30 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
It has grown spacious. The shore line of the 
sky has been buffeted back by the winter storm- 
winds. The wide, bleak landscape across which 
are farmhouses and herds of cattle and the slow, 
homelike curl of house smoke, minding you of 
dinner or supper coming on and making you 
sniff to smell the brewing coffee and listen for 
the frying meat; and the flocks of trees flocking 
in their hollows or standing back on the hills 
against the snowy background of far fields, and 
the thatched huts of the haystacks and the spire 
of the village church and the running of the va- 
grant stream—look at such a landscape tending 
slowly toward the sky but going so far before reach- 
ing it, and your world will seem to have been am- 
plified by the handicraft of winter. Earth cuts 
large figure when winter goes barehanded out to 
chop wood for the fire of winter hearths. 
How good the outdoors makes the indoors in 
winter, too! Summer makes indoors “stale, 
flat, unprofitable,” as good Will Shakespeare was 
heard to say on occasion. Not so, winter. In- 
doors and outdoors both are good. Winter 
frosts his whiskers with his breath. When night 
winds howl like dervishes, how good to throw 
fuel on the fire, sit close hugging round in a 
circle of those you love the most, crack walnuts 
grown on your own woods if you have the woods, 
hear the wood crackle and see the flames leap 
chimneyward as eager to go gadding about in 
the winter sky. And this indoor comfort is 
