running on the snow. These very tiny things are so small, they hardly look
bigger than a large black beetle; they lived on the seeds of the tall
weeds, which they, might be seen climbing and clinging to, yet were hardly
heavy enough to weigh down the heads of the dry stalks. It is pretty to
see the footprints of these small shrewmice, on the surface of the fresh
fallen snow in the deep forest-glades. They are not dormant during the
winter like many of the mouse tribe, for they are up and abroad at all
seasons; for however stormy and severe the weather may be, they do not
seem to heed its inclemency. Surely, children, there is One who cares for
the small tender things of earth, and shelters them from the rude blasts.

Nimble-foot and Silver-nose often saw their cousins, the black squirrels,
playing in the sunshine, chasing each other merrily up and down the trees,
or over the brush-heaps; their jetty coats, and long feathery tails,
forming a striking contrast with the whiteness of the snow, above which
they were sporting. Sometimes they saw a few red squirrels too, but there
was generally war between them and the black ones.

In these lonely forests, everything seems still and silent, during the
long wintry season, as if death had spread a white pall over, the earth,
and hushed every living thing into silence. Few sounds are heard through
the winter days, to break the death-like silence that reigns around,
excepting the sudden rending and cracking of the trees in the frosty air,
the fall of a decayed branch, the tapping of a solitary woodpecker, two or
three small species of which still remain after all the summer birds are
flown; and the gentle, weak chirp of the little tree-creeper, as it runs
up and down the hemlocks and pines, searching the crevices of the bark for
insects. Yet in all this seeming death lies hidden the life of myriads of
insects, the huge beast of the forest, asleep in his lair, with many of
the smaller quadrupeds, and forest-birds, that, hushed in lonely places,