the
sweetest music they had heard that day, and hurried off to the house.

_Author of "Ten Acres Enough."_

(_To be continued._)

SNOW-FANCIES.

O snow! flying hither
And hurrying thither,
Here, there, through the air,--you never care whither,--
Do you see me here sitting,
A-knitting, a-knitting,
And wishing myself with you breezily flitting,
Like any wild elf?

Mother sits there a-rocking,
And watches my stocking;
Well, I know I am slow, and she thinks it is shocking:
While Lizzie and Sally,
They twit me, and rally,--
My thoughts, half asleep, chase your flakes to the valley,
A drowsy white heap.

Dear Sally and Lizzie,
My sisters so busy,
In and out, all about, you make my head dizzy;
You hasten, you flutter,
You spin, you churn butter,
You sew the long seams; while I cannot utter
One word of my dreams.

Lo! light as a feather,
The merry flakes gather
In rifts and in drifts, glad enough of cold weather;
Gay throngs interlacing,
On the slant roofs embracing,
They slip and they fall! down, down they are racing,
I after them all!

One large flake advances;
'Tis a white steed that prances;
At the bits as he flits, how he foams, like my fancies!
Up softly I sidle
From where I sit idle,--
I snatch, as it flies, at the gossamer bridle,--
I'm mounted, I rise!

Away we are bounding,
No hoof-note resounding,
Still as light is our flight through the armies surrounding;
No murmur, no rustling,
Though millions are jostling;
A host is in camp, but you heard neither bustling
Nor bugle, nor tramp.

Yet the truce-flag is lifted;
Unfurled it lies drifted
Over hill, over rill, where its snow could be sifted;
And now I'm returning
To parley concerning
The beautiful cause that awakened my yearning,--
The trouble that was.

Ho! ho! a swift fairy,--
A pearl-shallop airy!
I am caught, quick as thought! fleece-muffled and hairy,
Her grim boatman tightens
His grasp, till it frightens
Me,