WINTER VOICES 



leafy days of summer, when it bore the 

 perfume of flowers and the odor of green 

 fields, and one may imagine the spirit of 

 springtime and summer lingers among 

 the naked boughs, voicing memory and 

 hope. 



Amid all the desolation of their wood- 

 land haunts the squirrels chatter their 

 delight in windless days of sunshine, and 

 scoff at biting cold and wintry- blasts. 

 The nuthatch winds his tiny trumpet, 

 the titmouse pipes his cheery note, the 

 jay tries the innumerable tricks of his 

 unmusical voice, and from their rollick- 

 ing flight athwart the wavering slant of 

 snowflakes drifts the creaking twitter of 

 buntings. 



The sharp, resonant strokes of the 

 woodman's axe and the groaning down- 

 fall of the monarchs that it lays low, 

 the shouts of teamsters, the occasional 

 report of a gun, the various sounds of 

 distant farmstead life, the jangle of 

 sleigh bells on far - off highways, the 

 rumbling roar of a railroad train rushing 

 and panting along its iron path, and the 

 bellowing of its far -echoed signals, all 

 proclaim how busily affairs of life and 

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