The voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer were gone. The very face of things had changed; all had been reduced, made plain, simple, single, pure! There was less for the senses, but how much keener now their joy! The wide landscape, the frosty air, the tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out of the quiet of the falling twilight, the voice of the quail! There is no day but is beautiful in the woods; and none more beautiful than one like this Christmas Day,—warm and still and wrapped, to the round red berries of the holly, in the magic of the snow. [Illustration] III A Cure for Winter FOR, lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone— yet the snow lies white upon the fields, my little river huddles under the ice, and a new calendar hangs against the faded wall. But the storm is spent, the sun is out, there is a cheery _drip, drip, drip_ from the eaves, eggs are sixty cents a dozen, and I am writing to the golden cackle of my hens. New Year’s Day, and winter gone! No, not quite gone, with eggs at such a price; still, it must be plain to every one that I can have but little of winter left: eggs are liable to come down any day. It would be different, of course, were I buying eggs at sixty cents,—all the difference between a winter-sick and a winter-well condition. Selling eggs for sixty cents is a cure, though not for poverty when one has only thirty hens; but it is a cure for winter. The virtue, however, is not in the sixty cents. There is no cure for winter in mere money. The virtue is in the eggs, or, perhaps, it is really found in keeping the hens. Keeping the hens, and the two pigs, the horse, the cow, the four boys, and the farm, for the year around, is a sure cure for winter, and for a great many other ills. In addition to the farm, one must have some kind of a salary, and a real love for nature; but given the boys and the farm, the love will come, for it lies dormant in human nature, as certain seeds seem to lie dormant in the soil; and as for the salary, one must have a salary—farm or flat. The prescription, then, should read:— [Rx] A small farm—of an acre or more, A small income—of a thousand or more, A small family—of four boys or more, A real love of nature. _Sig._ Morning and evening chores. The dose to be taken daily, as long as winter lasts. This will cure. It is an old-fashioned household mixture that can be compounded in any country kitchen. But that is the trouble with it,—it is a _home_ remedy that cannot be bought of the apothecary. There is more trouble with it, too, largely on account of the regularity with which milking time returns and the dose of chores. But it is effective. A farm and congenial chores are a sovereign cure for uncongenial time.