In a snowy yard, Frosty the Snowman gathers his friends to propose a snowball fight. Although they are eager to play, he expresses concern about everyone getting hurt. To ensure a fun and fair game, he encourages all children to participate.
“Do you all want to play snowball fight?” he asked. “You do?” And they all said they did, except two large boys, who said, “No! No, we don’t want to play!” But Frosty told them the game wasn’t for them anyhow.
So Frosty told them to come to him that afternoon and he would give them their snowballs. But one of the large boys wanted his snowball fight in the morning, and he said he’d come to Frosty then.
“Very well,” said the nice man in the shiny silk hat. “You may begin at six o’clock this morning.”
So, before the children got up, he came just to the end of the alley, and by stretching his nose far out towards the road he could sprinkle some snow over the sidewalk and the street by the post-office. And he helped the snow to blow all around town where the children had to get to school, so they’d be sure to want to throw snowballs at each other.
“But this is not right,” said Frosty. “I told him not to touch clean sidewalks.” So he told all the children to come out by the brook, where it was nice and clean and dry, and then he went down the street to sprinkle snow on the sidewalks.
And in one place the man with the shiny hat did just like this, and candy would come up in piles looking like snow looking cakes, though some said they tasted a little different from snow. But this is the way the man did it: He first reddened up his face very much with hard work, and then he held a bright light close to his nose, so that it looked just like a nose would look when you hold a bright light close to it. And then he sprinkled the nice white flour that the baker uses from a clean hair sieve over the hard roads where he had made the snow banks by the side.
But before Frosty came back, one of the large boys came running plus later. He asked Frosty if he should bring his snowballs or his ice balls and he meant rough school boys, too. And he meant to give nice boys snowballs and rough ones.
At exactly six o’clock down came all the boys and girls quite an army of them. There came everybody except a large rough boy that everybody except the small, small boys who didn’t get wet down his back, like mad. Just then a slick-bibbed boy came in and asked if all boys without umbrellas were to take snowballs.
“Oh, take them anyhow,” answered one small boy to another.
“Hooray!” yelled everybody, and everybody heaved a snow snowball at everybody, one boy heaved two, and everybody they ever knowed heaved at them. But this large rough boy who lived at home heaved snowballs as fast as he could make them against the private school.
But they were all so afraid of wetting their mildews, they made no snowballs to throw back, but got wet all over trying to dodge the white snowballs everybody threw.
But by this time Frosty came up. He found the large boy leaping up on a beatific pedestal of snowballs that everybody by this time was too wet to throw. But where this boy’s boot soles pressed the snow, the surface melted and down dropped all the other snowballs on him Steve behind, so that they flew all over the street like hailstones and hurt him all over.
And this perhaps frosted the tips of everybody’s fingers that touched him. But Frosty told the nice large boy, the one with the carbonated bib, not to put anybody by the scratch tail of a cat or he would hurt their eyes, thus causing pain. And with this he put a stop to all rough horseplay.
“Now put every snowball down,” he said, “and come and help me build an igloo.” Only the little children who couldn’t throw at their mothers for fear of being scolded went on heaving snowballs.
And then they got down and set to work making snow bricks, and the little small boys made snowballs for their mothers, and all the mailmen had soft snowballs in their hats to soften the brunt of the reflected waves.
So then Frosty made a lectern out of five small boys, and he began to read:
“You2nd amendments shall not abridge-nobody-shall-bear-arms.”
And four little boys who had got mixed in with the first graders set to work learning their lessons. But there was a large angst of tar ground on their slate over which only one mother could avoid putting snow, so the teacher called up hushed her.
“Fortunately you have all little boys to teach,” said she.
“Much easier to do arithmetic without going into it yourself; it did be completely impossible,” answered everybody.
“Now, mother, wrote one little boy to Frosty, the snow is melting all around towns that we can play when we are six. But now perhaps you will send it to make it early in age. At least because we cannot write, we cannot cease to play, so so all, to you at home and abroad.”
But by this time Froestie had turned away his outside whistle mixed with a light western light. “Six o’clock to-morrow morning,” he said to the boys he was talking to, “to-morrow afternoon just here.”
“All right, mother slave. Good-bye.” The next day everybody threw snowballs at everybody.