DECEMBER. 299 



" Icicles hang by the wall, 



And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, 

 And Tom bears logs into the hall, 

 And milk comes frozen home in pail," 



I can collect green growths under the «Id oaks, and 

 make me a nosegay of saxifrage, columhine, pale cory- 

 dalus, fererfev, fleshy stalks of narcissus, and dainty 

 spring beauty. Leaves, nothing but leaves, remember; 

 but these have grown in importance since the flowers fell, 

 and will increase therein after the first snow has been 

 long forgotten, and until the impatient buds bursting 

 their bonds smile upon the lingering drifts of the winter's 

 last snow-storm. 



But winter is not always so behindhand ; not so two 

 years ago when the storm-driven snow-flakes beat angrily 

 upon the windows, as if daring me to face their fury; 

 while from the trees came threats of dire import, as their 

 bare branches lashed the whitened air. A long-planned 

 outing seemed indefinitely postponed ; but New England's 

 December weather proved as uncertain as is that of New 

 Jersey, and as quickly as the wind and snow appeared, so 

 they passed by. 



As they scurried together over the distant hills, leav- 

 ing bright sunshine in their track, my companion and I 

 started for a walk, hoping, between the acts of a capri- 

 cious winter day, to see the oaks at Waverley. 



It was fitting that I should see the spot where these 

 trees stood for the first time in winter ; for it was that 

 great winter of many thousand years ago, the Glacial 

 Epoch, that gave to the place its present contour. 



Crossing an undulating meadow that was a novelty to 

 me in that our home lowlands have no projecting rocks, 

 we reached one of those strange and not yet wholly ac- 

 counted for earth-works of the long vanished ice-sheet 

 known to geologists as a kame ; and upon its side, with 



