eath of each driver fluttering aside like a white
scarf. Through the still air ordinary voices cut sharply and clearly,
and a laugh bounds out across the open country with a kind of
superabundance of joy. I see two men beating their arms as they follow
their wood sled. They are bantering one another noisily. I see a man
shovelling snow from his barn doors; as each shovelful rises and
scatters, the sun catches it for an instant and it falls, a silvery
shower. ... I tramped to-day through miles of it: and whether in broken
roads or spotless fields, had great joy of it. It was good to stride
through opposing drifts and to catch the tingling air upon one's face.
The spring is beautiful indeed, and one is happy at autumn, but of all
the year no other mornings set the blood to racing like these; none
gives a greater sense of youth, strength, or of the general goodness of
the earth.

Give me the winter: give me the winter! Not all winter, but just winter
enough, just what nature sends.

...Dry air in the throat so cold at first as to make one cough; and
dry, sharp, tingling air in the nostrils; frost on beard and eyebrows;
cheeks red and crusty, so that to wrinkle them hurts: but all the body
within aglow with warmth and health. Twice the ordinary ozone in the
air, so that one wishes to whistle or sing, and if the fingers grow
chill, what are shoulders for but to beat them around!

* * * * *

It is a strange and yet familiar experience how all things present their
opposites. Do you enjoy the winter? Your neighbour loathes or fears it.
Do you enjoy life? To your friend it is a sorrow and a heaviness. Even
to you it is not always alike. Though the world itself is the same
to-day as it was yesterday and will be to-morrow--the same snowy fields
and polar hills, the same wintry stars, the same infinitely alluring
variety of people--yet to-day you, that were a god, have become a
grieving child.

Even at moments when we are well pleased with the earth we often have a
wistful feeling that we should conceal it lest it hurt those borne down
by circumstances too great or too sad for them. What is there to offer
one who cannot respond gladly to the beauty of the fields, or opens his
heart widely to the beckoning of friends? And we ask ourselves: Have I
been tried as this man has? Would I be happy then? Have I been wrung
with sorrow, worn down by ill-health, buffeted with injustice as this
man has? Would