SILVER FIELDS 5 



The air grows colder, coming out of the north; 

 but if the advance of Boreas is slow and cautious, 

 and he sends before him his light-armed skir- 

 mishers, the snow is frozen so gradually that it 

 turns to a crumbly, loose mass, with a thin, 

 treacherous surface, where nothing much heavier 

 than a fox, if not as broadly shod as with snow- 

 shoes, may go without vexatious and most tire- 

 some labor. If the change of temperature is sharp 

 and sudden enough to freeze the water held in the 

 snow before it has time to leach down to the earth, 

 we are given a crust so firm that it is a delight to 

 coasters and all walkers and runners on the snow. 



It is now no toil but a pleasure to go across lots. 

 "The longest way round" is not now "the short- 

 est way home." The fields give better footing 

 than the highways. The side of the highways is 

 pleasanter to the feet than the two grooves the 

 horses and sleighs have worn hi its center in all 

 their two months' going and coming. There is a 

 silver stile along every rod of every fence, and you 

 may walk anywhere over the buried gray wall or 

 rail fence at your ordinary pace, and sit down to 

 rest on the top of the stakes where last July, when 

 the daisies were blowing, the bobolink sang, 

 higher than you could reach. Can it be that sum- 

 mer ever blossomed here in these frozen fields? 

 How long ago it seems; and yet we are not much 

 older! 



