THE COHORTS OF THE FROST 25 



the lightness and irresponsibility of a feather, some- 

 times as if it were sliding down the air. Often you 

 would run to catch it on your coat sleeve, to admire its 

 fairy texture of interwoven crystals. Sometimes it 

 would swerve and hit you in the face, or fall into your 

 open, laughing mouth where it instantly dissolved with 

 the faintest hint of a cool waterdrop. Then faster and 

 faster the flakes began to come; they were getting smal- 

 ler now as the storm settled down to its work, and the 

 eyes were blinded trying to individualize them. The 

 paths were already white, the brown grass powdered, 

 the evergreens putting on their hoods. It was then 

 that you ceased your sport and looked out on the land- 

 scape in silence, no doubt unconscious of why it suddenly 

 held you, but yielding to its spell. 



There is not Emerson's "tumultuous privacy of 

 storm" hi the first snowfall, nor the suggestion of 

 Whittier's rustic "Snowbound." It comes upon a land 

 notjyebdevoid of colour on the hills, the browns and yel- 

 lows and faint reds of hardwood foliage still shredding 

 the branches, and a great deal of it must fall before the 

 ground plan of the earth the roads and pasture 

 squares and meadow swales is obliterated. What the 

 first snow does is suddenly to spread a magic gauze 

 between you and the familiar world, which accom- 

 plishes what the white gauze in the playhouse is in- 

 tended to accomplish the removal of the objects 

 behind it into a dream place of dimmed outlines and 



