IN THE CATSKILLS 



occasional mullein-stalk or other tall weed stood 

 above the snow. Near the top the hill was girded 

 with a bank of snow that blotted out the stone wall 

 and every vestige of the earth beneath. These 

 hills wear this belt till May, and sometimes the 

 plow pauses beside them. From the top of the 

 ridge an immense landscape in immaculate white 

 stretches before us. Miles upon miles of farms, 

 smoothed and padded by the stainless element, hang 

 upon the sides of the mountains, or repose across 

 the long sloping hills. The fences or stone walls 

 show like half-obliterated black lines. I turn my 

 back to the sun, or shade my eyes with my hand. 

 Every object or movement in the landscape is 

 sharply revealed; one could see a fox half a league. 

 The farmer foddering his cattle, or drawing manure 

 afield, or leading his horse to water; the pedestrian 

 crossing the hill below; the children wending their 

 way toward the distant schoolhouse, the eye 

 cannot help but note them: they are black specks 

 upon square miles of luminous white. What a 

 multitude of sins this unstinted charity of the snow 

 covers ! How it flatters the ground ! Yonder sterile 

 field might be a garden, and you would never sus- 

 pect that that gentle slope with its pretty dimples 

 and curves was not the smoothest of meadows, yet 

 it is paved with rocks and stone. 



But what is that black speck creeping across that 

 cleared field near the top of the mountain at the 

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