WINTER NEIGHBORS. 



THE country is more of a wilderness, more of a 

 wild solitude, in the winter than in the summer. 

 The wild comes out. The urban, the cultivated, 

 is hidden or negatived. You shall hardly know a 

 good field from a poor, a meadow from a pasture, 

 a park from a forest. Lines and boundaries are 

 disregarded ; gates and bar-ways are unclosed ; man 

 lets go his hold upon the earth ; title-deeds are deep 

 buried beneath the snow ; -the best-kept grounds re- 

 lapse to a state of nature ; under the pressure of 

 the cold all the wild creatures become outlaws, and 

 roam abroad beyond their usual haunts. The par- 

 tridge comes to the orchard for buds ; the rabbit 

 comes to the garden and lawn ; the crows and jays 

 come to the ash-heap and corn-crib, the snow-buntings 

 to the stack and to the barn-yard ; the sparrows pilfer 

 from the domestic fowls ; the pine grosbeak comes 

 down from the north and shears your maples of their 

 buds ; the fox prowls about your premises at night, 

 and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or 

 steal the butternuts from your attic. In fact, winter, 

 like some great calamity, changes the status of most 

 creatures, and sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, 

 makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. 



