dandelion in bloom, on the margin of Shadow Brook, where it glides out
of the dell.

But no more green grass and dandelions now. This was such a snow-storm!
Twenty miles of it might have been visible at once, between the windows
of Tanglewood and the dome of Taconic, had it been possible to see so
far, among the eddying drifts that whitened all the atmosphere. It
seemed as if the hills were giants, and were flinging monstrous handfuls
of snow at one another, in their enormous sport. So thick were the
fluttering snow-flakes, that even the trees, midway down the valley,
were hidden by them the greater part of the time. Sometimes, it is
true, the little prisoners of Tanglewood could discern a dim outline of
Monument Mountain, and the smooth whiteness of the frozen lake at its
base, and the black or gray tracts of woodland in the nearer landscape.
But these were merely peeps through the tempest.

Nevertheless, the children rejoiced greatly in the snowstorm. They had
already made acquaintance with it, by tumbling heels over head into its
highest drifts, and flinging snow at one another, as we have just
fancied the Berkshire mountains to be doing. And now they had come back
to their spacious play-room, which was as big as the great drawing-room,
and was lumbered with all sorts of playthings, large and small. The
biggest was a rocking-horse, that looked like a real pony; and there was
a whole family of wooden, waxen, plaster, and china dolls, besides rag-
babies; and blocks enough to build Bunker Hill Monument, and nine-pins,
and balls, and humming-tops, and battledores, and grace-sticks, and
skipping-ropes, and more of such valuable property than I could tell of
in a printed page. But the children liked the snow-storm better than
them all. It suggested so many brisk enjoyments for to-morrow, and all
the remainder of the winter. The sleigh-ride; the slides down hill into