A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 43 



thunder-gust left the tear-stains of its sudden passion 

 there ; nay, we have the signatures of deHcatest fern- 

 leaves on the soft ooze of aeons that dozed away their 

 dreamless leisure before consciousness came upon the 

 earth with man. Some whim of nature 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 ? Perhaps it was only be- 

 cause 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 w^ell 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 barefoot Muse got the 

 color in her cheeks by vigorous exercise in all weathers, 

 was thinking of this drier deluge, when he speaks of the 

 " whirling drift," and tells how 



" Chanticleer 

 Shook off the powthery snaw." 



But the damper and more deliberate falls have a choice 



