as impossible not to experience a shudder as of the approach of the
Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon the green lawn, and we
all stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar to each other. The
birds in the trees felt the spell. We could in fancy see those spectral
camp-fires which men would build on the earth, if the sun should slow
its fires down to about the brilliancy of the moon. It was a great
relief to all of us to go into the house, and, before a blazing
wood-fire, talk of the end of the world.

In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it is
best to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at any
hour to sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill of
Hudson's Bay. There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glides
calmly along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always be
ready to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves. Even
in our most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of a
cheerful fire at hand. It is only by this readiness for a change that
one can preserve an equal mind. We are made provident and sagacious by
the fickleness of our climate. We should be another sort of people if
we could have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which the Egyptian
has. The gravity and repose of the Eastern peoples is due to the
unchanging aspect of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity of the
great climatic processes. Our literature, politics, religion, show
the effect of unsettled weather. But they compare favorably with the
Egyptian, for all that.

II

You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with what longing I look back to
those winter days by the fire; though all the windows are open to this
May morning, and the brown thrush is singing in the chestnut-tree, and
I see everywhere that first delicate flush of spring, which seems too
evanescent to be color even, and amounts to little more than a suffusion
of the atmosphere. I doubt, indeed, if the spring is exactly what it
used to be, or if, as we get on in years [no one ever speaks of "getting
on in years" till she is virtually settled in life], its promises and
suggestions do not seem empty in comparison with the sympathies and
responses of human friendship, and the stimulation of society. Sometimes
nothing is so tiresome as a perfect day in a perfect season.

I only imperfectly understand this. The Parson says that woman is always
most restle