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WINTER 



III 



Did you ever hear the running, rumbling, reverber- 

 ating sound of the shore-to-shore split of a wide 

 sheet of new ice ? You will hear it as the sun rises over 

 the pond, as the tide turns in the ice-bound river, 

 and when the ice contracts with falling temperature, 

 a startling bolt of sound, a quake, that cleaves 

 the ice across and splits its way into the heart of 

 the frozen hills. 



IV 



One of the most unnatural of all the sounds out- 

 of-doors is the clashing, glassy rattle of trees ice- 

 coated and shaken by the wind. It is as if you were 

 in some weird china shop, where the curtains, the 

 very clothes of the customers, were all of broken = 

 glass. It is the rattle of death, not of life ; no, 

 rather it is the rustle of the ermine robe of Win- 

 ter, as he passes crystal-booted down his crystal 

 halls. 



If winter is the season of large sounds, it is also; 

 f the season of small sounds, for it is the season of i 

 wide silence when the slightest of stirrings can be; 

 heard. Three of these small sounds you must listen[ 

 for this winter : the smothered tinkle-tunkle of water 

 running under thin ice, as where the brook passes 

 a pebbly shallow ; then the tick-tick-tick of the 



