Hauling out the cakes with tongs, too, is somewhat hazardous on a
slippery ice margin. We beveled off a kind of inclined "slip" at one end
of the open water, and cut heel holes in the ice beside it, so that we
might stand more securely as we pulled the cakes out of the water.
For those first few days we had bright, calm weather, not very cold; we
got out five hundred cakes and drew them home to the ice-house without
accident.
The hardship came the next week, when several of our neighbors--who
always kept an eye on the old Squire's farming, and liked to follow his
lead--were beset by an ambition to start ice-houses. None of them had
either experience or tools. They wanted us to cut the ice for them.
We thought that was asking rather too much. Thereupon fourteen or
fifteen of them offered us two cents a cake to cut a year's supply for
each of them.
Now no one will ever get very rich cutting ice, sixteen inches thick, at
two cents a cake. But Addison and I thought it over, and asked the old
Squire's opinion. He said that we might take the new kit, and have all
we could make.
On that, we notified them all to come and begin drawing home their cakes
the following Monday morning, for the ice was growing thicker all the
while; and the thicker it got, the harder our work would be.
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