WINTER SUNSHINE. 



II 



be, perhaps, because we have such splendid specimens 

 of both at that period of the year when one values 

 such things highest, namely, in the fall and winter and 

 early spring. Sunlight is good any time, but a bright, 

 evenly tempered day is certainly more engrossing to 

 the attention in winter than in summer, and such days 

 seem the rule and not the exception in the Washington 

 winter. The deep snows keep to the north, the heavy 

 rains to the south, leaving a blue space central over 

 the border States. And there is not one of the winter 

 months but wears this blue zone as a girdle. 



I am not thinking especially of the Indian Summer, 

 that charming but uncertain second youth of the New 

 England year, but of regularly recurring lucid inter- 

 vals in the weather system of the Virginia fall and 

 winter, when the best our climate is capable of stands 

 revealed, — southern days with northern blood in their 

 veins, exhilarating, elastic, full of action, the hyper- 

 borean oxygen of the North tempered by the dazzling 

 sun of the South, a little bitter in winter to all trav- 

 ellers but the pedestrian — to him sweet and warming 

 — but in autumn a vintage that intoxicates all lovers 

 of the open air. 



It is impossible not to dilate and expand under such 

 skies. One breathes deeply and steps proudly, and if 

 he have any of the eagle nature in him it comes to 

 the surface then. There is a sense of altitude about 

 these dazzling November and December days, of 

 mountain tops and pure ether. The earth in passing 



s 



