The mornings of late autumn, as the nights get longer, begin to have a nipping air. Ponds of water are covered with a glare and safe coat of ice, and our youngsters get out their skates, so carefully laid away last season. The children trudge away to school, and their color is heightened by the morning frost and wind; but gradually the human system is getting accustomed to the change of the season, and the dry, pleasant cold is enjoyable. Immense ice hummocks form upon the banks of our large lakes. They are conical and steep, or blunt and rolling, with a flat place here and there among the convolutions. Daily, as the cold strengthens and the winds dash the billows upon the ice-banks as if they would destroy them, they gather from each wave a little more frozen from it, and so work out from the shore, solid and immovable, as if to entirely close over our inland sea’s surface; but they do not, and they never succeed in effecting any permanent lodgment more than eight or ten rods from the shore. Somehow in freezing they invariably leave holes here and there. Now, let a storm come on and the breakers be driven against the ice-banks and under them--for they do not reach the bottom in any deep water--the pent-up water under the banks, driven up with terrific force by each incoming sea, tries to find an escape. These holes, in a measure, serve for an escape. Sprays or jets of water will be forced up through these holes twenty feet into the air, only to fall upon the surrounding ice and be frozen as hard as its neighboring globules in their icy immobility. The blow-holes of a whale furnish a good analogy to the blow-holes in the ice. Indeed, the most powerful whale can scarcely expel the water from his blow-holes higher than a storm forces it up among the ice-dunes. And as they get too high or too heavy near the outer edge, they break away in great lumps and go floating upon the surface. A change in the direction of the wind sails them away, and we see upon our inland seas ice islands sometimes many miles in extent. Look again for the ice islands in a few hours, and not a trace is seen. The waters are a deep blue, in strong contrast to the white snow upon the shore or the ice upon the edge. Stand upon an eminence and look along the shores and outer edge of the ice-bank, so firmly rooted to the margin. It is jagged and furrowed, and honeycombed, and awful, and withal so still. Not a bird is wheeling over the surface of the water, not a sail is upon it. The voice of Nature is effectually hushed to rest. While you are still observing, let the sun shine upon the ice and water, and you can with difficulty take your eyes off the picture--as fine a picture of the Arctic as we can get, even if it be in miniature. What a contrast from our golden autumn! Those of us who are not particularly subject to lung troubles and who are well fed and clad, really enjoy our dry and beautiful cold and the glint of the Arctic regions which these pictures afford us.