■[[ In the Lake Superior region, much colder than our own, — where the snow falls with the first frosts, and stays to the edge of summer, — many of the plants we dig up, and put into our cellars, are left in the ground with perfect safety, because " He giveth snow like wool " to preserve them under its warm fleece. In my readings, I have found many curious records of persons buried under the snow, surviving through long spans of time ; but, if a hand or a foot was exposed, that was lost.^
rill soft and deep, 0 winter snow.
The sweet azalea's oaken dells, And hide the bank where roses blow,
And swing the azure bells !
^ H. C. McCook, The Gospel in Nature, 100. * R. CoUyer, Nature and Life, 52.
142 THE TREASURIES OF THE SNOW
O'erlay the amber violet's leaves, The pui'ple aster's brookside home,
Guard all the flowers her pencil gives A life beyond their bloom.
And she, when spring comes round again, By greening slope and singing flood
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain, Her darlings of the wood.^
2. Snow is a useful fertilizer. It prepares the soil for the uses of man. Every agriculturist recognizes this. Many a sheaf of wheat is a sheaf of reaped snowstorm. Many bushels of golden grain are but snowflakes turned to life in rye and barley. The great wheat-fields must have snow or the substitute for it. It is better than the manure which seizes hold of stubborn clods and dried fields, for it wraps them with its white cloak and makes them warm for spring sowing. It refuses to conduct their heat away. It hides it in radiant silence while it wakes the earth up to its coming possibility. Nothing so relieves a field of the care of a crop, or helps it to forget the scratching of the plough or harrow, or makes it independent of the sun which exhorted it to work, as a heavy snowstorm which hides it from December until April.
The snow is falling softly o'er the plain,
And slowly hiding 'neath a veil of white
The fields that once with flowers were bedight
In days of summer sun and summer rain.
'Tis thus forgetfulness has healed my pain — By slowly hiding from my inward sight The dear dead joys that made the past so bright;
And therefore I am happy once again.
Yet e'en this painless peace must have an end; The sun will melt the snow in happy tears, And gild the earth with glory as of yore:
So if I meet thee once again, dear Friend,
Thy smile will straightway melt the mists of years, And all the happy past be ours once more.^
3. Snow acts as a stimulus to mind and character. It has
^ J. G. Whittier, Flowers in Winter.
* Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, Love's Argument and other Poems, 123.
JOB XXXVIII. 22 143
been noticed that as in the Tropics, land is fruitful, in snowy- countries man is fruitful ; as a rule the colder the climate, the more vigorous do we find intellect and character. The strong young races that from time to time have freshened the earth with men have always had a home in some winter land ; and nearly all the most precious fruits in the higher departments of life and learning have ripened within the snowline. This just means — does it not ? — that it is not a good thing for men that life should be made too easy for them. A certain amount of hardship to be contended with, a certain amount of opposition to be overcome, brings a man out, puts him upon his mettle and develops all his higher faculties. We see this in the matter of climate, in the actual winters and snows that the seasons bring.
^ It is remarkable that in the thin edge of land between Cincinnati or St. Louis and Chicago there is this difference, that, in the gravest times the nation has ever known, the great ballads, whose influence for good was incalculable, — ballads like the " Battle-cry of Freedom," — came from the city that is set farthest in the snow. I mention these instances as hints of what I mean by that better blessing in the snow than the contemplation of its starry order and noble uses as it lies on the land. What every healthy man and woman feels, when, after the disheartening rains of the last weeks in the autumn, the first powder of the white blessing falls; and then, as winter deepens, the snow comes in good earnest, and
The whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
that is the intimation of the difference between the snow present in, and absent from, our life.^
^ The eighteenth year of my ministry in Myrtle Street com- mences to-day. Through all these seventeen years I have not had one day's illness. Oh! my God, what a responsibility! I have had trials, severe and awful, especially the irreparable loss of my dear wife. But I think that I can say that these afflictions have been of inestimable service, this last in particular; what self-knowledge, what experience, what a power of sympathy it has produced ! I now look upon an untried man as an uneducated man. Of all schools, the school of affliction is that which teaches most effectually.^