A COLD WAVE. 15 



necessarily affects all animal life that was astir be- 

 fore it reached us. Yesterday, there were birds 

 in the woods and about the meadows ; even spi- 

 ders had spread their webs in the sunny glades, 

 and stray flies hummed in the sheltered hollows 

 of the hill ; so that thoughts of an early spring 

 came continually to the fore, as I watched and lis- 

 tened to the busy life about me, myself reclining 

 at full length, on a prostrate tree. 



Had there been no intimation of the cold 

 wave's coming in the morning paper, it would 

 have been suspected as on its way, for all day the 

 barometer was suspiciously low, and soon after 

 sunset a faint moaning in the chimney corner 

 and a far shriller sound among the tree-tops 

 suggested a coming change. The sudden up- 

 leaping of sparks, too, from the back-log counts 

 for something. For an hour or more the coals 

 had been red or purple and scarcely a flame> 

 however small, shot from the glowing mass ; 

 then, at the whisper of the fretful wind, suddenly 

 long trains of brilliant sparks flew upward, and 

 again, both the back-log and the black fore-sticks 

 were ablaze. Doubtless, in the good old times, 

 this never passed unnoticed and every one vent- 

 ured a prediction when there was no likelihood 

 of erring. So he who spake first, in the days of 

 our grandfathers, became the greater weather- 

 prophet. 



