As for our actual winter, it may enhance
its value in our eyes if we take into account that the three other seasons all depend upon it for their peculiar charms. In the case of spring this dependence is palpable to every one. Berate as we may its backwardness and deceit, muffle ourselves never so pettishly against its harsh breath, yea, even deny it all claim to its own proper title, yet anon it gets the better of our discontent, and we thank our stars that we have lived to see again the greening of the grass, and to hear once more the song of a bird. A mild day in March is like a foretaste of heaven; the first robin seems an angel; while saxifrage, anemones, and dandelions win kindly notice from many a matter-of-fact countryman who lets all the June roses go by him unregarded. It is pleasures of this kind, natural, wholesome, and universal, that largely make up the total of human happiness. Our instinct for them only strengthens with age. They are like the "divine ideas" of Olympian bards,—
"Which always find us young,
And always keep us so."
All this glory of the revival would be wanting but for the previous months of
desolation. The hepatica is not more beautiful than many another flower, but it takes us when we are hungry for the sight of a blossom. What can we do? When it peeps out of its bed of withered leaves, puts off its furs, and opens to the sunlight its little purple cup, we have no choice but to love it as we cannot love the handsomer and more fragrant hosts that follow in its train.
And as winter over and gone sets in brighter relief the warmth and resurrection of springtime, so does the shadow of its approach lend a real if somewhat indefinable attractiveness to the fall months. The blooming of the late flowers, the ripening of leaf and fruit, the frosty air, the flocking of birds, all the thousand signs of the autumnal season take on a kind of pathetic and solemn interest, as being but prelusive to the whiteness and deadness so soon to cover the earth. Indeed, if there were no winter, there could be neither spring nor autumn; nay, nor any summer. Leave out the snow and ice, and the whole round year would be metamorphosed; or, rather, the year itself would pass away, and nothing be left but time.
I am not yet a convert to the pessimistic doctrine that "all pleasure is merely relief from pain;" but I gladly believe that pain has its use in heightening subsequent happiness, and that one man's evil qualities (mine, for example) may partly atone for themselves by setting off the amiable characteristics of worthier men around him. It consoles me to feel that my neighbors seem better to themselves and to each other because of the abrupt antithesis between their dispositions and mine. It is better than nothing, if my failure can serve as a background for their virtuous success. With reverent thankfulness do I acknowledge the gracious and far-reaching frugality which, by one means and another, saves even my foolishness and imperfection from running altogether to waste.
Viewed in this light, as an offset or foil for the remainder of the year, we may say that the worse the winter is, the better it is. Within reasonable limits, it can hardly be too long or too rigorous. And just here, as it appears to me, our New England climate shows most admirably. Without being unendurably hot or insufferably cold, it does
offer us an abundant contrast. An opposition of one hundred and twenty-five degrees between January and July ought to be enough, one would say, to impress even the dullest imagination.
But winter has its positively favorable side, and is not to be passed off with merely negative compliments; as if it were like a toothache or a tiresome sermon,—something of which the only good word to be said is, that it cannot last forever. It is not to be charged as a defect upon cold weather that some people find it to disagree with them. We might as well chide the hill for putting a sick man out of breath. It is with persons as with plants: some are hardy, others not. The date-palm cannot be made to grow in Massachusetts; but is Massachusetts to blame for the palm-tree's incapacity? All things of which the specific office is to promote strength (exercise, food, climate) presuppose a degree of strength sufficient for their use. So it is with cold weather. Its proper effect is to brace and invigorate the system; but there must be vigor to start with. The law is universal: "To him that hath shall be given."