cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O' wintry war,
Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle,
Beneath a scaur.

"Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing,
That in the merry months o' spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
And close thy ee?"

As I passed the creek, I noticed the white woolly masses that filled
the water. It was as if somebody upstream had been washing his sheep
and the water had carried away all the wool, and I thought of the
Psalmist's phrase, "He giveth snow like wool." On the river a heavy
fall of snow simulates a thin layer of cotton batting. The tide drifts
it along, and, where it meets with an obstruction alongshore, it folds
up and becomes wrinkled or convoluted like a fabric, or like cotton
sheeting. Attempt to row a boat through it, and it seems indeed like
cotton or wool, every fibre of which resists your progress.

As the sun went down and darkness fell, the storm impulse reached its
full. It became a wild conflagration of wind and snow; the world was
wrapt in frost flame; it enveloped one, and penetrated his lungs and
caught away his breath like a blast from a burning city. How it
whipped around and under every cover and searched out every crack and
crevice, sifting under the shingles in the attic, darting its white
tongue under the kitchen door, puffing its breath down the chimney,
roaring through the woods, stalking like a sheeted ghost across the
hills, bending in white and ever-changing forms above the fences,
sweeping across the plains, whirling in eddies behind the buildings,
or leaping spitefully up their walls,--in short, taking the world
entirely to itself, and giving a loose rein to its desire.

[Illustration: THE STUDY]

But in the morning, behold! the world was not consumed; it was not the
besom of destruction, after all, but the gentle hand of mercy. How
deeply and warmly and spotlessly Earth's nakedness is clothed!--the
"wool" of the Psalmist nearly two feet deep. And as far as warmth and
protection are concerned, there is a good deal of the virtue of wool
in such a snow-fall. How it protects the grass, the plants, the roots
of the trees, and the worms, insects, and smaller animals in the
ground! It is a veritable fleece, beneath which the shivering earth
("the frozen hills ached with pain," says one of our young poets) is
restored to warmth. Wh