A SNOW-STOEM 91 



dry, bracing air, a blazing sun that brought out the 

 bare ground under the lee of the fences and farm- 

 buildings, and at night a spotless moon near her 

 full. The next morning the sky reddened in the 

 east, then became gray, heavy, and silent. A seam- 

 less cloud covered it. The smoke from the chim- 

 neys went up with a barely perceptible slant toward 

 the north. In the forenoon the cedar-birds, purple 

 finches, yellowbirds, nuthatches, bluebirds, were 

 in flocks or in couples and trios about the trees, 

 more or less noisy and loquacious. About noon a 

 thin white veil began to blur the distant southern 

 mountains. It was like a white dream slowly de- 

 scending upon them. The first flake or flakelet 

 that reached me was a mere white speck that came 

 idly circling and eddying to the ground. I could 

 not see it after it alighted. It might have been a 

 scale from the feather of some passing bird, or a 

 larger mote in the air that the stillness was allow- 

 ing to settle. Yet it was the altogether inaudible 

 and infinitesimal trumpeter that announced the 

 coming storm, the grain of sand that heralded the 

 desert. Presently another fell, then another; the 

 white mist was creeping up the river valley. How 

 slowly and loiteringly it came, and how microscopic 

 its first siftings ! 



This mill is bolting its flour very fine, you think. 

 But wait a little ; it gets coarser by and by ; you 

 begin to see the flakes; they increase in numbers 

 and in size, and before one o'clock it is snowing 

 steadily. The flakes come straight down, but in 



