NEW ENGLAND WINTER. 161 



to all tastes in a way which some may look 

 upon as fickleness, but which I prefer to re- 

 gard as catholicity. Its days are of many 

 types, and it spreads them out before us 

 like a patient shopkeeper, as if it recog- 

 nized in the Yankee a customer hard to suit. 

 I do not mean to affirm that the weather 

 and I are never at odds ; but all in all, in 

 the long run and theoretically, I approve 

 its methods. What a humdrum round life 

 would be if nothing ever happened but the 

 expected ! I wonder if there are beings 

 anywhere who have forgotten how it feels 

 to be surprised. The children of this world, 

 at all events, were not intended for any 

 such condition of fixity. When there is no 

 longer anything new under the sun, it will 

 be time to get above it. 



Even in so simple and regular a proceed- 

 ing as a morning walk, one wishes always 

 to see something new, or failing of that, 

 something old in a new light ; an easy 

 enough task, if one has eyes. For as we 

 cannot diink twice of the same river, so we 

 cannot twice take the same ramble. I went 

 over the same course yesterday and to-day ; 

 but yesterday's landscape and sky were dif- 



