WINTER 



most economical and comfortable dress for a warm- 

 blooded animal when the external temperature is 

 very low. 



Man, himself, gets inside other creatures' skins 

 and bids defiance to weather, or, having in his 

 cunning tapped one of the earth's great stores of 

 energy a coal-bedsits comfortably by his hearth, 

 gloating in what is really the warmth of a larger sun 

 than that which now sends him in the wintry months 

 too little cheer. Man, too, like the birds, often 

 migrates from the bleak north to a sunnier south, 

 and he knows, like many a creature of less high 

 degree, of winter refuges. 



To many living creatures, of high and low degree, 

 the alternative comes to sleep or die. The spindle 

 cannot be escaped, the cold shall pierce like a 

 sword but sleep ! and it may be well. Of this 

 " sleep " there are, ^indeed, many degrees, from the 

 mysterious latent-life of frozen seeds and animal 

 germs to the almost equally mysterious true hiberna- 

 tion of marmot and hedgehog. Often, too, it must 

 be admitted that what began as slumber ends by 

 becoming sleep's twin sister, Death. 



The great hypnotist lifts his hands, and the sap 

 stands still in the tree, and the song is hushed in the 

 bird's throat ; he makes his passes, and growth 

 ceases in bud and seed, in cocoon and egg ; he 

 breathes, and sleep falls upon marmot, hamster, and 

 hedgehog, upon tortoise, frog, and fish, upon snail 

 and insect ; he commands his voice is the North 

 Wind and the water stands in the running brooks, 

 and the very waves of the fiord are still. 



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