Sometimes, a keen, frosty night would be succeeded by a still, sunny day, when the eaves pattered their sleepy music, and the cows strayed away into the forest, as though they smelt approaching spring—when the cats flew out of the house, and chased each other up into the trees, and the dog went away by himself, wandering along the river-banks for reasons known only to himself.
These were visiting days, holidays, jubilee days, for those animals that were housed in trees, and burrowed in the earth. Go forth into the woods. You may, on such a day, see the squirrel push out his head from the door of his castle, where he has been confined for a month, and cautiously look over the landscape—then dart in again. Soon he pushes himself out farther, and farther, and timidly glides down to the foot of the tree. Then he tries the snow, and then again, and finally goes cantering to the nearest stump, and chirruping, up he goes with a flirt, throws his tail over his back, sits down, and breaks forth into a burst of song.
Do you believe that squirrel remembers his last summer rambles in those woods—yon rivulet where he drank, now sleeping beneath its silver frost-work, and chanting its low, muffled dirge—yon icy knoll, that stood, last June, a pyramid of flowers—yon hickory where he harvested his nuts? Is his song for the present or the past?
Look a little farther—the solemn tread of the turkey—who is busy disinterring some of the buried mast of autumn. Such a day is a bright page in the winter life of the turkey. She comes forth from beneath the roots of upturned trees, from thickets or hollow logs, where she has been so long cowering and starving, to hail the blessed warmth. She dreamed away the summer, stalking about from wood to stream, and stream to wood—she passed the provident squirrel often, in October, and saw him roll in his winter stores, but she didn't know why; and now she is shovelling the snow, scattering it right and left with her feet, with a melancholy twit! twit! to get a kernel of bread.
Farther on is a little gorge sloping up from the brook, and on such days the snows melt off, and the banks grow warm, and the green grass shines as brightly as it did in May. It is soft and spring-like there. The sunbeams seem to be all tangled together in that spot. There are clusters of winter birds sporting in this temple, and occasionally one breaks forth with a note or two of her last June's song, as though she were just twanging her harp to try its strings. They think those tangled sunbeams are the footfall of April, and so they chirrup, and flutter, and bow to them, and seem to ask where gentle May is, and when she is coming with her music and flowers.
Sometimes the fog from the river would freeze upon the trees during a night, and the sun would rise upon a forest all burst out into a white bloom. As the sun rose higher, the little particles glittered and flashed, and then it was a forest of silver—every shrub, every bush, every tree, was silver. The woods were a frozen poem—written in a night by invisible fingers, to be read for an hour or two, and then scattered away in shining scales, forever. These natural changes and beauties were all that there were to attract attention, and arrest our out-door thoughts. How different is all this from the life of a resident of some large city—where the life of a man is read in the street—and where each day shifts its pictures with its revolution, like the changing colors of a kaleidoscope!
In-doors, however, was the domestic hearth. There were joys there that knew no winter. Wife and children—how many? I said three—but were there not more? There was the babe, the creeping infant, the tottering child, in each. The portraits of half a dozen children were daguerreotyped on my soul as I looked at one. But a part were dead!—the babe had died in the infant, and the infant in the child—not died, either, but one grace had faded into another, one beauty had risen upon the ruins of another, until the child was born where the infant perished, we know not when nor how. Instead of two, I always felt that I had a family of little ones about me.
And then, that old dog that had been with us for years, and shared our fortunes and misfortunes, always the same, under all circumstances—he was one of the family. He used to pioneer the children a half a mile to school, and wag his tail, and bid them "good morning," as he left them at the door. He was also there in waiting, at night, to escort them home again. He used to walk around, over the farm, and examine this thing and that, as though he was half proprietor of the premises. He used to sleep during the long winter evenings by the fire, his nose between his fore paws, his hind legs stretched out full length, and dream of scouring the woods—first a tremor! then a twitch! then a bark, and a leap! and looking up, and finding all a sham, away he would walk under the table, overwhelmed with mortification.
This dog never made any acquaintance among the Puddlefordians, nor their dogs. He always stood aloof on his dignity, and if either approached too near, warned them away with a low growl. He was a noble Newfoundland, and prided himself upon his ancestry.
But there are little threads of beauty that penetrate every household, wherever it may be, and warm the heart. Those thoughts, and kind words, and remembrances, that fly back and forth, hundreds of miles, and keep the poorest hovel all a-glow. They are so many rays that converge there, and make a star. That sleepy old horse that brought in the mail once a week was a blessed old horse, and bore upon his back treasures that far outweighed gold. That mail-bag, like all mail-bags, was full of passions—love, hatred, and revenge—all kinds of courtesy, civility, politeness, sycophancy—some coarseness and vulgarity, too; and when it burst, like a bomb, in the post-office, it covered some persons with a rainbow light, gave others a cold drench, overpowered still others, and turned many into so many raging madmen. The imprisoned conflicting elements that jogged along up hill and down dale, so cosily on that old horse's back, made strange work when they were let loose.