indow to greet once more the signs of life and cheerfulness; but
the landscape is more devoid of life and reality than during any storm
of wind and snow and sleet, no matter how dark and lowering. There is a
changed aspect in everything; it is metallic, and everything is made of
the same horrible white metal. Nothing seems familiar; not only are the
wonted forms and outlines vanished, and all their varied textures and
materials and beautiful diversity of color gone also, but there is a
steely immobility restraining everything which is so complete that it
seems as if it were a shell that could never be broken.

"We look upon a world unknown,
On nothing we can call our own."

It is no longer a real landscape but an artificial encircling diorama of
meaningless objects made of vast unshaded sheets of white glazed
Bristol-board, painted with white enamel, warranted not to crack; with
the garish high-lights put in crystallized alum or possibly powdered
glass. It is without life, or atmosphere, or reality; it has nothing but
the million reflections of that artificial and repellent sunshine. In a
quarter of an hour, even in a few minutes, it is agonizingly monotonous
to the spirit as it is painful to the eye; then, like a veritable oasis
of color and motion in an unmovable glittering white desert, a sound and
sight of beautiful and active life appears. Around the bend of the road
comes slow and straining down the hill, as has come through the glaring
artificial sunlight after every heavy snowstorm for over a century past,
a long train of oxen with a snow-plough "breaking out" the old
post-road. Beautiful emblems of patient and docile strength, these
splendid creatures are never so grateful to the sight as now. Their slow
progress down the hill has many elements to make it interesting; it is
historic. Ever since the township was thickly settled enough for
families to have any winter communication with each other, whether for
school, church, mail, or doctor, this road has been broken out in
precisely this same way.

In nearly all scattered townships in New England the custom prevails
to-day just as it did a century and more ago even in large towns, and a
description of the present "breaking out" is that of the past also. The
work is now usually done in charge of road-surveyors or the
road-masters, who are often appointed from the remote points of the
township. There is, therefore, much friendly rivalry to see which
sur