IV 
THE JOY OF WINTER 
UCH as esteem winter a season to be en- 
dured—a frozen roadway leading to the 
redolence of spring—are far from the truth. 
We may fairly say they knew not the truth. Spring 
is radiant; winter is jubilant. Winter trumpets 
like a warlike troop. Each season has its own 
strength, seasonableness, serenity, violence, ten- 
derness, tears, rejoicement, as the case may stand. 
Each season in its way is best; therefore those 
who endure winter are utterly amiss, and those 
who enjoy winter are utterly right. 
Winter is ushered in by the leaf-fall of melan- 
choly autumn and ushered out by the rejoicing 
of leaf-making of the gladsome spring. Ushered 
in by sadness and ushered out by joy; and its 
plateau lies high and cold like the giant uplands 
of the mountains. Let in of weeping autumn, let 
out of leafing spring. 
Winter is the season of naked strength. Its 
trees have no shadow nor music of leaves. They 
stand unadorned. Their garment is their might. 
Birds are not in their gaunt branches, save now 
and then a redbird blazes like a sudden star and 
calls with a springtime voice from a winter wood- 
land; and in naked thicket the chickadee calls 
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