in the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look we forth again,
and see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done.

Slow and sure! He has the day, perchance the week, before him, and
may take his own time to accomplish Nature's burial in snow. A smooth
mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the
dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white
surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand
shivering in a shallow snow-drift, looking, poor things! as
disconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary
scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with the
summer; they neither live nor die; what they retain of life seems but
the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower shrubs in
midwinter! The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the
eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern the
real intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object,--as
yonder spire,-and observe how the riotous gust fights with the
descending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes the
entire prospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct, but
transient glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost; and now
the dense wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snowdrifts
at each other, in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have
seen an amusing parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the
upper regions. It is a snow-battle of school-boys. What a pretty
satire on war and military glory might be written, in the form of a
child's story, by describing the snowball-fights of two rival schools,
the alternate defeats and victories of each, and the final triumph of
one party, or perhaps of neither! What pitched battles, worthy to be
chanted in Homeric strains! What storming of fortresses, built all of
massive snowblocks! What feats of individual prowess, and embodied