earth seems to allow us to hear the solemn
beat of the very heart of earth itself. We seem very near to the sacred
mystery of being, nearer than at any other season of the year, for in
other seasons we are distracted by its pleasurable phenomena, but in
winter we seem close to the very mystery itself; for the world seems to
have put on robes of pure spirit and ascended into a diviner ether.

The very phenomena of winter have a spiritual air which those of summer
lack, a phantom-like strangeness. How mysterious this ice, how ghostly
this snow, and all the beautiful fantastic shapes taken by both; the
dream-like foliage, and feathers and furs of the snow, the Gothic
diablerie of icicled eaves, all the fairy fancies of the frost, the
fretted crystal shapes that hang the brook-side with rarer than Venetian
glass, the strange flowers that stealthily overlay the windows, even
while we watch in vain for the unseen hand! No flowers of summer seem so
strange as these, make us feel so weirdly conscious of the mystery of
life. As the ghostly artist covers the pane, is it not as though a
spirit passed?

As we walk on through the shining morning, we ourselves seem to grow
rarefied as the air. Our senses seem to grow finer, purged to a keener
sensitiveness. Our eyes and ears seem to become spiritual rather than
physical organs, and an exquisite elation, as though we were walking on
shining air, or winging through celestial space, fills all our being.
The material earth and our material selves seem to grow joyously
transparent, and while we are conscious of our earthly shoe-leather
ringing out on the iron-bound highway, we seem, nevertheless, to be
spirits moving without effort, in a world of spirit. Seldom, if ever,
in summer are we thus made conscious of, so to say, our own ghosts,
thus lifted up out of our material selves with a happy sense of
disembodiment.

There would, indeed, seem to be some relation between temperature and
the soul, and something literally purifying about cold. Certain it is
that we return from our winter's walk with something sacred in our
hearts and something shining in our faces, which we seldom, if ever,
bring back with us in summer. Without understanding the process, we seem
to have been brought nearer to the invisible mystery, and a solemn peace
of happy insight seems for a little while at least to possess our souls.
Our white walk in the snow-bright air has in some way quickened the
half-torpid immor