68 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



use appearance Avhich they now so often present 

 if farmers received due in-door sympathy. Boys 

 would not consider farming as coarse and undig- 

 nified labor, and hasten off to the city, if sisters 

 worked "heart and hand" with them, and would 

 not speak with such evident pride of the brother 

 who is in college, or clerk in some city store. And 

 young ladies, your pretty white fingers would 

 touch the piano keys just as gracefully, and cro- 

 chet and embroider just as skilfully, were they in 

 the habit of giving the cows a daily loving pat, or 

 a handful of hay. And you would lose none of 

 your refinement, were you so well acquainted at 

 the barn, that the horse would greet you with a 

 good-morning neigli, and the busy fowls flock 

 about j'ou as you enter ; or if you were able to in- 

 form inquirers whether or not your father "cut the 

 feed" for his cattle, or whether in the summer he 

 "turned them out to pasture," or "soiled" them. 



You enjoy sympathy; why not give then, as you 

 ■wish to recche ? HowAKD. 



Dec. 18, 1861. 



FROST IN THE WINDO'W. 



Books have been written of painted windows, 

 and journeys long and expensive have been made 

 to see them. And without a doubt they are both 

 curious and more than curious ; they are admira- 

 ble. One such work of art standing through gen- 

 erations of men, and making countless hearts glad 

 with its beauty, is a treasure for wliich any com- 

 munity may be grateful. 



But are we so destitute of decorated windows 

 as at first one might suppose ? Last night the 

 thermometer sank nearly to zero, and see what 

 business Nature has on hand ! Every pane of 

 glass is etched and figured as never INIoorish artist 

 decorated Alhambra. AVill you pass it unexam- 

 ined simply because it cost you nothing — because 

 it is, this morning, the property of so many in 

 common — because it was wrought by nature, and 

 not by man ? Do not do so. Learn rather to en- 

 joy it for its own elegance, and for God's sake, who 

 gave to frosts such artist tendencies. 



The children are wiser than their elders. They 

 are already at the window, interpreting these mys- 

 tei'ious pictures. One has discovered a silent, sol- 

 itary lake, extremely beautiful, among stately, 

 wliite chffs. Another points out a forest of white 

 fir trees and pines growing in rugged grandeur. 

 There are in succession discovered mountains, val- 

 leys, cities of glorious structures, a little confused 

 in their outline by distance. There are various 

 beasts, too. Here a bear coming down to the wa- 

 ter ; birds in flocks, or sitting voiceless and soli- 

 tary. There are rivers flowing through plaiiis ; 

 and elephants, and buff^ixloes, and herds of cattle. 

 There are dogs and serpents, trees and horses, 

 sliips and men. Besides all these phantom crea- 

 tures, there are, shadowy ornaments of every de- 

 gree and beauty, simple or complicated, running 

 through the whole scale, from a mere dash of the 

 artist's tool to the most studied and elaborate 

 compositions. 



Neither does frost repeat itself. Every Mindow 

 has its separate design. Every pane of glass is 

 individual and peculiar. You see only one ap- 

 pearance of anxiety in tlie artist, and that, lest 

 time and room should fail for the expression of the 

 endless imaginations wliich throng liis fertile soil. 



There is a generous disregard of all fictitious 

 or natural distinctness of society in this beautiful 

 working. The designs upon the poor-house win- 

 dows are just as exquisite as any upon the rich 

 man's mansion. The little child's bed-room win- 

 dow is just as carefully handled as the proudest 

 window in any room of static. The church can 

 boast of nothing better than the emblazonings on 

 the window of the poor seamstress who lives just 

 by. For a few hours everybody is rich. Every 

 man owns pictures and galleries of pictures. 



But then comes the iconoclast — the sun ! Ah, 

 remorseless eye ! why will you gaze out all these 

 exquisite figures and lines ? Art thou jealous lest 

 night shall make sweeter flowers in the winter than 

 thou canst make in all the summer time ? For 

 shame, envious Father of Flowers ! There is no 

 end of thy abundance. Around the equator the 

 summer never dies ; flowers perfume the whole 

 ecliptic. And spreading out thence, the summer 

 shall travel northward, and for full eight months 

 thou hast the teiuperate zones in thy portfolio. 

 Will not all the flowers of the tropics and of eight- 

 month zones suffice ? Will not all the myriads 

 that hide under leaves, that climb up for air to tree- 

 tops that nestle in rock crevices, or sheet the open 

 plains with wild efl'ulgence, that ruffle the rocks 

 and cover out of sight all rude and homely things 

 — suffice thy heart, that thou must come and rob 

 from our winter canvass all the fine things, the 

 rootless trees, the flowers that blossom without 

 growing, the Avilderness of pale shrubberies that 

 grow at night and die by day ? Rapacious sun, 

 thou shouldst set us a better example. 



But the indefatigable frost repairs the desola- 

 tion. New pictures supply the waste ones. New 

 cathedrals, new forests, fringed and blossoming, 

 new sceneries and new races of extinct animals. 

 We are rich every morning, and poor every noon. 

 One day with us measures the peace of two hun- 

 dred years in kingdoms — a hundred years to build 

 up, and a hundred years to decay and destroy ; 

 twelve hours to overspread the evanescent j^ane 

 with glorious beauty, and twelve to extract and 

 dissipate the pictures ! 



How is the frost-picturing like fancy painting ! 

 Thus we fill the vagrant hours with innumerable 

 designs, and paint visions upon the visionless 

 sphere of time, which, with every revolution, de- 

 stroys our work, restoring it back to the realm of 

 waste phantasies ! 



But is not this a type of finer things than ar- 

 rant fictions ? Is it not a mournful vision of many 

 a virtuous youth, overlaid with every device of 

 virtue which parental care could lay on, dissolved 

 before the hot breath of love, blurred and quite 

 rubbed out ! 



Or, shall we read a lesson for a too unpractical 

 mind, full of airy theories and dainty plans of ex- 

 quisite good, that Ue upon the surface of the mind, 

 fair indeed, till touched ? The first attempt at re- 

 alization is as an artist tries to tool these frosted 

 sketches, the most exquisite touch of ripest skill 

 would mar and destroy them ! 



Or, rather, shall we not reverently and rejoic- 

 ingly behold in these morning pictures, Avrought 

 without color, and kissed upon the window by the 

 cold lips of Avinter, another instance of that Di- 

 vine beneficence of beauty which suffuses the 

 heavens, clothes the earth, and royally decorates 

 the months, and scuds them forth thi'ough all 



