124 WINTER 



III 



Didyou ever hear the running, rumbling, reverber- 

 ating sound of the shore-to-shore split of a wide 

 sheet of new ice ? You will hear it as the sun rises over 

 the pond, as the tide turns in the ice-bound river, 

 and when the ice contracts with falling temperature, 

 a startling bolt of sound, a quake, that cleaves 

 the ice across and splits its way into the heart of 

 the frozen hills. 



IV 



One of the most unnatural of all the sounds out- 

 of-doors is the clashing, glassy rattle of trees ice- 

 coated and shaken by the wind. It is as if you were 

 in some weird china shop, where the curtains, the 

 very clothes of the customers, were all of broken 

 glass. It is the rattle of death, not of life ; no, 

 rather it is the rustle of the ermine robe of Win- 

 ter, as he passes crystal-booted down his crystal 

 halls. 



If winter is the season of large sounds, it is also 

 the season of small sounds, for it is the season of 

 wide silence when the slightest of stirrings can be 

 heard. Three of these small sounds you must listen 

 for this winter : the smothered tinkle-tunkle of water 

 running under thin ice, as where the brook passes 

 a pebbly shallow; then the tick-ticU-ticTc of the 



