immitigable deity
who tyrannizes over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in his
white mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a
wind-tossed snowdrift, he travels over the land in the midst of the
northern blast, and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon
his path! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the
spot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing
rivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His
dreary empire is established; all around stretches the desolation of
the pole. Yet not ungrateful be his New England children (for Winter
is our sire, though a stern and rough one)--not ungrateful even for
the severities which have nourished our unyielding strength of
character. And let us thank him, too, for the sleigh-rides cheered by
the music of merry bells; for the crackling and rustling hearth when
the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy manhood and the blooming cheek of
woman: for all the home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues which
flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven
months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a
flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting
him with violets by the handful and strewing green grass on the path
behind him. Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushes
fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the shrinking form of Spring,
yet step by step he is compelled to retreat northward, and spends the
summer month within the Arctic circle.

Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the
winter's day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without
abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser
volumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is a
layer of snow reaching halfway up the lowest pane of glass. The garden
is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots of
uncovered earth where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it
elsewhere to the fence-tops or piling huge banks against the doors of
houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across
a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen
with the wind. And now the jingling of bells--a sluggish sound
responsive to the horse's toilsome progress through the unbroken
drifts--announces the passage of a sleigh with a boy clinging behind
and ducking his head