FOOTSTEPS OF THE SEASONS. 209 



abandoned the fields, there is nothing but the voice of the robin to 

 vary the sighing and hollow piping of the winds, except it be the 

 fierce pattering of the shower, or the crash and fall of branches in the 

 woods. 



The early winter is the chosen time of hurricanes and storms. 

 During November, the old fogs come down and walk about among 

 the sons of men, shrouding all things in a ghostly gloom, and creeping 

 on through wood, and brake, and briar, mingling all the paths together, 

 making a smokelike darkness all day long, and tracking the wayfarer 

 to his ruin. The fogs only clear away to make room for the floods ; 

 and in one night, hayricks, cottages, meadows, and huge barns, are 

 bathed in deep sheets of water, their highest ridges peeping up here 

 and there like mountain peaks above the ocean deep ; while the rabbits, 

 and rats, and ferrets, and harvest-mice, and shrews ; friends and foes, 

 are either drowned or huddled into corners altogether, frighted to 

 their very hearts by the terrors of the new deluge. As the dams and 

 sluices, and forest runnels free themselves, the winter snows begin to 

 fall, and the frost, which heretofore had only dropped down softly in 

 the night, comes now at broad day, and with a talismanic power ar- 

 rests the waters as they leap and foam, converting each splash into a 

 beaded gem, and each bubble into a fairy world. The few green 

 things in the gardens become crimped and curled, as though they had 

 been scorched ; the ponds and rivers are sheeted over, and the skater 

 tries his skill upon the glass ; and the cattle, thirsted with their win- 

 ter food, stand above the frozen pool, panting and lowing for drink. 

 And the snow, how silent ! wrapping all the earth in one vast gleezing 

 shroud ; how fit a symbol of the death beneath ! In one night the 

 world is made anew, trees, housetops, gardens, and fields, all painted 

 of an everlasting white, which, with its blinding glare, seems to lie 

 mocking at the clouds. And yet it is like the soft influences of a 

 gentle heart, when with its offices of kindness, and of love, it surrounds 

 all things with a vestment of purity : even in the moments of wreck 

 and desolation, when the flowers of the heart's world are withered, and 

 the winter of life has set in upon poor humanity's short year. Per- 

 haps it is sent by God to foreshow the virgin whiteness of the souls 

 that survive the winter of the grave ; and which, like the new flowers 

 which jewel the shado^vy grass of another spring, will bloom into 

 greater beauty in the green paradise above. 



Underneath the snow, the workers of the season ply their tasks, for 



p 



