was doubtless his chosen period. The gods smiled upon him then if ever. The time of the chase, the season of the buck and the doe, and of the ripening of all forest fruits; the time when all men are incipient hunters, when the first frosts have given pungency to the air, when to be abroad on the hills or in the woods is a delight that both old and young feel,—if the red aborigine ever had his summer of fulness and contentment, it must have been at this sea son, and it fitly bears his name. John Burroughs.

Ah! how short are the days! How soon the night overtakes us!

In the old country the twilight is longer; but here in the forest

Suddenly comes the dark, with hardly a pause in its coming,

Hardly a moment between the two lights, the day and the lamplight;

Yet how grand is the winter! How spotless the snow is, and perfect!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Dear swift December evenings, homelier far

Than are June's perfumed twilights, warm and still.

Sir Lewis Morris.

WEATHER

OPINIONS

'Twas morn

among,

A cauld day December blew;
A cauld kirk, and in't few;
A caulder minister ne'er spak;
It will be lang ere I come back.

Robert Burns.

-but not the ray which falls the summer boughs

When Beauty walks in gladness forth, with all her light and

song;

'Twas morn-but mist and cloud hung deep upon the lonely vale,

And shadows, like the wings of death, were out upon the gale.
Charles Swain.

There was never a leaf on bush or tree,
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly;
The river was dumb and could not speak,
For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun.

James Russell Lowell.

All else was still with the weird, dreamy stillness that hangs over the earth on a day of chill East-wind haze. There is a brooding expectancy about such a day that works strangely on the imagination, and suggests the dark impossibilities of irresistible Fate. There is an austere poetry in the purply gray, breathless air, and the dark unchanging sky, and a mute pathos in the quiet hush of weary Nature, thus folding her hands for rest, which has an unutterable charm for some temperaments, and touches far deeper chords than those vibrated by the brilliance and joyous tumult of life and song in the pleasant June time.

Maxwell Gray.

OPINIONS

DECEMBER

When suns are low and nights are long
And winds bring wild alarms,

Through the darkness comes the Queen of the Year
In all her peerless charms,-
December, fair and holly-crowned,

With the Christ-child in her arms.

When icicles hang by the wall,

Edna Dean Proctor.

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!
To-who! -a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit!

To-who!-a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Shakespeare.

The frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

When, like a sullen exile driven forth,
Southward, December drags his icy chain,
He graves fair pictures of his native North
On the crisp window-pane.

The fairy fragments of some Arctic scene
I see tonight; blank wastes of polar snow,
Ice-laden boughs, and feather pines that lean
Over ravines below.

Black frozen lakes, and icy peaks blown bare,
Break the white surface of the crusted pane,
And spear-like leaves, long ferns, and blossoms fair
Linked in silvery chain.

Edith May.

Behold the groves that shine with silver frost,
Their beauty wither'd, and their verdure lost.

Alexander Pope.

Hear the rain elves' soft, wet fingers,
Creeping o'er the window-pane,
Gently tapping, tapping, tapping
A monotonous refrain.

Pattering lightly on the shingles,

'Neath the old eaves murmuring low,

From the gables to the portals
Gaily dancing to and fro.

Eleanor French.