Thursday, October 23, 2008

Attic, Spice



The little house was fairly bursting with good food stored away for the long winter. The pantry and the shed and the cellar were full, and so was the attic ... The attic was a lovely place to play. The large, round, colored pumpkins made beautiful chairs and tables. The red peppers and the onions dangled overhead. The hams and the venison hung in their paper wrappings, and all the bunches of dried herbs, the spicy herbs for cooking and the bitter herbs for medicine, gave the place a dusty spicy smell.

Often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound. But in the attic Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cosy.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
Illustration by Garth Williams

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