AN ICE-STORM

Of all the vagaries of winter weather, one of the rarest is the ice-storm; rain falling with a wind and from a quarter that should bring snow, and freezing as it falls, not penetrating the snow but coating it with a shining armor, sheathing every branch and twig in crystal and fringing eaves with icicles of most fantastic shapes.

On ice-clad roofs and fields and crackling trees the rain still beats with a leaden clatter, unlike any other sound of rain; unlike the rebounding pelting of hail or the swish of wind-blown snow.

The trees begin to stoop under their increasing burden, and then to crack and groan as it is laid still heavier upon them. At times is heard the thin, echoless crash of an overladen branch, first bending to its downfall with a gathering crackle of severed fibres, then with a sudden crash, shattering in a thousand fragments the brief adornments that have wrought its destruction.

Every kind of tree has as marked individuality in its icy garniture as in its summer foliage. The gracefulness of the elms, the maples, the birches, the beeches, and the hornbeams is preserved and even intensified; the clumsy ramage of the butternut and ash is as stiff as ever, though every unbending twig bears its row of glittering pendants. The hemlocks and firs are tents of ice, but the pines are still pines, with every needle exaggerated in bristling crystal.

Some worthless things have become of present value, as the wayside thistles and the bejeweled grass of an unshorn meadow, that yesterday with its dun unsightliness, rustling above the snow, proclaimed the shiftlessness of its owner.

Things most unpicturesque are made beautiful. The wire of the telegraph with its dull undulations is transformed to festoons of crystal fringe, linking together shining pillars of glass that yesterday were but bare, unsightly posts.

The woods are a maze of fantastic shapes of tree growth. Wood roads are barricaded with low arches of ice that the hare and the fox can barely find passage beneath, and with long, curved slants of great limbs bent to the earth. The wild vines are turned to ropes and cables of ice, and have dragged down their strong supports, about whose prostrate trunks and limbs they writhe in a tangle of rigid coils. The lithe trunks of second growth are looped in an intricate confusion of arches one upon another, many upon one, over whole acres of low-roofed forest floor.

The hare and the grouse cower in these tents of ice, frightened and hungry; for every sprout and bud is sheathed in adamant, and scarlet berries, magnified and unattainable, glow in the heart of crystal globules. Even the brave chickadees are appalled, and the disheartened woodpecker mopes beside the dead trunk, behind whose impenetrable shield he can hear the grub boring in safety.

Through the frozen brambles that lattice the doorway of his burrow the fox peers dismayed upon a glassy surface that will hold no scent of quarry, yet perhaps is comforted that the same conditions impose a truce upon his enemies the hounds. The squirrel sits fasting in his chamber, longing for the stores that are locked from their owner in his cellar. It is the dismalest of all storms for the wood folk, despite all the splendor wherewith it adorns their realm.

One holds out his hand and lifts his face skyward to assure himself that the rain has ceased, for there is a continual clattering patter as if it were yet falling. But it is only the crackling of the icy trees and the incessant dropping of small fragments of their burden.

The gray curtain of the sky drifts asunder, and the low sun shines through. It glorifies the earth with the flash and gleam of ten million diamonds set everywhere. The fire and color of every gem that was ever delved burn along the borders of the golden pathway that stretches from your feet far away to the silver portals of the mountains that bar our glittering world from the flaming sky.

The pallid gloom of the winter night falls upon the earth. Then the full moon throbs up behind the scintillating barrier of the hills. She presently paves from herself to us a street of silver among the long blue shadows, and lights it with a thousand stars; some fallen quite to earth, some twinkling among the drooping branches, all as bright as the eternal stars that shine in the blue sky above.

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