A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 27 



than any charms of which his rivals are capable. 

 Spring is a fickle mistress, who either does not know her 

 own mind, or is so long in making it up, whether you 

 shall have her or not have her, that one gets tired at 

 last of her pretty miffs and reconciliations. You go to 

 her to be cheered up a bit, and ten to one catch her in 

 the sulks, expecting you to find enough good-humor for 

 both. After she has become Mrs. Summer she grows a 

 little more staid in her demeanor ; and her abundant 

 table, where you are sure to get the earliest fruits and 

 vegetables of the season, is a good foundation for steady 

 friendship ; but she has lost that delicious aroma of 

 maidenhood, and what was delicately rounded grace in 

 the girl gives more than hints of something like redun- 

 dance in the matron. Autumn is the poet of the family. 

 He gets you up a splendor that you would say was 

 made out of real sunset ; but it is nothing more than a 

 few hectic leaves, when all is done. He is but a senti- 

 mentalist, after all ; a kind of Lamartine whining along 

 the ancestral avenues he has made bare timber of, and 

 begging a contribution of good-spirits from your own 

 savings to keep him in countenance. But Winter has 

 his delicate sensibilities too, only he does not make them 

 as good as indelicate by thrusting them forever in your 

 face. He is a better poet than Autumn, when he has a 

 mind, but, like a truly great one as he is, he brings you 

 down to your bare manhood, and bids you understand 

 him out of that, with no adventitious helps of associa- 

 tion, or he will none of you. He does not touch those 

 melancholy chords on which Autumn is as great a 

 master as Heine. Well, is there no such thing as 

 thrumming on them and maundering over them till 

 they get out of tune, and you wish some manly hand 

 would crash through them and leave them dangling 

 brokenly forever 1 Take Winter as you find him, and he 



