sincere deference and waving gesture in his tone, he speaks of the lake
pickerel, which he has never seen, his primitive and ideal race of
pickerel. He is connected with the shore still, as by a fish-line, and yet
remembers the season when he took fish through the ice on the pond, while
the peas were up in his garden at home.

But now, while we have loitered, the clouds have gathered again, and a few
straggling snow-flakes are beginning to descend. Faster and faster they
fall, shutting out the distant objects from sight. The snow falls on every
wood and field, and no crevice is forgotten; by the river and the pond, on
the hill and in the valley. Quadrupeds are confined to their coverts, and
the birds sit upon their perches this peaceful hour. There is not so much
sound as in fair weather, but silently and gradually every slope, and the
gray walls and fences, and the polished ice, and the sere leaves, which
were not buried before, are concealed, and the tracks of men and beasts
are lost. With so little effort does nature reassert her rule and blot out
the traces of men. Hear how Homer has described the same. "The snow-flakes
fall thick and fast on a winter's day. The winds are lulled, and the snow
falls incessant, covering the tops of the mountains, and the hills, and
the plains where the lotus-tree grows, and the cultivated fields, and they
are falling by the inlets and shores of the foaming sea, but are silently
dissolved by the waves." The snow levels all things, and infolds them
deeper in the bosom of nature, as, in the slow summer, vegetation creeps
up to the entablature of the temple, and the turrets of the castle, and
helps her to prevail over art.

The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace our
steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and birds seek
their roosts, and cattle their stalls.