the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for
the gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals
drop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement
rattles in the gust and the snowflakes or the sleety raindrops pelt
hard against the window-panes, then I spread out my sheet of paper
with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it
like stars at twilight or like violets in May, perhaps to fade as
soon. However transitory their glow, they at least shine amid the
darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through the
room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-born
son, be New England's winter, which makes us one and all the nurslings
of the storm and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriek
of the December blast. Now look we forth again and see how much of his
task the storm-spirit has done.

Slow and sure! He has the day--perchance the week--before him, and may
take his own time to accomplish Nature's burial in snow. A smooth
mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the
dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white
surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand
shivering in a shallow snowdrift, looking, poor things! as
disconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary
scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with the
summer. They neither live nor die; what they retain of life seems but
the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs in
midwinter. The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the
eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern the
real intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object--as
yonder spire--and observe how the riotous gust fights with the
descending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes the entire
prospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct but transient
glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost; and now the dense
wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snowdrifts at each
other in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have an amusing
parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions.
It is a snow-battle of schoolboys. What a pretty satire on war and
military glory might be written in the form of a child's story by
describing the snow-ball fights of two rival schools, the alternate