rare keen air, and the sheep-dogs' distant bark and children's
laughter peals faintly clear like Alpine bells across the open hills!
And then skating! scudding with wings of steel across the swaying ice,
making whirring music as we fly. And oh, how dainty is spring--Nature
at sweet eighteen!

When the little hopeful leaves peep out so fresh and green, so pure
and bright, like young lives pushing shyly out into the bustling
world; when the fruit-tree blossoms, pink and white, like village
maidens in their Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed cottage in a
cloud of fragile splendor; and the cuckoo's note upon the breeze is
wafted through the woods! And summer, with its deep dark green and
drowsy hum--when the rain-drops whisper solemn secrets to the
listening leaves and the twilight lingers in the lanes! And autumn!
ah, how sadly fair, with its golden glow and the dying grandeur of its
tinted woods--its blood-red sunsets and its ghostly evening mists,
with its busy murmur of reapers, and its laden orchards, and the
calling of the gleaners, and the festivals of praise!

The very rain, and sleet, and hail seem only Nature's useful servants
when found doing their simple duties in the country; and the East Wind
himself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend when we meet him
between the hedge-rows.

But in the city where the painted stucco blisters under the smoky sun,
and the sooty rain brings slush and mud, and the snow lies piled in
dirty heaps, and the chill blasts whistle down dingy streets and
shriek round flaring gas lit corners, no face of Nature charms us.
Weather in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house--out of place
and in the way. Towns ought to be covered in, warmed by hot-water