from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water
and a crust of bread.

And then this beautiful masquerade of the elements,--the novel disguises
our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another dew, water
that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an unclean
vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and willingness to
serve lurk beneath all.

Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,--the air a dizzy maze of
whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the
exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the
same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall. How novel
and fine the first drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly set
off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an
unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone-wall, in
the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the
first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe
artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the
horizon as iron!

All life and action upon the snow have an added emphasis and
significance. Every expression is underscored. Summer has few finer
pictures than this winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle from a
stack upon the clean snow,--the movement, the sharply-defined figures,
the great green flakes of hay, the long file of patient cows,--the
advance just arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest
morsels,--and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in
the woods,--the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his
easy triumph over the cold, coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp
ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost,
and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying
forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the
storm, to restore the lost track and demolish the beleaguering drifts.

All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I
hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it
is a sort of complacent pur, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but
in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

A severe artist! No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble
and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to
gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight an