34 
ladies’ department. 
but the storm was unheeded by them, save when 
they thought of some neighbor less comfortably pro¬ 
tected from the inclemency of the season. For 
their own lot they were thankful; there was a deep 
felt sense of gratitude for their many unmerited 
blessings; “a sober certainty of waking bliss,” 
which they could scarcely imagine to exist in the 
heartless bustle of a city life, and which they would 
not have exchanged for any othei station however 
exalted. They truly felt that 
“ God made the country and man made the town. 
What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts 
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught 
That life holds out to all, should most abound 
And least be threatened in the fields and groves!” 
This is no fancy sketch. There are thousands, 
who are surrounded by all the luxuries and elegan¬ 
ces of life, and calculated to shine in any sphere, and 
who have feelings and tastes refined enough to enjoy 
the only truly independent life—that of a man, who 
owning and cultivating the soil he stands upon, and 
unshackled by ceremony, except such as good feeling 
and unselfish habits produce, feels that he is free, and 
blesses God that he is so. The charms and the 
pleasures of a country life cannot be enumerated, 
were volumes filled with the catalogue. Who has 
ever seen a snow storm without being entranced by 
its beauty? How noiselessly the feathery flakes 
descend, and cover with the mantle of purity, all 
that was dark and barren in the prospect. How 
exquisite the fairy frostwork on every spray; 
and when the tempest has sighed itself to sleep, 
how beautiful and delicate the long drifts on 
the fields and hill sides, curling over with their 
own weight like waves of the sea, and taking in 
their shadowy curves, the same green hue; or 
settling in heavy masses on the evergreens, and 
weighing them down in graceful sweeps, as they 
stand out in bold relief from the dark background. 
Then the merry sleigh bell; the gay parties; the 
pleasant visits to far off friends ; and it is so invi¬ 
gorating, after being shut up during the storm, to feel 
the pure healthful air rushing past, as one is borne 
rapidly along over the smooth white roads. 
But then comes a thaw, followed by a cold driving 
rain that freezes as it falls, encrusting every object 
with its icy robes. The sheets of water dashing 
against the windows almost obscure the light of 
day; everything without is bleak and dreary, and 
within doors no one wishes to venture beyond the 
precincts of a blazing fire. All are glad to betake 
themselves to early rest, to sleep aw r ay the cheer¬ 
less hours, feeling as if an air of gloom pervaded 
even the snug bedrooms. Morning steals upon 
them calm and bright, as if the wind had never 
learned to blow, and with the rising sun such a 
scene of inimitable splendor bursts upon their sight, 
as they had not dreamed of. The Storm King had 
been abroad, and all nature, to do him honor, is 
dressed in his gorgeous livery of robes embroidered 
with living gems ; the meanest slaves in his train, 
the withered herbage and dry sticks, are decked in 
an array of jewels that the proudest earth-born 
monarch might envy. His sceptre is some tall pine, 
each twig and leaf glittering with diamonds of the 
urest lustre, multiplied indefinitely by the passing 
reeze which shakes them off with lavish profusion 
as it bends its majestic head, as if in mock reverence 
to the delighted beholder; his throne is a rock- 
crested hill top, robed in ice, from whence comes 
crashing down with deafening noise, some rough 
crag, or huge tree, the patriarch of the forest, that, 
after resisting the tempests of centuries, at last in its 
old age, too proud to bend, yields to a storm less 
mighty than hundreds that have preceded it. The 
arden in which Aladdin was so cruelly immersed 
y the wicked magician, where the fruit was 
rubies, topazes, and sapphires, and the leaves of 
the trees were emeralds, never, even in my childish 
fancy, rivalled the glories of sunrise after an ice 
storm. Who ever witnessed this scene of exquisite 
splendor without feeling what has been so beauti 
fully said by Nature's truest poet, 
“ Is wilder hideous in a garb like this ?” 
E. S 
Milking. —I don’t know anything about which 
folks are so careless in the winter, or that is 
more disagreeable to us women, than the manner in 
which the milking is done. Many farmers do not 
bed their cows at all, and the consequence is, they 
lie down in their filth, and get up in the morning 
with bags too shocking to look at. Set a boy or 
man then to milking, and nine out of ten will not 
half clean the cow’s bag before they commence ; so 
the dirt falls into the pail, and by the time they 
have finished stripping the cow, the milk is a nasty 
mess indeed !-—hardly fit to give a pig, much more 
to be brought into a decent dairy. Pah ! it makes 
me sick to think of the thing ! Who would drink 
it if they knew this ? or use it in any cooking ? or 
make butter from it ? Tf it was not for being 
called a scold, or a Mrs. Caudle, I would say I 
wish the men who treated cows so, had their own 
faces daubed every morning—I won’t add in what. 
If milk you’d have both clean and sweet. 
Each night before you rest your feet, 
Make for your cows a straw-bed neat. 
Dolly Homespun. 
Making Stocking Yarn. —Many has been the 
time that my mother has come to me, saying, 
“ Johnny, get off the dye-tub,” when comfortably 
seated upon it in the corner of the old stone chim¬ 
ney, drying my stockings, after a day spent in sled¬ 
ding wood on a Saturday, or during school vaca 
tion. Yes, the old dye-tub stood in the cornel 
twenty-four years ago ; and when I went home last 
November, there it stood, as if it had never been 
moved since I left. It holds precisely seven gal¬ 
lons, and when a fresh dye is to be set, it is filled 
two-thirds full of chamber ley, with six ounces of 
best Spanish-float indigo, put into a small bag, made 
of cotton cloth, tied up and thrown in for the dye¬ 
ing. Here it lies in the liquor which is kept at a 
moderate heat, for several days, when the indigo is 
squeezed gently with the hand, and the wool then 
put in, and occasionally stirred and examined from 
day to day, until the color suits. The wool is now 
taken out of the liquor, and wrung clean of it, 
and then put out to dry, after which it is mixed- — 
one part a beautiful, deep indigo blue, and two parts 
white wool. Next it is carded at the factory, and then 
spun on a hand wheel in my mother’s old kitchen, 
and thus girls are never out of knitting-yarn from 
one year’s end to the other. John Doltttle. 
