A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 39 



locked them fast in stone for us after-thoughts of creation. 

 Which of us shall leave a footprint as imperishable as that 

 of the ornithorhyncus, or much more so than that of these 

 Bedouins of the snow-desert 1 Perhaps it was only because 

 the ripple and the rain-drop and the bird were not thinking 

 of themselves, that they had such luck. The chances of 

 immortality depend very much on that. How often have 

 we not seen poor mortals, dupes of a season s notoriety, 

 carving their names on seeming-solid rock of merest beach- 

 sand, whose feeble hold on memory shall be washed away 

 by the next wave of fickle opinion ! Well, well, honest 

 Jacques, there are better things to be found in the snow 

 than sermons. 



The snow that falls damp comes commonly in larger 

 flakes from windless skies, and is the prettiest of all to 

 watch from under cover. This is the kind Homer had in 

 mind; and Dante, who had never read him, compares the 

 dilatate falde, the flaring flakes, of his fiery rain, to those of 

 snow among the mountains without wind. This sort of 

 snowfall has no fight in it, and does not challenge you to a 

 wrestle like that which drives well from the northward, 

 with all moisture thoroughly winnowed out of it by the 

 frosty wind. Burns, who was more out of doors than most 

 poets, and whose bare-foot Muse got the colour in her cheeks 

 by vigorous exercise in all weathers, was thinking of this 

 drier deluge when he speaks of the &quot; whirling drift,&quot; and 

 tells how 



&quot; Chanticleer 

 Shook off the pouthery snaw.&quot; 



But the damper and more deliberate falls have a choice 

 knack at draping the trees ; and about eaves of stone walls 

 wherever, indeed, the evaporation is rapid, and it finds a 

 chance to cling it will build itself out in curves of 

 wonderful beauty. I have seen one of these dumb waves, 

 thus caught in the act of breaking, curl four feet beyond 

 the edge of my roof and hang there for days, as if Nature 

 were too well pleased with her work to let it crumble from 



