The Ploughboy 



winter beauty, — the wonderful radiance of 

 the snow when it was starry with crystals, and 

 the dawns and the sunsets and white noons, 

 and the cheery, enlivening company of the 

 brave chickadees and nuthatches. 



The winter stars far surpassed those of our 

 stormy Scotland in brightness, and we gazed 

 and gazed as though we had never seen stars 

 before. Oftentimes the heavens were made 

 still more glorious by auroras, the long lance 

 rays, called "Merry Dancers" in Scotland, 

 streaming with startling tremulous motion to 

 the zenith. Usually the electric auroral light is 

 white or pale yellow, but in the third or fourth 

 of our Wisconsin winters there was a magni- 

 ficently colored aurora that was seen and ad- 

 mired over nearly all the continent. The whole 

 sky was draped in graceful purple and crimson 

 folds glorious beyond description. Father 

 called us out into the yard in front of the house 

 where we had a wide view, crying, "Come! 

 Come, mother ! Come, bairns ! and see the glory 

 of God. All the sky is clad in a robe of red light. 

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