8. "A stranger, ignorant of the trade, For where's the middle? where's the border? 9. Quoth Dick, "My work is yet in bits, Why, man, that carpet's inside out." 10. Says John, "Thou say'st the thing I mean, This world, which clouds thy soul with doubt, 11. "As when we view these shreds and ends, 12. "No plan, no pattern, can we trace; 13. But when we reach that world of light, And view those works of God aright, 14. "What now seem random strokes, will there Then shall we praise what here we spurned, 15. "Thou'rt right," quoth Dick; "no more I'll grumble That this sad world's so strange a jumble; My impious doubts are put to flight, For my own carpet sets me right." XLIII. THE SNOW-WALKERS. ATLANTIC MONTHLY. 1. He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the pageantry are swept away; but the essential elements remain,—the day and the night, the mountain and the valley, the elemental play and succession, and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. 2. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the artimpulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses. 3. The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to Literature, summer the tissues and blood. 4. The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread. 5. 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. 6. 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 masterartist old Winter is. Ah, a severe artist! How stern the woods look; dark and cold, and as rigid against the horizon as iron! 7. 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. 8. 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 ax. 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. 9. 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. 10. 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 and the snow. The air is full of latent fire, and the cold warms me-after a different fashion from that of the kitchen-stove. The world lies about me in a "trance of snow." The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the farthest possible remove from the condition of a storm,—the ghosts of clouds, the indwelling beauty freed from all dross. 11. I see the hills, bulging with great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against the sky, the black lines of fences here and there obliterated by the depth of the snow. Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and I imagine I can almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated surface, and looking down in my direction. As I listen, one answers him from behind the woods in the valley. What a wild winter sound,-wild and weird, up among the ghostly hills. Since the wolf has ceased to howl upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there is nothing to be compared with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of the night to hear it. 12. It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to know that such wild creatures are still among us. At this season Nature makes the most of every throb of life that can withstand her severity. How heartily she indorses this fox! In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow! The snow is a great telltale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods, and know all that has happened. I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled. 13. Entering the woods, the number and variety of the tracks contrast strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life still shoot and play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges, squirrels, and mice abound. The mice-tracks are very pretty, and look like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. 14. One is curious to know what brings these tiny crea tures from their retreats; they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be traveling about for pleasure or sociability, though always going post-haste, and linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine, hurried strides. That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden passages and winding galleries under the snow, which undoubtedly are their main avenues of communication, 15. Here and there these passages rise so near the surface as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow, and a slight ridge betrays their course to the eye, I know him well. He is known to the farmer as the deermouse, to the naturalist as the Hesperomys leucopus, a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with large ears, and large, fine eyes, full of a wild, harmless look. He leaps like a rabbit, and is daintily marked, with white feet and a white belly. 16. It is he who, far up in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store of beech-nuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most delicate hands, as they were. How long it must have taken the little creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey them up to his fifth-story chamber! is not confined to the woods, but is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid the corn and pota toes. He 17. The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds another figure to this fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,-leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,the complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less frequent! XLIV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 1. The squirrel-tracks-sharp, nervous, and wiry-have their histories also. But who ever saw squirrels in winter? The naturalist says they are mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced depredator, the chipmunk, was not carring buckwheat for so many days to his hole for nothing; -was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or the demands of a very active appetite? Red and gray squirrels are more or less active all winter, though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, partially nocturnal in their habits. |