eathery flakes are scattered widely through the
air and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on
the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the
atmosphere. These are not the big flakes heavy with moisture which
melt as they touch the ground and are portentous of a soaking rain. It
is to be in good earnest a wintry storm. The two or three people
visible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed,
frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a
comfortless and blustering day. By nightfall--or, at least, before the
sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us--the street and our little
garden will be heaped with mountain snowdrifts. The soil, already
frozen for weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be
laid upon it, and to a Northern eye the landscape will lose its
melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own when Mother
Earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her
winter's wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle.
As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoar-frost over the brown
surface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still
discernible, and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look
gray instead of black. All the snow that has yet fallen within the
circumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly
equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually by silent and stealthy
influences are great changes wrought. These little snow-particles
which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air will bury
the great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold
her sister Sky again for dreary months. We likewise shall lose sight
of our mother's familiar visage, and must content ourselves with
looking heavenward the oftener.

Now, leaving the Storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down,
pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an
influence productive of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative
thought in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a Southern
clime may woo the Muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage
reclining on banks of turf, while the sound of singing-birds and
warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our brief
summer I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a
dream. My hour of inspiration--if that hour ever comes--is when the
green log hisses upon