Christmas in the Woods 
ering chicken or frost grapes, plump clusters of blue- 
black berries of the greenbrier, and limbs of the 
smooth winterberry bending with their flaming fruit. 
There were bushes of crimson ilex, too, trees of fruit- 
ing dogwood and holly, cedars in berry, dwarf sumac 
and seedy sedges, while patches on the wood slopes 
uncovered by the sun were spread with trailing par- 
tridge berry and the coral-fruited wintergreen. I had 
eaten part of my dinner with the ’possum ; I picked a 
quantity of these wintergreen berries, and continued 
my meal with the birds. And they also had enough 
and to spare. 
Among the birds in the tangle was a large flock 
of northern fox sparrows, whose vigorous and con- 
tinuous scratching in the bared spots made a most 
lively and cheery commotion. Many of them were 
splashing about in tiny pools of snow-water, melted 
partly by the sun and partly by the warmth of their 
bodies as they bathed. One would hop to a softening 
bit of snow at the base of a tussock, keel over and 
begin to flop, soon sending up a shower of sparkling 
drops from his rather chilly tub, A winter snow- 
water bath seemed a necessity, a luxury indeed, for 
they all indulged, splashing with the same purpose 
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