A 



INTRODUCTION 



S in The Fall of the Year, so here in Winter, 

 the second volume of this series, I have tried 

 by story and sketch and suggestion to catch 

 the spirit of the season. In this volume it is the 

 large, free, strong, fierce, wild soul of Winter which 

 I would catch, the bitter boreal might that, out of 

 doors, drives all before it; that challenges all that is 

 wild and fierce and strong and free and large within 

 us, till the bounding red blood belts us like an equa- 

 tor, and the glow of all the tropics blooms upon our 

 faces and down into the inmost of our beings. 



Winter within us means vitality and purpose and 

 throbbing life ; and without us in our fields and 

 woods it means widened prospect, the storm of bat- 

 tle, the holiness of peace, the poetry of silence and 

 darkness and emptiness and death. And I have 

 tried throughout this volume to show that Winter is 

 only a symbol, that death is only an appearance, 

 that life is everywhere, and that everywhere life domi- 

 nates even while it lies buried under the winding- 

 sheet of the snow. 



" A simple child, 

 That lightly draws its breath, 

 What should it know of death ? " 



Why, this at least, that the winter world is not 

 dead; that the cold is powerless to destroy; that 



