languor comes, does not one grow restless indoors? The sun puts out
the fire, the people say, and the spring sun certainly makes one's
intellectual light grow dim. Why should not a man sympathize with
the seasons and the moods and phases of Nature? He is an apple upon
this tree, or rather he is a babe at this breast, and what his
great mother feels affects him also.



X

I have frequently been surprised, in late fall and early winter, to
see how unequal or irregular was the encroachment of the frost upon
the earth. If there is suddenly a great fall in the mercury, the
frost lays siege to the soil and effects a lodgment here and there,
and extends its conquests gradually. At one place in the field you
can easily run your staff through into the soft ground, when a few
rods farther on it will be as hard as a rock. A little covering of
dry grass or leaves is a great protection. The moist places hold
out long, and the spring runs never freeze. You find the frost has
gone several inches into the plowed ground, but on going to the
woods, and poking away the leaves and debris under the hemlocks and
cedars, you find there is no frost at all. The Earth freezes her
ears and toes and naked places first, and her body last.

If heat were visible, or if we should represent it say by smoke,
then the December landscape would present a curious spectacle. We
should see the smoke lying low over the meadows, thickest in the
hollows and moist places, and where the turf is oldest and densest.
It would cling to the fences and ravines. Under every evergreen