DECEMBER. 295 



proved. Throughout the night the storm continued, and 

 at sunrise I thought how happily the Indians had named 

 the year's last month, M'chakhocque gisclmch, the moon 

 when the trees bend with snow. 



That we have less snow than formerly can not be 

 questioned; that we shall have next to none when our 

 forests are all gone, goes without saying; but, happily, 

 it yet occasionally invades even the sheltered meadows, 

 and I, for one, am duly thankful. It is a fact that it mat- 

 ters not how intense the cold may be, nature is never at 

 rest, nor wild life banished ; merely every object is more 

 strictly conditioned. Even an arctic winter teems with 

 suggestiveness, and a mild one is too often but a summer 

 in undress. 



Field, meadow, and hill-side, alike snow-clad ; let us 

 ramble over them. Even were the country literally cov- 

 ered with the snow, a day's outing would not prove fruit- 

 less, for there are ever the -birds that soar above it crows 

 in the upper air, larks in the tree-tops, and sparrows in 

 the hedge-rows ; then, too, the snow itself is often alive 

 with pretty creatures akin to fleas, marvels of activity and 

 grace as they flee from your advancing shadow. Still, the 

 average rambler is not an Eskimo ; his ancestry is tropical 

 rather, and winter is loved only as a novelty. Hence, 

 how the countenance brightens during a winter walk 

 when one comes to a bare spot of earth ! How tenderly 

 he kneels to examine and perhaps to pluck some little 

 faded flower a bit of chick-weed or withered dandelion ! 

 But I did more than this ; tired with picking my way over 

 half a mile of stubble, starting the mice from their run- 

 ways and flushing grass-finches from their favorite hol- 

 lows, I came, at the public road, upon a narrow strip of 

 naked earth. So, at least, it was in common parlance ; 

 but what a beggarly idea of nature one must have to call 

 it naked ! 



