s more
accurately than another man could measure them with rod and chain. He
could find his way in the woods at night better by his feet than by
his eyes. He knew every track in the snow and on the ground, and what
creature had taken the path in the snow before him."

Thoreau could write the most beautiful descriptions when he was so
inclined. Here is an exquisite description of a snowstorm.

"Did you ever admire the steady, silent, windless fall of the snow, in
some lead-colored sky, silent save the little ticking of the flakes as
they touched the twigs? It is chased silver, molded over the pines and
oak leaves. Soft shades hang like curtains along the closely-draped
wood-paths. Frozen apples become little cider-vats. The old crooked
apple-trees, frozen stiff in the pale, shivering sunlight, that
appears to be dying of consumption, gleam forth like the heroes of one
of Dante's cold hells; we would mind any change in the mercury of the
dream. The snow crunches under the feet; the chopper's axe rings
funereally through the tragic air. At early morn the frost on
button-bushes and willows was silvery and every stem and minutest twig
and filamentary weed came up a silver thing, while the cottage smoke
rose salmon-colored into that oblique day. At the base of ditches were
shooting crystals, like the blades of an ivory-handled penknife, the
rosettes and favors fretted of silver on the flat ice. The little
cascades in the brook were ornamented with transparent shields, and
long candelabrums and spermaceti-colored fools'-caps and plated
jellies and white globes, with the black water whirling along
transparently underneath. The sun comes out, and all at a glance,
rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds start into intense life on
the angles of the snow crystals."

LIX

THE LAST DAYS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE

There has been great difference of opinion concerning the genius of
Poe. His life also has been the subject of much controversy. By some
Poe is painted as a fiend incarnate, by others as a man more sinned
against than sinning. When Howells visited Emerson he was surprised to
hear the Concord Sage refer to Poe as the "jingle man," but then
Emerson himself had been treated rather contemptuously by Poe, and
that, together with Emerson's lack of appreciation of melody, may
account for the "jingle man" expression.

It is not strange that Poe has been the subject of bitter criticism.
He himself was bitter and unjust in