By the time you have reached the spring the woods are full of life and sound, and the spring itself adds to the winter music. The rocks where it bubbles out are thickly covered with hoar frost. One of the big blocks of limestone in its causeway is covered with ice, clear and viscid as molten glass. The river is bridged over with ice twenty inches thick, save only the little gulf stream into which the spring pours its waters. From the surface of this stream thin smoky wreaths of vapor rise and are changed into crystals by the frosty air. But the waters of the spring gush forth as abundantly and musically now as they did in the hot days of last July, and the clam-shell with which you then drank is still in its place by the rock. The pure, melodious, beautiful spring makes its own environment, regardless of surroundings. Its sources are in the unfailing hills. It suggests the lives of some men and women whose friendship you enjoy, and who are ever ready to refresh you on life's way. * * * * * The wind of last night has carried much of the snow over the top of the ridge and deposited it in this sheltered slope of the river canon. Here are wind-formed caves of sculptured snow, vaulted with a tender blue. Turrets and towers sparkle in the splendid light. All angles are softened, and everywhere the lines of the snow curves are smooth and flowing. The drift sweeps down from the footpath way on the river bank to the ice-bound bed of the river in graceful lines. Where the side of the canon is more precipitous there is equal beauty. Each shrub has its own peculiar type amidst the broken drift. The red cedar, which is Iowa's nearest approach to a pine, except in a few favored counties, hangs from the top of the crag heavily festooned with feathery snow. Those long creeping lines on which the crystals sparkle are only brambles, and that big rosette of rusty red and fluffy white is the New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost particles, is the downy viburnum. The great tangle of vine and lace work mixed with snow is young hop hornbeam, supporting honeysuckle. * * * * *