NATURE IN ARMOR. 



NATURE does not always drop her cloak of 

 ermine when she buckles on her armor. She 

 often covers her soft snow garments with icy mail 

 and meets the dawn with every hillside a shield 

 and every branch of oak a sword. She was thus 

 girded and armed on Sunday, January 18, 1891, 

 as I sought the Arlington hills at the hour when 

 the air of Suffolk and Middlesex was throbbing 

 with the music of church bells. A gentle east 

 wind for even Massachusetts east winds can 

 be gentle when they try carried in slanting 

 lines against the hills and trees a steady fall of 

 cold rain. It had been falling so for over twelve 

 hours, till level snow, fences, walls, weeds by the 

 wayside, shrubs, orchards, elms in the meadows, 

 savins on the hillsides, and belts of woods on the 

 ridge-crests were all sheathed in clear ice, which 

 measured, on an average, a quarter of an inch 

 in thickness. 



As I mounted through the open fields toward 

 the heights, I wondered what the birds were do- 

 ing in the cold rain, with every twig ice-coated, 

 and every berry shut up in thick crystal. Where 



