SECOND WEEK] January 17 



nouncing thus with emphasis the number six, order, /cocr/^o?. 

 This was the beginning of a storm which reached far and 

 wide, and elsewhere was more severe than here. On the 

 Saskatchewan, where no man of science is present to 

 behold, still down they come, and not the less fulfil their 

 destiny, perchance melt at once on the Indian's face. 

 What a world we live in, where myriads of these little 

 discs, so beautiful to the most prying eye, are whirled 

 down on every traveller's coat, the observant and the 

 unobservant, on the restless squirrel's fur, on the far- 

 stretching fields and forests, the wooded dells and the 

 mountain tops. Far, far away from the haunts of men, 

 they roll down some little slope, fall over and come to 

 their bearings, and melt or lose their beauty in the mass, 

 ready anon to swell some little rill with their contribution, 

 and so, at last, the universal ocean from which they came. 

 There they lie, like the wreck of chariot wheels after a 

 battle in the skies. Meanwhile the meadow mouse shoves 

 them aside in his gallery, the schoolboy casts them in 

 his ball, or the woodman's sled glides smoothly over them, 

 these glorious spangles, the sweepings of heaven's floor. 

 And they all sing, melting as they sing, of the mysteries 

 of the number six; six, six, six. He takes up the waters 

 of the sea in his hand, leaving the salt; he disperses it in 

 mist through the skies; he re-collects and sprinkles it like 

 grain in six-rayed snowy stars over the earth, there to lie 

 till he dissolves its bonds again." 



But here is a bit of snow which seems less pure, with 

 grayish patches here and there. Down again to sparrow- 

 level and bring the glass to bear. Your farmer friend 



