“This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled _Hoti’s_ business--let it be!-- Properly based _Oun_-- Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_, Dead from the waist down. “Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know-- Bury this man there? Here--here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.” CHAPTER VI A JANUARY SUMMER CHAPTER VI A JANUARY SUMMER _When winter winds blow cold and chill And through the hawthorn howls the gale_ The winter winds were truly cold and chill on this twenty-first of January here in Massachusetts. And I chance to know they were chill down along the Delaware this particular January day. I remember many a January day like this on the wide marshes of the Delaware and in the big woods along the Maurice River where I was a boy. But I was not thinking of those days at all here in my New England home, for I was busy at my desk. Some one was at my study door. More than one, for I heard low talking. Then the door softly opened, and four bebundled boys stood before me--with an axe, a long-handled shovel, a covered basket, and a very big secret, which stuck out all over their faces. They were not big boys outside. But they were almost bursting inside with their big secret. They were big with boots and coats and caps and mittens; and they looked almost like monsters in my study door with their axe and shovel and big basket. “Come on, father,” they whispered (as if _She_ hadn’t heard them tramping through the hall and upstairs with their kit!), “come on! It’s mother’s birthday to-morrow, and we’re going after the flowers.” “What!” I exclaimed. “Are you going to chop the flowers down with an axe, and dig them up with a shovel?” And I tried to think what a chopped-down and dug-up birthday bouquet would look like. But it was too much for me. “You are going to give her a nice bunch of frost flowers,” I said, feeling about in my puzzled mind for just what was afoot. “If you are going to give her frost flowers, you had better get the ice-saw, too, for we shall need a big block of ice to stick their stems in.” Not a word of comment! No sign on the four faces that they had even heard my gentle banter. They knew what they were going to do; and all they wanted of me was to come along. “Hurry up,” they answered, dropping my hip-boots on the floor. “Here are your scuffs.”