melts away as readily as ice melts in the sun. 

 They experience a thaw and become democratic. 



To skate over meadows and into inaccessible 

 bogs gives one a taste for exploration. It is a new 

 freedom and perhaps the next thing to flying. 

 Seen through the clear "black" ice, familiar ob- 

 jedts have an added interest; the pebbles on the 

 bottom, the spagnum, the lily-pads, all give the 

 impression of being severed from our world, though 

 so plainly in view. The skater glides in and out 

 amongst cassandra and andromeda, clethra and black 

 alders — wintry jungles, enlivened only by red 

 winterberries — where in summer is the haunt of 

 the rose pogonia and the white-fringed orchis. 

 Who would imagine now that the swamp was 

 capable of producing anything so exquisite, that it 

 held beneath the ice the seeds of such beauty ? 



The most friendly voice in Nature is the song 

 of the brook. Not the wind in the pines, not the 

 voice of the sea, can compare with this for true 

 sociability. These are always somewhat remote, 

 somewhat mystical in our ears, but the song of 

 the brook is cheerfulness itself. Its bonhomie is 

 irresistible. It gradually prevails over any whim 

 and wins us to a sociable and contented mood. 

 i68 



