Second Autumn in the Ice. 499 



ice has become colder. It can be heard from afar a 

 strange roar, which would sound uncanny to any one who 

 did not know what it was. 



" A delightful snow-shoe run in the light of the full 

 moon. Is life a vale of tears ? Is it such a deplorable 

 fate to dash off like the wind, with all the dogs skipping 

 around one, over the boundless expanse of ice through a 

 night like this in the fresh, crackling frost, while the 

 snow-shoes glide over the smooth surface, so that you 

 scarcely know you are touching the earth, and the stars 

 hang high in the blue vault above ? This is more, 

 indeed, than one has any right to expect of life ; it is a 

 fairy-tale from another world, from a life to come. 



" And then to return home to one's cosy study-cabin, 

 kindle the stove, light the lamp, fill a pipe, stretch one- 

 self on the sofa, and send dreams out into the world with 

 the curling clouds of smoke is that a dire infliction ? 

 Thus I catch myself sitting staring at the fire for hours 

 together, dreaming myself away a useful way of em- 

 ploying the time. But at least it makes it slip unnoticed 

 by, until the dreams are swept away in an ice-blast of 

 reality, and I sit here in the midst of desolation, and 

 nervously set to work again. 



"Wednesday, November i4th. How marvellous 

 are these snow-shoe runs through this silent nature. 

 The ice-fields stretch all around bathed in the silver 

 moonlight ; here and there dark, cold shadows project 

 from the hummocks, whose sides faintly reflect the 



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