Leaving behind us the sleighs and snow-shovels of the street, we turn noiselessly toward the radiant margin of the sunlit woods.  The yellow willows on the causeway burn like flame against the darker background, and will burn on until they burst into April.  Yonder pines and hemlocks stand motionless and dark against the sky.  The statelier trees have already shaken all the snow from their summits, but it still clothes the lower ones with a white covering that looks solid as marble.  Yet see how lightly it escapes!—­a slight gust shakes a single tree, there is a Staub-bach for a moment, and the branches stand free as in summer, a pyramid of green amid the whiteness of the yet imprisoned forest.  Each branch raises itself when emancipated, thus changing the whole outline of the growth; and the snow beneath is punctured with a thousand little depressions, where the petty avalanches have just buried themselves and disappeared.

In crossing this white level, we have been tracking our way across an invisible pond, which was alive last week with five hundred skaters.  Now there is a foot of snow upon it, through which there is a boyish excitement in making the first path.  Looking back upon our track, it proves to be like all other human paths, straight in intention, but slightly devious in deed.  We have gay companions on our way; for a breeze overtakes us, and a hundred little simooms of drift whirl along beside us, and whelm in miniature burial whole caravans of dry leaves.  Here, too, our track intersects with that of some previous passer; he has but just gone on, judging by the freshness of the trail, and we can study his character and purposes.  The large boots betoken a wood-man or ice-man:  yet such a one would hardly have stepped so irresolutely where a little film of water has spread between the ice and snow and given a look of insecurity; and here again he has stopped to observe the wreaths on this pendent bough, and this snow-filled bird’s-nest.  And there the footsteps of the lover of beauty turn abruptly to the road again, and he vanishes from us forever.

As we wander on through the wood, all the labyrinths of summer are buried beneath one white inviting pathway, and the pledge of perfect loneliness is given by the unbroken surface of the all-revealing snow.  There appears nothing living except a downy woodpecker, whirling round and round upon a young beech-stem, and a few sparrows, plump with grass-seed and hurrying with jerking flight down the sunny glade.  But the trees furnish society enough.  What a congress of ermined kings is this circle of hemlocks, which stand, white in their soft raiment, around the dais of this woodland pond!  Are they held here, like the sovereigns in the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, till some mortal breaks their spell?  What sage counsels must be theirs, as they nod their weary heads and whisper ghostly memories and old men’s tales to each other, while the red leaves dance on the snowy sward below, or a fox or squirrel steals hurriedly through the wild and wintry night!  Here and there is some discrowned Lear, who has thrown off his regal mantle, and stands in faded russet, misplaced among the monarchs.