temptation that assails us when we are
braced up to profit by the invigorating rigor of winter.

Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only a
fancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is not altogether a
matter of temperature, although the good old deacon used to say, in his
humble, simple way, that his third wife was a very good woman, but her
"temperature was very different from that of the other two." The north
wind is full of courage, and puts the stamina of endurance into a
man, and it probably would into a woman too if there were a series of
resolutions passed to that effect. The west wind is hopeful; it has
promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagers
America-bound, the best wind that ever blew. The east wind is
peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up in
the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokes
when the wind sits in that quarter. The south wind is full of longing
and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we
might say of modern poetry,--at any rate, modern poetry needs a change
of air. I am not sure but the south is the most powerful of the winds,
because of its sweet persuasiveness. Nothing so stirs the blood in
spring, when it comes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men
"longen to gon on pilgrimages."

I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper to do
in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying With
Us, beginning,--

"Out of a drifting southern cloud
My soul heard the night-bird cry,"

but it never got any farther than this. The Young Lady said it was
exceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not only
rhyme but meaning had to be procured. And this is true; anybody can
write first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so many
poems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with a
south-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is very fortunate
when there is not wind enough to finish them. This emotional poem, if
I may so call it, was begun after Herbert went away. I liked it,
and thought it was what is called "suggestive;" although I did not
understand it, especially what the night-bird was; and I am afraid I
hurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if she meant Herbert by the
"night-bird,"--a very absurd suggestion about two unsentimental people.
She said, "No