nd leaves a brisk pure atmosphere and a
sky without a shred of cloud in it--and everything is still, there is not
a breath of wind. The dawn breaks and spreads, the news of the storm
goes about the house, and the little and the big, in wraps and blankets,
flock to the window and press together there, and gaze intently out upon
the great white ghost in the grounds, and nobody says a word, nobody
stirs. All are waiting; they know what is coming, and they are waiting
waiting for the miracle. The minutes drift on and on and on, with not a
sound but the ticking of the clock; at last the sun fires a sudden sheaf
of rays into the ghostly tree and turns it into a white splendor of
glittering diamonds. Everybody catches his breath, and feels a swelling
in his throat and a moisture in his eyes-but waits again; for he knows
what is coming; there is more yet. The sun climbs higher, and still
higher, flooding the tree from its loftiest spread of branches to its
lowest, turning it to a glory of white fire; then in a moment, without
warning, comes the great miracle, the supreme miracle, the miracle
without its fellow in the earth; a gust of wind sets every branch and
twig to swaying, and in an instant turns the whole white tree into a
spouting and spraying explosion of flashing gems of every conceivable
color; and there it stands and sways this way and that, flash! flash!
flash! a dancing and glancing world of rubies, emeralds, diamonds,
sapphires, the most radiant spectacle, the most blinding spectacle, the
divinest, the most exquisite, the most intoxicating vision of fire and
color and intolerable and unimaginable splendor that ever any eye has
rested upon in this world, or will ever rest upon outside of the gates of
heaven.

By, all my senses, all my faculties, I know that the icestorm is Nature's
supremest achievement in the domain of the superb and the beautiful; and
by my reason, at least, I know that the Taj is man's ice-storm.

In the ice-storm every one of the myriad ice-beads pendant from twig and
branch is an individual gem, and changes color with every motion caused
by the wind; each tree carries a million, and a forest-front exhibits the
splendors of the single tree multiplied by a thousand.

It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm put upon canvas,
and have not heard that any painter has tried to do it. I wonder why
that is. Is it that paint cannot counterfeit the intense blaze of a
sun-flooded j