An Ice-Bound Brook. 31 



ing about? Not so much what a thing is as 

 what it suggests, I take it, as the secret of that 

 content that eases weary limbs when we have 

 walked for miles. To wander by this brook- 

 side now, intent only on its ice, its mossy banks, 

 and the leafless trees that skirt its winding 

 course ; intent, I say, only on these as they are 

 individually, is "to feel like one who treads 

 alone some banquet hall deserted." The plain 

 truth of the matter is, there now are no living 

 creatures to be seen or heard, and frozen 

 ground, thinly carpeted with dead grass, does 

 not exhilarate like the rank growths of summer. 

 It is too cold, too, to speculate, and why at 

 such a time are winter birds so unreasonable ? 

 All things are favorable, from my point of view, 

 yet not a bird will show itself, and the song- 

 sparrows no longer sing, even fitfully. The 

 silence of a winter day is maddening, and were 

 it not that we have just expectations of at least 

 one chickadee, the rambler had better stay at 

 home ; but I hear jays now in the hill-side 

 beeches and quarrelling crows along the frozen 

 river. Such sounds bring content. A lively 

 activity that defies the cold is assuring, and the 



