120 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



barrack roofs, slowly stealing down the shingle or hovering in 

 impending avalanche at the dripping eaves. High on the ridge- 

 pole of the barn my butterfly first disclosed itself, now flutter- 

 ing against the sky, now alighting with expanded, gently moving 

 wings, sipping at the steamy edge of the snow, or sailing across 

 its white field. How I sighed to bag the prize ! What yearn- 

 ings and heart-throbs, wondrous stratagems of allurement, and 

 superhuman schemes of capture ! what hopes and fears animated 

 my demoralized being as I watched the sportive antics of the 

 sprite, as in turn it circled close to the eaves among the swallow- 

 nests or disappeared behind the peak or gable ! What a marvel- 

 lous account of this strange visitor could I have given had not 

 prosaic fortune at last permitted its identification ! 



An event like this is a perpetual spring to the spirit. How 

 often through the years have I drank therefrom and been re- 

 freshed ! But in my present mood the incident recurs with a new 

 significance. That enrapturing butterfly happily is still free, but 

 a similar one since captured proved to be a species familiar in my 

 cabinet the antiopa, the same that fluttered among the winter 

 mosses of the " Old Manse " of Hawthorne. " Rare butterflies," 

 he writes, "came before the snow was off, flaunting in the chill 

 breeze and looking forlorn and all astray, in spite of all the mag- 

 nificence of their dark velvet cloaks with golden borders." In 

 this " lone butterfly " of the winter sun, as Wilson mistakenly 

 calls it, we have a representative of a small family of beautiful 

 insects for which the cold has no terrors ; for it is not true, as 

 the poet of " the butterfly " would have us believe, that 



"each gay little rover 

 Shrinks from the breath of the first autumn day"; 



nor, as Shakespeare implied in the lines 



" Men, like butterflies, 

 Show not their mealy wings but to the summer 



