RAIN AND SNOW 
107 
tries, where vapor is a practical impossibility 
and only the ice- or snow-crystal exists. In 
such lands the covering of the earth glitters 
as though thickly sprinkled with diamond dust, 
and the mist rising from swift-running streams 
is frozen into hoar-frost that drifts in the 
air, sparkling in the sharp sun-light. It is 
flash and gleam from every point of view as 
though a dozen suns were in the sky and all 
were flaming brightly. 
This splendor is greatly modifted in the re- 
gions where the snow is moist and forms in 
heavy masses, loading the branches of the 
pine and the spruce, mufiling the eaves and 
chimneys of the houses, and piling up in pyra- 
mids on the tops of the gate-posts. The bril- 
liancy is pronounced for only a few hours. 
Under the sun and its warmth the crystals lose 
their sharp angles and melt down into ice-par- 
ticles, the pyramids soon slip from the gate- 
posts, and the pine, shaking its long branches in 
the breeze, throws its burden of snow from it. 
The purity and serenity of the morning follow- 
ing such a snow-fall, when the sun is up and 
we are out walking the fields and woods through 
the still whiteness, are not lost upon us. We 
all feel the solemn beauty of the scene, the hush 
Brilliancy 
of siow. 
The snowy 
landscape. 
