DECEMBER. 313 



quissings Creek, I see a film of smoke that hovers in the 

 still air above a treacherous meadow. The tract is as level 

 as a table-top, rankly sodded as a well-tended lawn, but 

 lacks firmness below. William Penn might have written 

 his "Sandy foundations, shaken," while walking there; 

 but he never came, I know, although his manor-house and 

 brewery are almost within sight. 



What the " smoke " might be I conjectured as I bent 

 my steps that way ; and at last my hoped-for green 

 Christmas was veritably before me. Brown trees, brown 

 moss, brown hedges, and brown grass ; even the ice was 

 dusty ; the country everywhere was dripping with dreari- 

 ness but at this one spot. The supposed smoke was really 

 mist, mellowed by the sunlight, arid beneath it was a 

 rank, tropically rank green foi-est, which for birds and 

 butterflies harbored fish, frogs, and salamanders. 



As a small picture usually looks well within a walnut 

 frame, so the deep brown of the frost-bitten world proved 

 a suitable surrounding here ; and the picture was covered, 

 that no rude wind should mar it, with water, now so 

 smooth and clear, except where the upward current 

 reached the surface, that no image was distorted, or any 

 object, however small, obscured. 



As a tired, homeless wanderer in a city seeks to find 

 rest and warmth by peering into the windows of some 

 Croesus's house, so I forgot that it was winter where I stood, 

 seeing only the perpetual summer of my neighbor's great 

 meadow spring. To merely witness the life and beauty 

 there made me forget that I had long since lost hold of 

 my own youthful vigor, and must soon return to a dreary 

 world, perhaps both cold and hungry. For a time these 

 weaknesses were likewise forgotten ; and this, I take it, is 

 next akin to annihilating them. Before me was as near 

 the fabled youth-renewing spring as I have hopes of find- 

 ing, and it is a discovery I would be well pleased to make. 



