The Long Winter

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Title:     The Long Winter
Author: Elaine Goodale Eastman [More Titles by Eastman]

It was almost summer time when some boys who were playing in a boat pulled out of the water a long piece of drifting seaweed and put it in again on the other side of the canoe. For this trifling, not only the mischievous boys were punished, but all the people in their village.

For winter at once came on again with fresh fury, and snow was piled so high in front of the houses that the people were soon in want of food. Their winter stores were exhausted, and they would have starved to death, had it not been for a bluejay which one day perched on the edge of a smoke hole with a spray of fresh elderberries in its beak.

"Kilnaxe! Kilnaxe!" screamed the jay. Now this was the name of a neighboring town. So all the people took the cedar bark they had prepared to make their summer houses of and went to Kilnaxe, where they found it was full summer and the berries already ripe. Winter lingered only about their own village.

From this story we learn that one must not insult anything--not even a piece of seaweed.

[The end]
Elaine Goodale Eastman's short story: Long Winter

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