KAIN AND SNOW 



107 



tries, where vapor is a practical impossibility 

 and only the ice- or snow-crystal exists. In 

 such lands the covering of the earth glitters 

 as though thickly sprinkled with diamond dust, 

 and the mist rising from swift-running streams 

 is frozen into hoar-frost that drifts in the 

 air, sparkling in the sharp sun-light. It is 

 flash and gleam from every point of view as 

 though a dozen suns were in the sky and all 

 were flaming brightly. 



This splendor is greatly modified in the re- 

 gions where the snow is moist and forms in 

 heavy masses, loading the branches of the 

 pine and the spruce, muffling the eaves and 

 chimneys of the houses, and piling up in pyra- 

 mids on the tops of the gate-posts. The bril- 

 liancy is pronounced for only a few hours. 

 Under the sun and its warmth the crystals lose 

 their sharp angles and melt down into ice-par- 

 ticles, the pyramids soon slip from the gate- 

 posts, and the pine, shaking its long branches in 

 the breeze, throws its burden of snow from it. 

 The purity and serenity of the morning follow- 

 ing such a snow-fall, when the sun is up and 

 we are out walking the fields and woods through 

 the still whiteness, are not lost upon us. We 

 all feel the solemn beauty of the scene, the hush 



Brilliancy 

 of mow. 



