It may be a far cry, but from green-robed spring fancy yourself suddenly flung into the lap of snow-bound winter, to look upon scenes quite different from the foregoing. The Frost King had been playing a good many pranks for a week or two, and once, in a spasm of frigid ill humor, had jammed the mercury in our thermometers a dozen or more degrees below zero, and had held it there quite too long for our comfort. More than once had he shrieked and blustered and stamped his feet incontinently, and more than once sent his legions of wind, sleet, and snow howling through the leafless woods. Everybody in our central latitudes knows what an explosive old fellow the Frost King is, and how fierce and savage he can become let the mood once seize him.
Sometimes, too, by the hour he had ground his ice crystals to powder in mid-air and hurled them to the earth, covering its surface with a robe of purest white, thus proving that, with all his rudeness and bluster, he is an old gentleman of aesthetic tastes. One evening his mood became blander, and he dropped his crystals from the sky in large, damp flakes, which clung tenaciously to the branches and twigs; then during the night his breath became chilled and froze the snowy cylinders, and when morning broke the woods were a miracle of loveliness, every leaf and twig bearing a ridge of gleaming pearls, while the sylvan floor was pure white. Soon the sun was shining from an unmarred sky, and the snow-clad earth smiled back in shimmering recognition. It was a day for worship in God's first sanctuary.
Yet it was a day for watching the gambols of the birds, and such occupation by no means interfered with the spirit of worship. In the depths of the woods the white-breasted nuthatches were holding a friendly interview. How affectionately they talked to one another in idioms all their own, saying "Hick! hick!" and "Yank! yank!" and "Ha-ha! ha-ha! ha-ha!" which may mean anything that is kind and cordial and confidential. They were either playing at a game of tag, or were having a peep-show among the bushes, hiding for a moment in some leafy cluster, then dashing in pursuit of one another in the most frolicksome way. I crept in under the arches of the snow-clad bushes to watch their caperings more closely, but the birds at once quieted down, and went about their more prosaic vocation of grub gathering. They were no doubt "aching" to frisk about among the snowy bushes, but would not indulge their playful mood under the eye of a human spectator.