Frost Foliage. 23 



scape, and, coming at the call of frost, I asso- 

 ciate them with his crystalline lifeless handi- 

 work. Frost-work, in all its infinite variety, is 

 a fitting accompaniment to feathers in their 

 complexity. We have since the beginning of 

 time associated birds and blossoms, and to 

 many it may seem a novelty to have the one 

 without the other. But Nature is not partial ; 

 the summer songsters have not all of the 

 world's glories to themselves. My brave win- 

 ter wren and tits and nuthatches brave the frost 

 foliage, and when they sport among it the glory 

 of winter sunshine is apparent. 



My little wayside camp-fire is but a heap of 

 ashes ; the smoke that arose from it has drifted 

 miles. The birds that gathered, one by one, as 

 I tarried, have left me ; and now I, too, pass to 

 other points, to a meadow here, a field there, 

 and through the dark cedars that fringe a high- 

 way, and wherever I turn there is no repulsive 

 nakedness, the trees, the shrubs, the very skel- 

 etons of the dead grasses, are made beautiful 

 again, clothed in frost foliage. 



