WEEDS ABOVE THE SNOW 309 



be most natural for me to allow them to remain 

 there, neither reasoned about nor written about, 

 merely a deepening of the background of one's sen- 

 suous enjoyment of "this goodly frame, the earth." 

 Yet to-night I am curiously tempted to pin them 

 up before me for further contemplation, endeavor- 

 ing vaguely, blindly, to work from them to human 

 analogies. 



If, aided by the soft, obliterating mantle of the 

 snow, we walk abroad and find common things — a 

 brook, a dead weed-top — suddenly revealed in a new 

 and simpler aspect, so that some unguessed trait 

 of enduring loveliness it all along possessed is set 

 alone, in a high light, for contemplation, and from 

 its littleness one's soul moves on to grasp such large 

 conceptions as the beauty of the curve or the pro- 

 found strength required for accurate delicacy, why 

 can there not be some snow mantle in our relations 

 with our fellows, to work a magical transformation 

 and reveal similar unexpected significances? Henry 

 Adams is but the last large mind to affirm that a man 

 can compass at most but two or three friends. Is 

 that because it is only upon friendship — and love — 

 that the snow mantle of silence tails, and under the 

 spell of this silence is born a more perfect under- 

 standing than can ever come of words; under it, as 

 we think each our own secret and dynamic thoughts, 

 we seem mystically aware of what it is in his, or 

 her, soul which is lovely and eternal? All of us 

 know this snow mantle of silence that drops upon 

 the converse of friends, the communion of lovers, 

 the wife and husband sitting by their evening fire. 

 And all of us know that we can look for its soft 



