WINTER SUNSHINE 3 



Capital. It may be, perhaps, because we have such 

 splendid specimens of both at that period of the year 

 when one values such things highest, namely, in 

 the fall and winter and early spring. Sunlight is 

 good any time, but a bright, evenly tempered day 

 is certainly more engrossing to the attention in 

 winter than in summer, and such days seem the 

 rule, and not the exception, in the Washington 

 winter. The deep snows keep to the north, the 

 heavy rains to the south, leaving a blue space cen- 

 tral over the border States. And there is not one 

 of the winter months but wears this blue zone as 

 a girdle. 



I am not thinking especially of the Indian Sum- 

 mer, that charming but uncertain second youth of 

 the New England year, but of regularly recurring 

 lucid intervals in the weather system of the Virginia 

 fall and winter, when the best our climate is capable 

 of stands revealed, — southern days with northern 

 blood in their veins, exhilarating, elastic, full of 

 action, the hyperborean oxygen of the North tem- 

 pered by the dazzling sun of the South, a little bit- 

 ter in winter to all travelers but the pedestrian, — 

 to him sweet and warming, — but in autumn a 

 vintage that intoxicates all lovers of the open air. 



It is impossible not to dilate and expand under 

 such skies. One breathes deeply and steps proudly, 

 and if he have any of the eagle nature in him it 

 comes to the surface then. There is a sense of 

 altitude about these dazzling November and Decem- 

 ber days, of mountain tops and pure ether. The 



