56 BIRDS AND POETS 
blank like the outer, and all my great ideals are 
wrapped in the same monotonous and expressionless 
commonplace. The blackest of black days are better. 
Why does snow so kill the landscape and blot out 
our interest in it? Not merely because it is cold, 
and the symbol of death,—for I imagine as many 
inches of apple blossoms would have about the same 
effect, — but because it expresses nothing. White is 
a negative; a perfect blank. The eye was made for 
color, and for the earthy tints, and, when these are 
denied it, the mind is very apt to sympathize and 
to suffer also. 
Then when the sap begins to mount in the trees, 
and the spring languor comes, does not one grow 
restless indoors? The sun puts out the fire, the 
people say, and the spring sun certainly makes one’s 
intellectual light grow dim. Why should not a man 
sympathize with the seasons and the moods and 
phases of Nature? He is an apple upon this tree, 
or rather he is a babe at this breast, and what his 
great mother feels affects him also. 
x 
I have frequently been surprised, in late fall and 
early winter, to see how unequal or irregular was 
the encroachment of the frost upon the earth. If 
there is suddenly a great fall in the mercury, the 
frost lays siege to the soil and effects a lodgment 
here and there, and extends its conquests gradually. 
At one place in the field you can easily run your 
staff through into the soft ground, when a few rods 
