Those grays and browns,
huddling together in silent lines side by side, are full of peaceful
beauty as they rest upon the white snow or up against uncertain skies.
I like a gray atmosphere relieved by silver birches, just enough
sombreness set off by cheerfulness. It is wisdom and patience ornamented
with gray locks.
Spring, early spring, in New England, we call more disagreeable than
winter. Ah, but it is the budding time! When you meet spring, before
the trees come out in full dress, when all that fluttering, fluffy
greenness, and that crimson flowering etch, with innumerable branchlets,
the embroidery of Nature against the sky, you meet, even though the
east sea winds blow, a season incomparable.
An opportunity for getting acquainted with Nature is never wanting.
If men should cut down all the forest trees, as they now threaten,
they could not "cut the clouds out of the sky," as Thoreau affirms.
A roof light in a garret, even, gives the eye visions dazzlingly
beautiful over beyond all the chimney pots, if the eye only looks. We
would go far to see on canvas the lake, the river, the wood that borders
our heritage; and yet we rarely heed their living charms that daily
offer us new pleasures. We cross the ocean to visit great churches, and
we throng to hear an organ played by a master musician; while in yonder
forest we may enter a cathedral, loftier and grander far than art can
form, through whose densely branching arches and solemn aisles sweeps
the music of the winds from the organ pipes of the pines.
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