Let the thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their stiff wings.

Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her _yashmac_; schoolboys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof.

There is nothing in all this to complain of.

A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,--its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding thunders.

Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties, -- sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts.