ig was bent down under its load, yet with
its halo of frost it measured fully two inches across. The crystals were
large, formed like spearheads, flat, slablike, yet of infinite thinness
and delicacy, so thin and light that, when by misadventure my whip
touched the boughs, the flakes seemed to float down rather than to fall.
And every one of these flat and angular slabs was fringed with hairlike
needles, or with featherlike needles, and longer needles stood in
between. There was such an air of fragility about it all that you hated
to touch it--and I, for one, took my whip down lest it shook bare too
many boughs.

Whoever has seen the trees like that--and who has not?--will see with
his mind's eye what I am trying to suggest rather than to describe. It
was never the single sight nor the isolated thing that made my drives
the things of beauty which they were. There was nothing remarkable in
them either. They were commonplace enough. I really do not know why I
should feel urged to describe our western winters. Whatever I may be
able to tell you about them, is yours to see and yours to interpret. The
gifts of Nature are free to all for the asking. And yet, so it seems to
me, there is in the agglomerations of scenes and impressions, as they
followed each other in my experience, something of the quality of a
great symphony; and I consider this quality as a free and undeserved
present which Chance or Nature shook out of her cornucopia so it
happened to fall at my feet. I am trying to render this quality here for
you.

On that short mile along the first of the east-west grades, before again
I turned into the bush, I was for the thousandth time in my life struck
with the fact how winter blots out the sins of utility. What is useful,
is often ugly because in our fight for existence we do not always
have time or effort to spare to consider the looks of things. But the
slightest cover of snow will bury the eyesores. Snow is the greatest
equalizer in Nature. No longer are there fields and wild lands,
beautiful trails and ugly grades--all are hidden away under that which
comes from Nature's purest hands and fertile thoughts alone. Now there
was no longer the raw, offending scar on Nature's body; just a smooth
expanse of snow white ribbon that led afar.

That led afar! And here is a curious fact. On this early December
morning--it was only a little after nine when I started the horses into
their trot again--I noticed for the first