WINTER 45 



if you like ; then snuggle into your easy- 

 chair and enjoy the concert. The boom- 

 ing, the gusts, the eldritch skirling, I 

 don't know what that means, but it sounds 

 well and windy, the whispering and 

 moaning, the shaking of blinds and cas- 

 ings, the singsong of the air's voice, are 

 inspiring. It is Wagner night when a 

 zephyr achieves forty miles an hour. 

 Those threatening sounds tell of far, cold 

 wastes, of manful souls battling homeward 

 on the sea, of men in lonely places doing 

 duty in the cold; and the fire to which 

 we go for pictures yields up a story of 

 heroism in the mountains, on the ocean, 

 on the plains, that the wind accompanies, 

 and that makes us glad to be of the precious 

 human race. Learn to love the wind. It 

 is free, wild, pure, and strong. It is a 

 voice that never sings false. You are never 

 small when you listen to it. 



And the colder outside the cosier within. 

 There is experience enough of cold and 

 storm to be had through the windows to 

 satisfy a good many. Yet a man likes to 

 find that the thermometer in his yard has 



