A SNOW-STORM. 101 



out the bare ground under the lee of the fences and 

 farm buildings, and at night a spotless moon near her 

 full. The next morning the sky reddened in the 

 east, then became gray, heavy, and silent. A seam- 

 less cloud covered it. The smoke from the chim- 

 neys went up with a barely perceptible slant toward 

 the north. In the forenoon the cedar-birds, purple- 

 finches, yellow-birds, nut-hatches, bluebirds, were in 

 flocks, or in couples and trios about the trees, more or 

 less noisy and loquacious. About noon a thin, white 

 veil began to blur the distant southern mountains. 

 It was like a white dream slowly descending upon 

 them. The first flake or flakelet that reached me 

 was a mere white speck that came idly circling and 

 eddying to the ground. I could not see it after it 

 alighted. It might have been a scale from the 

 feather of some passing bird, or a larger mote in the 

 air that the stillness was allowing to settle. Yet it 

 was the altogether inaudible and infinitesimal trum- 

 peter that announced the coming storm, the grain of 

 sand that heralded the desert. Presently another fell, 

 then another ; the white mist was creeping up the 

 river valley. How slowly and loiteringly it came, 

 and how microscopic its first sittings ! 



This mill is bolting its flour very fine, you think. 

 But wait a little ; it gets coarser by and by ; you 

 begin to see the flakes ; they increase in numbers and 

 in size, and before one o'clock it is snowing steadily. 

 The flakes come straight down, but in a half-hour 

 they have a marked slant toward the north ; the wind 



