Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,--the air a dizzy maze of
whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the
exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in
the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall.
How novel and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is
suddenly set off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and
fluted after an unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of
decrepit stone wall, in the trimming of which the wind had fairly
run riot, I saw, as for the first time, what a severe yet master
artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe artist! How stern the woods look,
dark and cold and as rigid against the horizon as iron!

All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and
significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer
pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle
from a stack upon the clean snow,--the movement, the sharply defined
figures, the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient
cows, the advance just arriving and pressing eagerly for the
choicest morsels, and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the
chopper in the woods,--the prostrate tree, the white new chips
scattered about, his easy triumph over the cold, his coat hanging to
a limb, and the clear, sharp ring of his axe. The woods are rigid
and tense, keyed up by the frost, and resound like a stringed
instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying forth with oxen and sleds
in the still, white world, the day after the storm, to restore the
lost track and demolish the beleaguering drifts.

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night
I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In
summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down