Produced by David Widger. HTML version by Al Haines.
TWICE TOLD TALES
SNOW-FLAKES
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning!-and, throughthe partially frosted window-panes, I love to watch the gradualbeginning of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widelythrough the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almostalighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions ofthe atmosphere. These are not the big flakes, heavy with moisture,which melt as they touch the ground, and are portentous of a soakingrain. It is to be, in good earnest, a wintry storm. The two or threepeople, visible on the side-walks, have an aspect of endurance, ablue-nosed, frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed inanticipation of a comfortless and blustering day. By nightfall, or atleast before the sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us, thestreet and our little garden will be heaped with mountain snow-drifts.The soil, already frozen for weeks past, is prepared tosustain whatever burden may be laid upon it; and, to a northern eye,the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and acquire a beautyof its own, when Mother Earth, like her children, shall have put onthe fleecy garb of her winter's wear. The cloud-spirits are slowlyweaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime likehoarfrost over the brown surface of the street; the withered green ofthe grass-plat is still discernible; and the slated roofs of thehouses do but begin to look gray, instead of black. All the snow thathas yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it heaped uptogether, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually,by silent and stealthy influences, are great changes wrought. Theselittle snow-particles, which the storm-spirit flings by handfulsthrough the air, will bury the great earth under their accumulatedmass, nor permit her to behold her sister sky again for dreary months.We, likewise, shall lose sight of our mother's familiar visage, andmust content ourselves with looking heavenward the oftener.
Now, leaving the storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down,pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is aninfluence productive of cheerfulness, and favorable to imaginativethought, in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a southernclime may woo the muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage,reclining on banks of turf, while the sound of singing birds andwarbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our briefsummer, I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of adream. My hour of inspiration--if that hour ever comes--is when thegreen log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter forthe gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coalsdrop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When thecasement rattles in the gust, and the snow-flakes or the sleetyraindrops pelt hard against the window-panes, then I spread out mysheet of paper, with the certainty that thoughts and fancies willgleam forth upon it, like stars at twilight, or like violets inMay,--perhaps to fade as soon. However transitory their glow, theyat least shine amid the darksome shadow which the clouds of the outwardsky fling through the room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomedby me, her true-born son, be New England's winter, which makes us, oneand all, the nurslings of the storm, and sings a familiar lullaby evenin the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look we forth again,and see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done.
Slow and sure! He has the day, perchance the week, before him, andmay take his own time to accomplish Nature's burial in snow. A smoothmantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and thedry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the whitesurface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes standshivering in a shallow snow-drift, looking, poor things! asdisconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the drearyscene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with thesummer; they neither live nor die; what they retain of life seems butthe chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower shrubs inmidwinter! The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where theeddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern thereal intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object,--asyonder spire,-and observe how the riotous gust fights with thedescending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes theentire prospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct, buttransient glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost; and nowthe dense wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snowdriftsat each other, in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we haveseen an amusing parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in theupper regions. It is a snow-battle of school-boys. What a prettysatire on war and military glory might be written, in the form of achild's story, by describing the snowball-fights of two rival schools,the alternate defeats and victories of each, and the final triumph ofone party, or perhaps of neither! What pitched battles, worthy to bechanted in Homeric strains! What storming of fortresses, built all ofmassive snowblocks! What feats of individual prowess, and embodiedonsets of martial enthusiasm! And when some well-contested anddecisive victory had put a period to the war, both armies should uniteto build a lofty monument of snow upon the battle-field, and crown itwith the victor's statue, hewn of the same frozen marble. In a fewdays or weeks thereafter, the passer-by would observe a shapelessmound upon the level common; and, unmindful of the famous victory,would ask, "How came it there? Who reared it? And what means it?"The shattered pedestal of many a battle monument has provoked thesequestions, when none could answer.
Turn we again to the fireside, and sit musing there, lending our earsto the wind, till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice, anddictate wild and airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire meto sketch out the personification of a New England winter! And thatidea, if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit before myfancy, shall be the theme of the next page.
How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latterautumn, which is Nature's cry of lamentation, as the destroyer rushesamong the shivering groves where she has lingered, and scatters thesear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrapthemselves in cloaks, and shake their heads disconsolately, saying,"Winter is at hand!" Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp anddiligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice, becauseeach shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coalper ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance throughthe atmosphere. A few days more; and at eventide, the children lookout of the window, and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantlein the air. It is stern Winter's vesture. They crowd around thehearth, and cling to their mother's gown, or press between theirfather's knees, affrighted by the hollow roaring voice, that bellowsa-down the wide flue of the chimney. It is the voice of Winter; andwhen parents and children bear it, they shudder and exclaim, "Winteris come! Cold Winter has begun his reign already!" Now, throughoutNew England, each hearth becomes an altar, sending up the smoke of acontinued sacrifice to the immitigable deity who tyrannizes overforest, country side, and town. Wrapped in his white mantle, hisstaff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a wind-tossed snow-drift, hetravels over the land, in the midst of the northern blast; and woe tothe homeless wanderer whom he finds upon his path! There he liesstark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the spot where Winterovertook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broadlakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary empire isestablished; all around stretches the desolation of the Pole. Yet notungrateful be his New England children,--for Winter is our sire,though a stern and rough one,--not ungrateful even for the severities,which have nourished our unyielding strengt
h of character. And let usthank him, too, for the sleigh-rides, cheered by the music of merrybells; for the crackling and rustling hearth, when the ruddy firelightgleams on hardy Manhood and the blooming cheek of Woman; for all thehome enjoyments, and the kindred virtues, which flourish in a frozensoil. Not that we grieve, when, after some seven months of storm andbitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seendriving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by thehandful, and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often, erehe will give up his empire, old Winter rushes fiercely back, and hurlsa snow-drift at the shrinking form of Spring; yet, step by step, he iscompelled to retreat northward, and spends the summer months withinthe Arctic circle.
Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made thewinter's day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged withoutabatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denservolumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill, there isa layer of snow, reaching half-way up the lowest pane of glass. Thegarden is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spotsof uncovered earth, where the gust has whirled away the snow, heapingit elsewhere to the fence-tops, or piling huge banks against the doorsof houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deepacross a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak isswollen with the wind. And now the jingling of bells, a sluggishsound, responsive to the horse's toilsome progress through theunbroken drifts, announces the passage of a sleigh, with a boyclinging behind, and ducking his head to escape detection by thedriver. Next comes a sledge, laden with wood for some unthriftyhousekeeper, whom winter has surprised at a cold hearth. But whatdismal equipage now struggles along the uneven street? A sablehearse, bestrewn with snow, is bearing a dead man through the storm tohis frozen bed. O, how dreary is a burial in winter, when the bosomof Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor child!
Evening--the early eve of December--begins to spread its deepeningveil over the comfortless scene; the firelight gradually brightens,and throws my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of thechamber; but still the storm rages and rattles, against the windows.Alas! I shiver, and think it time to be disconsolate. But, taking afarewell glance at dead Nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock ofsnow-birds, skimming lightsomely through the tempest, and flittingfrom drift to drift, as sportively as swallows in the delightful primeof summer. Whence come they? Where do they build their nests, andseek their food? Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summeraround the earth, instead of making themselves the playmates of thestorm, and fluttering on the dreary verge of the winter's eve? I knownot whence they come, nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by thatwandering flock of snow-birds.