NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 149 



Enough, then, of apologies and negative 

 considerations. There was never a good 

 Yankee, of moderately robust health, and 

 under fifty years of age, that did not wel- 

 come cold weather as a friend. Ask the 

 school-boys, especially such as live in coun- 

 try places, whether summer or winter brings 

 the greater pleasure. Two to one they will 

 vote for winter. Or look back over your 

 own childhood, and see whether the sports 

 of winter-time do not seem, in the retro- 

 spect, to have been the very crown of the 

 year. How vivid my own recollections are ! 

 Other seasons had their own distinctive 

 felicities ; the year was full of delights ; 

 but we watched for the first snow-fall and 

 the first ice as eagerly as I now see elderly 

 and sickly people watching for the first 

 symptoms of summer. As well as I can 

 remember, winter was never too long nor 

 too cold, whatever may have been true of 

 a single day now and then, when the old 

 school-house, with its one small stove, and 

 its eight or ten large windows, ought, in all 

 reason, to have been condemned as unin- 

 habitable. But the frolics out-of-doors! It 

 makes the blood tingle even now to think 



