This scrap of valor just for play
Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray”;
and this is what Emerson says he sings:
“Good day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger!
Happy to meet you in these places
Where January brings few faces.”
And as I brought to mind the poet’s lines, I forgot to shiver, and quite warmed again to the idea of flowers, especially as one of the boys just then brought up a spray of green holly with a burning red berry on it.
I laid the spray of green holly on the hard white crust of the January snow. Then I stood a moment and spread my hands out over it to warm them! It was like a little fire in the snow. The boys laughed at me. They were warm enough in their mittens. But I had need of more than mittens to warm my fingers. I had need of a fire,—a fire of green pointed holly leaves and one glowing, flaming berry, a tiny red hot coal of summer blazing here in the wide white ashes of the winter.
We were tacking again now in order to get back on our course, and had got into the edge of the swamp among the pines when the boy with the shovel began to study the ground and the trees as if trying to find the location of something.