Twice-told tales
“But I,” cried the fresh-hearted New Year—“I shall try to leave men
wiser than I find them. I will offer them freely whatever good gifts
Providence permits me to distribute, and will tell them to be thankful
for what they have and humbly hopeful for more; and surely, if they are
not absolute fools, they will condescend to be happy, and will allow me
to be a happy year. For my happiness must depend on them.”
“Alas for you, then, my poor sister!” said the Old Year, sighing, as
she uplifted her burden. “We grandchildren of Time are born to trouble.
Happiness, they say, dwells in the mansions of eternity, but we can
only lead mortals thither step by step with reluctant murmurings, and
ourselves must perish on the threshold. But hark! my task is done.”
The clock in the tall steeple of Dr. Emerson’s church struck twelve;
there was a response from Dr. Flint’s, in the opposite quarter of the
city; and while the strokes were yet dropping into the air the Old Year
either flitted or faded away, and not the wisdom and might of angels,
to say nothing of the remorseful yearnings of the millions who had used
her ill, could have prevailed with that departed year to return one
step. But she, in the company of Time and all her kindred, must
hereafter hold a reckoning with mankind. So shall it be, likewise, with
the maidenly New Year, who, as the clock ceased to strike, arose from
the steps of the city-hall and set out rather timorously on her earthly
course.
“A happy New Year!” cried a watchman, eying her figure very
questionably, but without the least suspicion that he was addressing
the New Year in person.
“Thank you kindly,” said the New Year; and she gave the watchman one of
the roses of hope from her basket. “May this flower keep a sweet smell
long after I have bidden you good-bye!”
Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent streets, and such
as were awake at the moment heard her footfall and said, “The New Year
is come!” Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers, they
quaffed her health. She sighed, however, to perceive that the air was
tainted—as the atmosphere of this world must continually be—with the
dying breaths of mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to
bury them. But there were millions left alive to rejoice at her coming,
and so she pursued her way with confidence, strewing emblematic flowers
on the doorstep of almost every dwelling, which some persons will
gather up and wear in their bosoms, and others will trample under foot.
The carrier-boy can only say further that early this morning she filled
his basket with New Year’s addresses, assuring him that the whole city,
with our new mayor and the aldermen and common council at its head,
would make a general rush to secure copies. Kind patrons, will not you
redeem the pledge of the New Year?
SNOWFLAKES
There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and through the
partially-frosted window-panes I love to watch the gradual beginning of
the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air
and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the
earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
These are not the big flakes heavy with moisture which melt as they
touch the ground and are portentous of a soaking rain. It is to be in
good earnest a wintry storm. The two or three people visible on the
sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude,
which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a comfortless and
blustering day. By nightfall—or, at least, before the sun sheds another
glimmering smile upon us—the street and our little garden will be
heaped with mountain snowdrifts. The soil, already frozen for weeks
past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be laid upon it, and
to a Northern eye the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and
acquire a beauty of its own when Mother Earth, like her children, shall
have put on the fleecy garb of her winter’s wear. The cloud-spirits are
slowly weaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime
like hoar-frost over the brown surface of the street; the withered
green of the grass-plat is still discernible, and the slated roofs of
the houses do but begin to look gray instead of black. All the snow
that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it heaped
up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually
by silent and stealthy influences are great changes wrought. These
little snow-particles which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through
the air will bury the great Earth under their accumulated mass, nor
permit her to behold her sister Sky again for dreary months. We
likewise shall lose sight of our mother’s familiar visage, and must
content ourselves with looking heavenward the oftener.
Now, leaving the Storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down, pen
in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an influence
productive of cheerfulness and favorable to imaginative thought in the
atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a Southern clime may woo the
Muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage reclining on banks of
turf, while the sound of singing-birds and warbling rivulets chimes in
with the music of his soul. In our brief summer I do not think, but
only exist in the vague enjoyment of a dream. My hour of inspiration—if
that hour ever comes—is when the green log hisses upon the hearth, and
the bright flame, brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles high
up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down among the growing
heaps of ashes. When the casement rattles in the gust and the
snowflakes or the sleety raindrops pelt hard against the window-panes,
then I spread out my sheet of paper with the certainty that thoughts
and fancies will gleam forth upon it like stars at twilight or like
violets in May, perhaps to fade as soon. However transitory their glow,
they at least shine amid the darksome shadow which the clouds of the
outward sky fling through the room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently
welcomed by me, her true-born son, be New England’s winter, which makes
us one and all the nurslings of the storm and sings a familiar lullaby
even in the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look we forth
again and see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done.
Slow and sure! He has the day—perchance the week—before him, and may
take his own time to accomplish Nature’s burial in snow. A smooth
mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the dry
stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white surface in
all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand shivering in a
shallow snowdrift, looking, poor things! as disconsolate as if they
possessed a human consciousness of the dreary scene. This is a sad time
for the shrubs that do not perish with the summer. They neither live
nor die; what they retain of life seems but the chilling sense of
death. Very sad are the flower-shrubs in midwinter. The roofs of the
houses are now all white, save where the eddying wind has kept them
bare at the bleak corners. To discern the real intensity of the storm,
we must fix upon some distant object—as yonder spire—and observe how
the riotous gust fights with the descending snow throughout the
intervening space. Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured; then,
again, we have a distinct but transient glimpse of the tall steeple,
like a giant’s ghost; and now the dense wreaths sweep between, as if
demons were flinging snowdrifts at each other in mid-air. Look next
into the street, where we have an amusing parallel to the combat of
those fancied demons in the upper regions. It is a snow-battle of
schoolboys. What a pretty satire on war and military glory might be
written in the form of a child’s story by describing the snow-ball
fights of two rival schools, the alternate defeats and victories of
each, and the final triumph of one party, or perhaps of neither! What
pitched battles worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains! What storming
of fortresses built all of massive snow-blocks! What feats of
individual prowess and embodied onsets of martial enthusiasm! And when
some well-contested and decisive victory had put a period to the war,
both armies should unite to build a lofty monument of snow upon the
battlefield and crown it with the victor’s statue hewn of the same
frozen marble. In a few days or weeks thereafter the passer-by would
observe a shapeless mound upon the level common, and, unmindful of the
famous victory, would ask, “How came it there? Who reared it? And what
means it?” The shattered pedestal of many a battle-monument has
provoked these questions when none could answer.
Turn we again to the fireside and sit musing there, lending our ears to
the wind till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice and
dictate wild and airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me to
sketch out the personification of a New England winter! And that idea,
if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit before my fancy,
shall be the theme of the next page.
How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latter
autumn which is Nature’s cry of lamentation as the destroyer rushes
among the shivering groves where she has lingered and scatters the sear
leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap
themselves in cloaks and shake their heads disconsolately, saying,
“Winter is at hand.” Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and
diligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice because each
shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per
ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the
atmosphere. A few days more, and at eventide the children look out of
the window and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the
air. It is stern Winter’s vesture. They crowd around the hearth and
cling to their mother’s gown or press between their father’s knees,
affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wide flue
of the chimney.
It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children hear it, they
shudder and exclaim, “Winter is come. Cold Winter has begun his reign
already.” Now throughout New England each hearth becomes an altar
sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity
who tyrannizes over forest, country-side and town. Wrapped in his white
mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a wind-tossed
snowdrift, he travels over the land in the midst of the northern blast,
and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon his path! There he
lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the spot where Winter
overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broad
lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary empire is
established; all around stretches the desolation of the pole. Yet not
ungrateful be his New England children (for Winter is our sire, though
a stern and rough one)—not ungrateful even for the severities which
have nourished our unyielding strength of character. And let us thank
him, too, for the sleigh-rides cheered by the music of merry bells; for
the crackling and rustling hearth when the ruddy firelight gleams on
hardy manhood and the blooming cheek of woman: for all the
home-enjoyments and the kindred virtues which flourish in a frozen
soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven months of storm and
bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen
driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the handful
and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often ere he will give
up his empire old Winter rushes fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at