WINTER SUNSHINE. 11 



mens of both at that period of the year when one 

 values such things highest, namely, in the fall and 

 winter and early spring. Sunlight is good any time, 

 but a bright, evenly tempered day is certainly more 

 engrossing to the attention in winter than in summer, 

 and such days seem the rule, and not the exception, in 

 the Washington winter. The deep snows keep to 

 the north, the heavy rains to the south, leaving a 

 blue space central over the border States. And there 

 is not one of the winter months but wears this blue 

 zone as a girdle. 



I am not thinking especially of the Indian Sum- 

 mer, that charming but uncertain second youth of the 

 New England year, but of regularly recurring lucid 

 intervals in the weather system of the Virginia fall 

 and winter, when the best our climate is capable of 

 stands revealed, southern days with northern blood 

 in their veins, exhilarating, elastic, full of action, the 

 hyperborean oxygen of the North tempered by the 

 dazzling sun of the South, a little bitter in winter to 

 all travelers but the pedestrian to him sweet and 

 warming but in autumn a vintage that intoxicates 

 all lovers of the open air. 



It is impossible not to dilate and expand under 

 such skies. One breathes deeply and steps proudly, 

 and if he have any of the eagle nature in him it 

 comes to the surface then. There is a sense of alti- 

 tude about these dazzling November and December 

 days, of mountain tops and pure ether. The earth in 

 passing through the fire of summer seems to have 

 lost all its dross, and life all its impediments. 



