for 



shovel it and suffer it, then to the city for the winter, 

 for there one's share of the shoveling is small, and 

 the suffering there seems very evenly distributed. 



Here on the farm is neither shoveling nor suffer- 

 ing, no quarrel whatever with the season. Here you 

 have nothing to do with its coming or going further 

 than making preparation to welcome it and to bid it 

 farewell. You slide, instead, with your boys ; you do 

 up the chores early in the short twilight, pile the 

 logs high by the blazing chimney and you remem- 

 ber that there is to be a lecture to-night by the man 

 who has said it all in his book ; there is to be a con- 

 cert, a reception, a club dinner, in the city, sixteen 

 blissful miles away, and it is snowing ! You can go 

 if you have to. But the soft tapping on the window- 

 panes grows faster, the voices at the corners of the 

 house rise higher, shriller. You look down at your 

 slippers, poke up the fire, settle a little deeper into 

 the big chair, and beg Eve to go on with the reading. 

 And she reads on 



Shut in from all the world without, 



We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 



Content to let the north wind roar 



In baffled rage at pane and door, 



While the red logs before us beat 



47 



