KNOWLEDGE

The green of the pastures and the gold of the fields was buried so
deeply under banks of snow that no one could say: "Here the cattle fed
and the buttercups grew; there the grain was harvested; here the corn
stood in shocks; there the daisies and meadow grass sheltered the nest
of the bobo-link." As death calls alike the least and the greatest
back to the dust from which they came, so winter laid over the varied
and changing scenes of summer a cold, white, shroud of wearisome
sameness. The birds were hundreds of miles away in their sunny
southland haunts. The bees, the butterflies, and many of the tiny wood
folk, were all snugly tucked in their winter beds, dreaming, perhaps,
as they slept, of the sunshiny summer days. In the garden the wind had
heaped a great drift high against the hedge on the boy's side, and, on
the little girl's side, the cherry tree in the corner stood shivering
in its nakedness with bare arms uplifted as though praying for mercy
to the stinging cold wind.

In the city the snow, as fast as it fell, was stained by soot and
grime and lay in the streets a mass of filth. The breath of the
laboring truck horses arose from their wide nostrils like clouds of
steam and, in the icy air, covered their breasts and shoulders and
sides with a coat of white frost. The newsboys and vendors of pencils
and shoestrings shivered in nooks and corners and doorways and, as the
people went with heads bent low before the freezing blast that swirled
through the narrow canyons between the tall buildings, the snowy
pavement squeaked loudly under their feet.

And the man who had found something to do, from his Occupation, began
to acquire Knowledge. In doing things, he began to know things.