THE WINTRY GARDEN 
“ Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, 
A frosty, fiery, sleepy-head; 
Blinks but an hour or two; and then, 
A blood-red orange, sets again.” 
Thus “ R. L. S.,” in one of the very pleasantest of all 
his child's garden songs; but it is precisely that hour or 
two of gracious golden blinking that makes our daylight 
happiness just now. We have hardly had time to grow 
aweary of the long evenings as yet, and the charm of the 
few short hours of sunlight is beyond expression. 
You are so grateful to him for showing his face at all 
in this the barren winter solstice, that perhaps it is only 
your gladdened fancy that would seem to read a new 
benignity, a greater splendour, into his smile. And 
when the “ blood-red orange ” goes down the clear sky, 
now sinking from flake to flake of the dark cedar, now 
caught and tangled in a thin maze of naked cherry 
boughs, through which he slips like a gold ducat through 
a net, I hold the pageant of his progress, for all its 
brevity, to the full as arresting in its beauty and its 
glamour as any sunset of summer time. 
Then when he is gone, “ when he nothing shines 
upon," for a little space the low west is lighted with a 
murky fire, the Alpine rose of winter twilight, until 
blue mists, that curl and float like the smoke from 
autumn couch-fires, spread about the garden, obliterat¬ 
ing all under the darkened skies. The days are short, 
