WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



me as I turn my back to the rushing flakes, and 

 so get my eyes open to look at it I Beyond a wide 

 swale, that yesterday was gold and green but now 

 is glistening wintry white, rises a small eminence 

 where a dissolving view of trees and buildings is 

 momently formed, then hidden, then brought out 

 again, mirage-like, in the most curious and dream- 

 like unreality, yet always with singular beauty. 

 Gray is the only color — a soft, purplish, silvery 

 gray — and the silhouette the only style of draw- 

 ing. By their outhnes I guess that that wavering, 

 slender spike amid the glistening haze is the church 

 steeple — that squarish blur the belfry of the court- 

 house — the next irregular smudge a certain collec- 

 tion of house-roofs ; but all seem as foreign and 

 unsubstantial as shadows, so quaintly are they 

 now clouded, now lightly revealed, by the swirling, 

 satiny snow-flakes that fill the air with particles 

 luminous in themselves yet obscuring the land- 

 scape. 



Suddenly, dark midgets attract my attention, 

 and, pulling my cap over my eyes, I wade out 

 into the meadow where weeds and grasses stand 

 thick above the snow. Tough and elastic are 

 these thin old plant-stems that have kept their 

 erectness all winter; and wild parsnips by the 



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