36 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



hours given heartily to this business. First comes the Sisy 

 phean toil of rolling the clammy balls till they refuse to 

 JDudge farther. Then, if you would play the statuary, they 

 are piled one upon the other to the proper height; or if your 

 aim be masonry, whether of house or fort, they must be 

 squared and beaten solid with the shovel. The material is 

 capable of very pretty effects, and your young companions 

 meanwhile are unconsciously learning lessons in aesthetics. 

 From the feeling of satisfaction with which one squats on 

 the damp floor of his extemporized dwelling, I have been 

 led to think that the backwoodsman must get a sweeter 

 savour of self-reliance from the house his own hands have 

 built than Bramante or Sansovino could ever give. Perhaps 

 the fort is the best thing, for it calls out more masculine 

 qualities and adds the cheer of battle with that dumb 

 artillery which gives pain enough to test pluck without risk 

 of serious hurt. Already, as I write, it is twenty odd years 

 ago. The balls fly thick and fast. The uncle defends the 

 waist-high ramparts against a storm of nephews, his breast 

 plastered with decorations like another Radetzky s. How 

 well I recall the indomitable good-humour under fire of him 

 who fell in the front at Ball s Bluff, the silent pertinacity of 

 the gentle scholar who got his last hurt at Fair Oaks, the 

 ardour in the charge of the gallant gentleman who, with the 

 death-wound in his side, headed his brigade at Cedar Creek ! 

 How it all comes back, and they never come ! I cannot 

 again be the Vauban of fortresses in the innocent snow, but 

 I shall never see children moulding their clumsy giants in it 

 without longing to help. It was a pretty fancy of the young 

 Vermont sculptor to make his first essay in this evanescent 

 material. Was it a figure of Youth, I wonder ? Would it 

 not be well if all artists could begin in stuff as perishable, to 

 melt away when the sun of prosperity began to shine, and 

 leave nothing behind but the gain of practised hands ? It is 

 pleasant to fancy that Shakespeare served his apprenticeship 

 at this trade, and owed to it that most pathetic of despairing 

 wishes, 



O, that I were a mockery -king of snow, 

 Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, 

 To melt myself away in water-drops ! 



I have spoken of the exquisite curves of snow surfaces. 

 Not less rare are the tints of which they are capable the 



