Soon even the trouble at home was forgotten; he was on his way
through the deep snow toward her.




XVIII


Gabriella had brought with her into this neighborhood of good-
natured, non-reading people the recollections of literature. These
became her library of the mind; and deep joy she drew from its
invisible volumes. She had transported a fine collection of the
heroes and heroines of good fiction (Gabriella, according to the
usage of her class and time, had never read any but standard
works). These, when the earlier years of adversity came on, had
been her second refuge from the world:, religion was the first. Now
they were the means by which she returned to the world in
imagination. The failure to gather together so durable a company of
friends leaves every mind the more destitute--especially a woman's,
which has greater need to live upon ideals, and cannot always find
these in actual life. Then there were short poems and parts of long
poems, which were as texts out of a high and beautiful Gospel of
Nature. One of these was on the snowstorm; and this same morning
her memory long was busy, fitting the poem within her mind to the
scenery around the farmhouse, as she passed joyously from window to
window, looking out far and near.

There it all was as the great New England poet had described it: