2 2 PASTORAL DAYS. 



sweeps with pitiless blast through shivering trees and over bleak hills, 

 from whose crests, like a great white veil, the clouds of hoary flakes are 

 lifted and drawn along by the gale. Down the upland slope, across the 

 undulating field, the blinding drift, like a thing of life, speeds in its wild 

 caprice, now swirling in fantastic eddies around some isolated stack, half 

 hidden in its chill embrace, now winding away over bare-blown wall and 

 scraggy fence, and through the sighing willows near the frozen stream; 

 now with a wild whirl it flies aloft, and the dark pines and hemlocks on 

 the mountain-side fade away in its icy mist. Again, yonder it appears 

 trailing along the meadow, until, flying like some fugitive spirit chased 

 from earth by the howling wind, it vanishes in the sky. On every side 

 these winged phantoms lead their flying chase across the dreary land- 

 scape, and fence and barn and house upon the hill in turn are dimmed or 

 lost to sight. 



Who has not watched the strange antics of the drifting snow whirling 

 past the window on a blustering winter's clay ? But this is not a winter's 

 day. This is the advent of a New England spring. 



Fortunate are we that its promises are not fulfilled, for the ides of 

 March might as oft betoken the approach of a tempestuous winter as 

 of a balmy spring. Consecrated to Mars and Tantalus, it is a month of 

 contradictions and disappointments, of broken promises and incessant 

 warfare. It is the strufjQ-le of tender awakening; life against the buffet- 

 ings of rude and blighting elements. No man can tell what a clay may 

 bring forth. Now we look out verily upon bleak December ; to-morrow 

 — who knows ? — we may be transported into May, and, with aspirations 

 high, feel our ardor cooled by a blast of ice and a blinding fall of snow. 

 But this cannot always last, for soon the southern breezes come and hold 

 their sway for clays, and the north wind, angry in its defeat, is driven back 

 in lowering clouds to the region of eternal ice and snow. Then comes a 

 lovely day, without even a cloud — all blue above, all dazzling white below. 

 The sun shines with a glowing warmth, and we say unto ourselves, "This 

 is, indeed, a harbinger of spring." The sugar-maples throb and trickle 

 with the flowing sap, and the lumbering ox-team and sled wind through 

 the woods from tree to tree to relieve the overflowing buckets. The 

 boiling caldron in the sugar-house near by receives the continual supply, 

 and gives forth that sweet-scented steam that issues from the open door, 

 and comes to us in occasional welcome whiffs across the snow. Long 

 "wedges "of wild-geese are seen cleaving the sky in their northward flight. 



