IS IT WINTER? 8i 
dried beans, and salt pork must get somewhat 
monotonous, even to those who love them. Store- 
houses are almost as rare as cellars, and is one to 
deprecate or envy a state of mind that enables people 
cheerfully to sell their corn in the autumn at thirty 
cents a bushel, with the certainty that they will have 
to buy it in the spring at eighty cents? 
We take advantage of each soft and sunny day, 
as though it were to be the last. It is yet December, 
so the calendar says, but along the roadside one sees 
a maze of sunny, yellow petals, the witch-hazel defy- 
ing the season. Gay red berries are falling from the 
trees, and little bushes are crowded with coral beads. 
The holly tree, decked with scarlet, stands with its 
toes in the rippling brook. Jack-oak leaves glow 
tremendously, and crimson horse-brier makes gay 
splashes against the evergreen pines. 
When Christmas comes, the people celebrate with 
firecrackers, and sometimes they have fireworks at 
night, — rockets, pinwheels, Roman candles. But in 
the remoter places there is no Christmas. Santa 
Claus has not been discovered, and the day passes 
without notice. 
Days come at last when you resign yourself to 
endless cold, but presently the sun bursts out in a 
fury, and your blood seems to feel a thrill of spring. 
This is premature, however, January is not spring; 
and we are smartly reminded of that when, one day 
amidst howling winds, the air is filled with snow. 
The ground now is white. How cold we are ! How 
exasperating these tumultuously blazing open fires 
