The black squirrel delights in the new-fallen snow like a boy—a real boy, with red hands as well as red cheeks, and an automatic mechanism of bones and muscles capable of all things except rest. The first snow sends a thrill of joy through every fibre of such a boy, and a thousand delights crowd into his mind. The gliding, falling coasters on the hills, the passing sleighs with niches on the runners for his feet, the flying snowballs, the sliding-places, the broad, tempting ice, all whirl through his mind in a delightful panorama, and he hurries out to catch the elusive flakes in his outstretched hands and to shout aloud in the gladness of his heart. And the black squirrel becomes a boy with the first snow. What a pity he cannot shout! There is a superabundant joy and life in his long, graceful bounds, when his beautiful form, in its striking contrast with the white snow, seems magnified to twice its real size. Perhaps there is vanity as well as joy in his lithe, bounding motions among the naked trees, for nature seems to have done her utmost to provide a setting that would best display his graces of form and motion.

When the falling snow clings in light, airy masses on the spruces and pines, and festoons the naked tracery and clustering winter buds of the maples—when the still air seems to fix every twig and branch and clinging mass of snow in a solid medium of crystal, the spell of stillness is broken by the silent but joyful leaps of the hurrying squirrel. How alive he seems, in contrast with the silence of the snow, as his outlines contrast with its perfect white! His body curves and elongates with regular undulations, as he measures off the snow with twin footprints. Away in the distance he is still visible among the naked trunks, a moving patch of animated blackness. His free, regular footprints are all about, showing where he has run hither and thither, with no apparent purpose except to manifest his joy in life.

His red-haired cousin comes to a lofty opening in a hollow tree and looks out with an expression of disappointment on his face. He does not like the snow-covered landscape spread out so artistically before him. It makes him tired, and he has not enough energy to scold an intruder, as he would in the comfortable days of summer. No amount of coaxing or tapping will tempt him from his lofty watch-tower, or win more recognition than a silent look of weary discontent. Another cousin, the chipmunk, no longer displays his daintily-striped coat. Oblivious in his burrow, he is sleeping away the days, and waiting for a more congenial season.

But the black squirrel, now among the branches of an elm, is twitching from one rigid attitude to another, electrified by the crisp atmosphere and the inspiration of the snow. Again he is leaping over the white surface to clamber up the repellent bark of a tall hickory. Among the larger limbs he disappears. As he never attempts to hide, he must have retired into his own dwelling to partake of the store laid by in the season of plenty. Hickory nuts are his favourite food, and the hard shells seem but an appetizing relish. He knows the value of frugality, and gathers them before they are ripe, throwing down the shrivelled and unfilled, that the boys may not annoy him with stones and sticks. In winter he is the happiest of all the woodland family. He does not yield to the drowsy, numbing influence of the cold, nor to the depression of a season of scanty fare, but bounds along from tree to tree, inspired by the subtle spirit of winter and revelling in the joy of being alive.

S.T. Wood