56 BIEDS AND POETS 



blank like the outer, and all my great ideals are 

 wrapped in the same monotonous and expressionless 

 commonplace. The blackest of black days are better. 



Why does snow so kill the landscape and blot out 

 our interest in it? Not merely because it is cold, 

 and the symbol of death, — for I imagine as many 

 inches of apple blossoms would have about the same 

 effect, — but because it expresses nothing. White is 

 a negative; a perfect blank. The eye was made for 

 color, and for the earthy tints, and, when these are 

 denied it, the mind is very apt to sympathize and 

 to suffer also. 



Then when the sap begins to mount in the trees, 

 and the spring languor comes, does not one grow 

 restless indoors? The sun puts out the fire, the 

 people say, and the spring sun certainly makes one's 

 intellectual light grow dim. Why should not a man 

 sympathize with the seasons and the moods and 

 phases of Nature? He is an apple upon this tree, 

 or rather he is a babe at this breast, and what his 

 great mother feels affects him also. 



I have frequently been surprised, in late fall and 

 early winter, to see how unequal or irregular was 

 the encroachment of the frost tipon the earth. If 

 there is suddenly a great fall in the mercury, the 

 frost lays siege to the soil and effects a lodgment 

 here and there, and extends its conquests gradually. 

 At one place in the field you can easily run your 

 staff through into the soft ground, when a few rods 



