116 The Turnpike Road. 



in the ice, would make a fair pattern for the laying out of 

 walks and rambles in a public park. When the snow falls 

 among the cedar trees, the effect is pleasing, the green and 

 the white make a pretty contrast. If the sun is shining the 

 scene is enhanced, for there are sun-snows, as well as sun- 

 showers. The little flakes descending among the dead 

 plants by the road-side, make a gentle rustle, as they fall 

 against the withered leaves. The close cropped pastures 

 look particularly beautiful, after the snow ; they present 

 one uninterrupted immaculate surface. Most of the fields, 

 however, have many weeds and tall grasses, which show 

 more conspicuously against the pure white background 

 than they did before. The crows appear blacker when the 

 snow lays on the ground than at any other time, and it is 

 also most profitable then, " to walk in another's footsteps." 

 Every man helps to wear the path, as musk-rats do in 

 the meadow-grass. 



The foot-prints of the inquisitive dogs, that ran from 

 their masters, to where the mice had been in the night, 

 show plainly ; and the tiny tracks of the mice themselves, 

 about the dead stems of the asters and golden-rods, indicate 

 their efforts to secure the seeds. 



You can see where one wagon has turned out to let 

 another pass ; even where they have stopped, perhaps to 

 talk and ask the news. The snow silently records the 

 wanderings of every creature, and tells of his purpose and 

 his vagaries. A dog led by some curious knowledge, or 

 by the memory of a former visit, before the snow, trots 

 across the field, to where a dead member of his species lies. 

 The snow records his great excitement ; how he pranced 



