on himself. When I investigated the strange banging that I'd been hearing for some time, I found him. He had even piled things against the door. While no actual damage has been done he has tossed every blessed thing about with his horns. Boxes, pails, sacks of grain, cans...

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